Compare And Contrast Frederick Taylor And Peter Follet's Theory Of Management

This paper analyzes five great management theorists: F. W. Taylor, Max Weber, Mary Parker Follett, and Douglas McGregor. Each theorist will be compared by four management functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling as detailed in the textbook: The Essentials of Contemporary Management-Sixth Edition from Gareth Jones and Jennifer M. George. We begin by discussing commerce prior the industrial revolution and then we define the key management functions, followed by an examination of each theorist, applying a template of analysis and critique.

Frederick W. Taylor was ahead of his time for his concept of Scientific management. It was a revolutionary way of running a business, that swept all over the globe, and his ideas were applicable to many different industries. Substituting disorder and conflict for a new untested method of control, cooperation, and science. Taylor understood there were no incentives for working harder. Knowing this, he payed workers based on output, allowing workers to make more money on any given day. It seemed like everyone would enjoy and prosper under this system, but that was not the case. Workers liked the opportunity to make more money in this system but many of them resisted this new idea. Being under constant supervision made work much harder for them.

The nineteenth century was a time ripe with progress and hope due to booming industrialization. As organizations and workforces grew, people looked for ways to increase their productivity and profit margins. New ideas were needed to satisfy both business owners and their employees and as such, along came theorists such as Marx or other contributors like Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo. Taylor produced a management style coined Scientific Management whereas Mayo took a slightly different route and conducted the Hawthorne studies. Over the years theorists such as Marx, with his wildly popular theory about alienation in the workplace, have shaped our view of how management should be conducted in

The twentieth century has brought in a number of management theories which have helped shaped our view of management in the present business environment. These emerging theories have enabled managers to appreciate new patterns of thinking, new ways of organising and new ways of managing organisations and people. Over the years these different theories have enabled the study

Scientific Management Theory by Frederick W. Taylor – Throughout the industrial world employees are the large part of the organisation and Fundamental interests of employees are necessarily aggressive. So as a manager it is necessary to arrange mutual relations with employees so their interests become identical. In case of any single individual the greatest prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest state of efficiency and that is, when he is turning out his largest daily output (Frederick Winslow Taylor, 2007).

Growing up, all of us had some sort of rule of thumb that either ruled in our households or school lives. We were told to do things a certain way because it has always been accomplished that way and never questioned if there was a better way in doing it. There are numerous ways in managing complex situations, so why do people believe management theory has only one correct way of executing it? Management theory has a very long timeline in history in which there have been many different management concepts, such as the scientific management theory created by F.W Taylor, which was more about production in contrast to Peter Drucker whose management theory consists of customer service. For this reason, it is extremely important to study and analyze the different management theories in order to see which practices are best suited for a specific workplace, person, and/or work communities. The book chosen for this report is The Charisma Myth, published by Penguin Group in New York 2012. The author Olivia Fox Cabane, has had much experience lecturing about management theory in prestigious colleges such as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and MIT. She is also a very well recognized columnist in the Huffington post as well as in Forbes magazine. Cabane is presently the Director of Innovative Leadership for Stanford’s StartX program. Olivia Fox

There are a number of management theories that have changed the management business environment in the twentieth century. The theories have assisted managers to come up with better ways of management and organization of people. Managers have been able to increase profits, reduce costs and maximize efficiency. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the contributions of scientific management and the human relations movement to the modern management. This essay will use Frederick Winslow Taylor’s theory on scientific management and Elton Mayo’s human relations theory. These two movements have been proven to increase productivity in the workplace (Mullins, 2005).

Taylorism is a management system which was popular in the late 19th century. It was designed to increase efficiency by breaking down and specialising repetitive tasks. This is exhibited as mentioned in ‘Selection and Development: A new perspective on some old problems’ that several jobs presently no longer consist of clusters of similar tasks, but are now process based collections of activities (Harrington, Hill & Linley 2005). According to Weber’s foundation of organisation theory; bureaucracy was portrayed as an “instrument or tool of unrivalled technical superiority which entailed charismatic, traditional and rational authority” (1978, cited in Clegg 1994). Thereafter, other theories derived based on the instrument being used as a form of manipulation. This is evident in Knights & Roberts’ (1982) concept of human resource management and staff misunderstanding the nature of power, treating it as if it were an individual possession, as opposed to a relationship between people (Knights & Roberts 1982). Subsequently, this led to the establishment of unions and increasing cooperative resistance in the workplace as employees seek change in the occupational structure (Courpasson & Clegg 2012). The change in this occupational structure was based around the ‘superior-inferior’ concept where managers prioritise their own success

“Taylor argued that rules of thumb should be replaced by a scientific approach to work: each task would be broken down into basic movement that could be timed to determine the one best way of doing the task. A worker would thus know what constituted a fair day's work for which he would receive a fair day's pay” This meant that the more productive an employee became the more the employee would earn but on the other hand if the productivity of a worker was poor this lead to the decrease in the wage earned.

Taylor imagined that workers would be able to make out the relationship between completion of more work in units and the economic rewards been increased. Taylors work as described by (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004) depicts how theories were to take place at shop floor levels, then how facts were substituted for opinion and guess work. Henri Fayol, his fellow classical writer had a different perception which looked at organisation from top to bottom. The pace setters of classical theories had engineering background hence derived theories with scientific approach. (Buchanan and Huczunski, 2004). (Cole, 2004) talks about how the production environment under the classical theory in America had created difficulties, where labour force were skint, uneducated, and in quest of making economic fortunes. (Lemak, 2004) point out how the classical management has had

In management literature today, the greatest use of the concept of Taylorism is as a contrast to a new, improved way of doing business. In political and

Contemporary Management with regard to The Ideas of Fredrick W. Taylor: An Evaluation by Locke.

Managers today have many different options when choosing a managerial theory to implement for their organizations. Knowledgeable managers must be aware of the different historical approaches and also able to determine which approach would be most effective for their unit. The established work structure of my unit currently utilizes elements of classical organizational theory, more specifically scientific management and bureaucratic theory. More recent theories, such as those that focus on human relations, are not applied as frequently. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical management theories utilized by my organization and determine whether they are appropriate. When areas in which my organization could be improved upon are identified, the recommendations of other management theories are considered for their possible effectiveness.

In the early 1900’s, some of the first ideas were thrown together to allow an organization to flourish in the upcoming modern era. The first theories were known as scientific and classical management, which focused on three separate theories from Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber. The three theories have similar ideology in the fact that organization is driven by management authority, employees only source of motivation is money, and organizations are machinelike with employees making up the parts of the machine (Papa, Daniels, & Spiker, 2008). In the Prophecy Fulfilled case study, Mary Ann (senior auditor) takes on a management role with subordinates similar to that of Weber’s Bureaucratic Theory (Daniels 1987, pp. 77-78).

The history of management has been grouped into phases of development. Classical Management was introduced in the beginning of the 201th century. This addresses the organization’s search for efficiency on the basis that people will work for themselves and be economically beneficial. In other words, they work because they are determined by the economic concerns. Workers are expected to accept every opportunity that comes and they must work for it to achieve a personal and financial improvement. All of this has been supported by 3 theories in which the companies still used it today.