Does the Closure of Volvo’s Uddevalla Manufacturing Plant, Together with the Takeover of the Company by Ford, Indicate That Taylorism Is Indeed the ‘One Best Way’?

Frederick Taylor’s fundamental thoughts on scientific management dated back to early 1880s when he was employed at Midvale Steel Company and observed his coworkers “soldiering” at work. In the following two decades, he moved around different companies while developing his management theory

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

Frederick Taylor was an engineer who ran experiments in the 1880’s on the common manufacturing process of his time. His goal was to increase the productivity of the workers. The experiments measured the time to perform different tasks. He created recommendations for the workplace that became business standards and were enforced in the workplace. Businesses used these as a measure of productivity and rewarded wages and other rewards on a basis of performance. These changes created a shift in the workplace and a demand for higher compliance became the norm. Taylor helped create the need for standards in the workplace.

These theories were proven relevant by their popularity (Brooks, 20) “Taylor’s thinking preceded the widespread adoption of mass production techniques, possibly best demonstrated by the early 1920’s motor manufacturers, most significantly Henry Ford in the USA.” Production lines were sequential and followed a strict rule of the “one best way” which may be because the new industry and workers did not have a large amount of knowledge or expertise on how their jobs should be done.

This paper will determine to what extent Taylorism has led to the degradation of work, and thus the extent to which the question statement is true. In terms of key phrases, this essay focuses on degradation of work, knowledge workers and Taylorism. When this paper refers to degradation of work it refers to the reduction in technical input by labour through the process of scientific management as defined by Spencer, (2000). Additionally, when this paper mentions knowledge workers it defines them as workers who perform non-routine tasks after training and education (Paton, 2012). Furthermore, when this essay mentions Taylorism it refers to the core characteristics of scientific management: division of labour and reducing the autonomy of workers, as defined in the work of Paton, (2012).

The central theme of this essay will deal with the role of Taylorism or scientific management in a specific organization. The primary focus will be to critically discuss how the various methods of scientific management are applicable to the chosen organization, which in this case will be Ford Motors. The essay will describe F.W. Taylor's early work life and techniques of scientific management and its success. It will then go on to discuss the production methods at Ford Motors prior and post the application of the management principles along with their benefits and criticisms.

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.

The beginning of the 20th century when Henry Ford first time put his genius idea of dividing works into separate parts by using assemble line into practice was marked as the start of massive production. It is also the debut for Taylorism in the massive production area. After that such method of massive standard production was named as Foedism. Based on the ‘scientific management’ theory that comes from Taylorism, the manufacturing area began to be dominated by Fordism. However, since the 1960s when a series of new technologies appeared, manufacturing did not have to be formed in a fixed method. A more flexible production method, which was named as Post-Fordism turned up. From then on a controversy appears between two groups of

With those evocative words, Frederick W. Taylor had begun his highly influential book; “The Principles of Scientific Management” indicating his view regarding management practices. As one of the most influential management theorists, Taylor is widely acclaimed as the ‘father of scientific management’. Taylor had sought “the ‘one best way’ for a job to be done” (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg & Coulter, 2003, p.39). Northcraft and Neale (1990, p.41) state that “Scientific management took its

However certain limitations could be said that he didn 't take into account, such as if workers sole concern is simply related to their pay then other psychological needs or the worker would not be addressed (Brooks). As a result of this, the repetitiveness of the task with little or even no room for experimentation or variation over long periods of time generally lead to boredom and apathy amongst the staff. (Brooks) It was widely considered in later years that Taylor had taken his theory to far and related to companies as mechanic structures when in fact they were co-operative communities. (Handy, C 1993) Chester Bernard was one of the first people who disagreed with Taylor, he suggested that intact people had to be persuaded and that authority really came from the people you led not from those above. (Handy, C 1993) A case study into this at Hawthorne plant of western electric, 'Showed how important the informal group was, and the hearts and minds of its people ' (Handy, C 1993).

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 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

Scientific management (also called Taylorism, the Taylor system, or the Classical Perspective) is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflow processes, improving labor productivity. The core ideas of the theory were developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s, and were first published in his monographs, Shop Management (1905) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).[1] Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful study of an individual at work.

This led to lowered overall productivity and systematic underproduction. Hence, this provoked Taylor to develop scientific management. The principles behind Tayor’s management concept were based on the idea that workers put in the least amount of effort and that they are motivated solely by material gains. As a result, the theory implied that greater external control is needed for more productive operations. Furthermore, the theory basically built an instrumental view of human behaviour making the human factor a mere component in a machine (Morgan, 2006) . Taylor’s concept was considered a milestone in the development of management as it proposed a different, efficiency-orientated approach that relied on how work was organized. From his point of view surely it was the increased productivity, predictability and control of the system that made the idea better. H e himself states that if applied in a correct manner his methods would lead to far larger and better results (Taylor, 2007) . However, when the scientific management theory was applied the negative effects of the system manifested. Frederick Taylor was even called “enemy of the working man” because of the principles he introduced (Morgan, 2006) . The separation between execution and conception and tightened control led to workers going to strike or leaving their jobs. Furthermore, the fact that the applied system presumed that workers had no other

 Taylor conducted a number of experiments in the workplace, resulting in the development of four principles of scientific management (“Taylorism”). (MindTools, n.d.). Using these four principles or key features of Frederick Taylor’s rather ruthless and strongly task-focused theory to analyse the job performance of Jim Young, Director SkillPower Ltd, I have identified the following: