Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management

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

Locke (1982) also articulates Taylor’s major criticisms in his journal article; degradation of the worker, loss of complete skills, authoritarianism or dictatorship power given to management, exploitation of workers and dishonesty. Locke concludes his article stating that even though it has been 65 years since Taylor’s death and many more theorists of business management have risen and fallen, Frederick W. Taylor’s research and findings are still used in today’s business systems (1982, p.22).

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.

Let’s begin by analyzing F. W. Taylor. Taylor’s scientific method can be summed up as a systematic study of relationships between people and tasks to increase efficiency (Jones and George 2015). There are four principles involved in this method: (1) Study the way workers perform their tasks, gather all the informal job knowledge that workers possess, and experiment with ways of improving the ways that tasks are performed. This step has the similar attributes of the organizing and controlling tasks discussed earlier in that the controlling task also involves evaluating the division of labor. (2) Codify the new methods of performing tasks into written rules and standard operating procedures. This step is very much about the organizing task. Although there are written rules, this aspect diverges from the leading

Taylors Method was known as the Time & Motion Studies. Time was the least amount of time it took to perform each task and even each part of each task, whereas motion was where the fewest numbers of motions required for each small task. Taylor wanted employees to work as if they were machines. From Taylor’s Theory to Taylorism the outcomes were that it boosted in productivity by 200% to 400%. More work was also accomplished with fewer people meant more profit for companies from Taylorism and the final outcome was that more consistent products were of higher quality (Frederick Taylor Scientific Management). In Frederick Winslow Taylor’s ‘The Principles of Scientific Management 1910, he states that ‘under the old

Lastly is labour selection and motivation. Taylor said that every task should be performed by a ‘first class man’ for a specific task. “First-class” men should be given “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”. (Rose 1978: 36) “First-class” man can be both born and trained. Workers should go for training and development courses

As the popularity of systematic management rose, there were many organizations that were implementing its main features such as employment of more unskilled workers

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).

The next technique of individualized work, is based on Taylor’s conviction that personal ambition would supersede the desire for general welfare as an incentive to exertion (Whyte, 1969, p.5). This is almost in complete contradiction with businesses like McDonald’s, where the focus is on teamwork.

The fourth principle was equal division of work and the responsibilities of employers and employees. Taylor designed a way of having management ensure that workers had knowledge of the job, the amount of time to do the job and how to do the job. These management principles aimed at finding the optimum performance value in an organization. Taylor’s principles were adopted in several enterprises but during the second half the century the theory started receiving criticism due to lack of flexibility and inhumanity.

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.

“Administration is ordinarily discussed as the art of “Getting things done,” (Simon, 2013). This quote is important to help understand the goals of the four theoretical contributions and the importance of these theories from a historical and managerial perspective. The theoretical contributions to focus on consist of Scientific Management, Administrative Theory, Bureaucracy and Organizational Structure, and Administrative Behavior. Ideally, all of these concepts have the same simple objective, to get things done and to make organizations as efficient and functional as possible. With this in mind, each theory will show how it’s different structure, concepts, and views of its organization can affect an individual worker, an employer, and the organization as a whole and how these theories are adapted over time.