Compare & Contrast Between Scientific and Behavioral Theories of Management

Frederick Taylor (1917) developed scientific management theory (often called "Taylorism") at the beginning of this century. His theory had four basic principles: 1) find the one "best way" to perform each task, 2) carefully match each worker to each task, 3) closely supervise workers, and use reward and punishment as motivators, and 4) the task of management is planning and control.

Frederick W. Taylor worked across the United States in the first 15 years of the 20th century looking to solve production problems (Owens & Valesky, 2011, p. 67). He was an engineer in steel manufacturing and studied developed what what is now known as the four principles of scientific management. These principles spell out what both managers and workers are to do. Two important principles include having the management set goals, plan, and supervise workers, and the workers perform the work, and that organizations should establish the standard where management “sets the objectives and the workers cooperate in achieving them” (p. 67). Taylor’s principles are still used today by some organizational leaders who fight the movement that management should work as a team with the workers (pp. 67-68). Taylor’s principles have led to things such as strict discipline, the idea that workers must focus on their task with little or no interaction with colleagues, and the idea of incentive

Scientific management or "Taylorism" is an approach to job design, developed by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) during the Second World War. With the industrial revolution came a fast growing pool of people, seeking jobs, that required a new approach of management. Scientific management was the first management theory, applied internationally. It believes in the rational use of resources for utmost output, hence motivating workers to earn more money. Taylor believed that the incompetence of managers was the major obstacle on the way of productivity increase of human labour. Consequently, this idea led to the need of change of management principles. On the base of research, involving analysing controlled experiments under various working

Prior to the development of scientific management, works were performed by skilled craftsmen who had learned their jobs by apprenticeships and they made their own decisions about how their job was to be carried out. Scientific management

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.

He believed that these employees were easily replaceable for less pay. These kinds of procedures and ideas created an environment that was ripe for alienation. In an attempt to satisfy workers, “In return for a workers lost dignity, freedom, power and skill, Taylor promised higher pay” (Hoopes 48). Taylor also created the “differential piece rate” (Hoopes 38) which would further alienate workers from each other, claiming it improved production. Overall, Taylor’s theory of scientific management created a good environment for business owners but it only fueled alienation between the workers and the workers and society.

The year 1911 saw Frederick Winslow Taylor publish a book titled ‘The principles of scientific management’ in which he aimed to prove that the scientific method could be used in producing profits for an organization through the improvement of an employee’s efficiency. During that decade, management practice was focused on initiative and incentives which gave autonomy to the workman. He thus argued that one half of the problem was up to management, and both the worker and manager needed to cooperate in order to produce the greatest prosperity.

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).

Taylor believed that managers should manage the organisation for example assign tasks to their workers and the workmen or women should perform these tasks. Also, having workers perform single or limited tasks eliminated the long training period required to train craftsmen, who were replaced with lesser paid but more productive unskilled workers. ‘all day long the management work almost side by side with the men, helping, encouraging, and smoothing the way for them, while in the past they stood on one side, gave the man but little help, and threw on to them almost the entire responsibility as to methods, implements, speed, and harmonious

Previously workers would work on their own and strived to improve their skills. The development by Taylor informed staff on what to do and how to do it. The third principle was about cooperation between employers and employees. This principle had two aims one was to achieve productivity through his defined processes and the other was to ensure management and workers worked together.

Scientific Management theory arose from the need to increase productivity in the U.S.A. especially, where skilled labor was in short supply at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only way to expand productivity was to raise the efficiency of workers.

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

Taylor's own name for his approach was scientific management. This sort of task-oriented optimization of work tasks is nearly ubiquitous today in industry, and has made most industrial work menial, repetitive, tedious and depressing; this can be noted, for instance, in assembly lines and fast-food restaurants. Ford's arguments began from his observation that, in general, workers forced to perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work (which he called "soldiering", but might nowadays be termed by those in charge as "loafing" or "malingering" or by those on the assembly line as "getting through the day"), he opined, was based on the observation that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work the slowest among them does: this reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their compensation. He therefore proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. From this he posited that there was one best method for performing a particular task, and that if it were taught to workers, their productivity would go up.

The scientific approach to management is one of the earliest methods used by organizations. Taylor’s systematic processes initially defined in 1910 gathered a multitude of support as his techniques develop a general understanding of the organization's workflow. While Taylor' idea propagated by the

Many of classical writers were concerned with the important of management as a means of increasing productivity and high level of output. A major contributor to this approach was F.W. Taylor (1856 – 1917). He believed that in the same way that there is a best machine for each job, so there is a best working method by which people should undertake their jobs. “ONE BEST WAY “F.W.Taylor. He saw workers soldiering or deliberately working beneath their potential and designed a 4-step method to overcome this problem.