Scientific Management: Taylor and the Gilbreths

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 – a method which sought to identify most efficient techniques for management through “time and motion” studies and then motivated worked to adopt these ways of working through the use of

Scientific management was introduced by Fredrick Winslow Taylor in 1898. The basic attributes of this perspective were giving incentives to employees, training them in a standard method and developing a standard procedure of performing a task. These procedures were established by numerous studies and observations (Samson et al., 2012).

Scientific Management is also known as Taylorism. Fredrick Winslow Taylor wanted to divide the work process into small, simple and separate steps (Division of Labor). Division of Labor meant every worker only had one or two steps, this was created to boost productivity. Taylor also believed in Hierarchy, he wanted a clear chain of command that separated the managers from workers. He did this so managers would design work process and enforced how the work was performed and employees would simply follow directions. Taylor wanted to select and train high performing workers or first-class employees and match them to a job that best suited them. Taylor believed the most productive workers should be paid more. Employees who could not meet the new higher standard were fired.

Despite many criticisms, and a wealth of newer theories on the topic of managing people, Taylorism (i.e. Scientific Management) is alive and well in the 21st century.

Fredrick Taylor, another management theorist invented the principle of scientific management showing five simple management principles: 1. Shift all responsibility for the organisation of work from the worker to the manager. Managers think, plan, and design work, while the workers does the implementation, 2. Use scientific method to determine the most efficient way of doing work. Design worker’s task accordingly, specifying the precise way in which the work is to be done, 3. Select the best person to perform the job thus designed, 4. Train the worker to do the work effectively, 5. Monitor worker performance to ensure that appropriate work procedures are followed and that appropriate results are achieved. (Morgan 1997)

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.

The manifestation of Frederick Taylor's theory of scientific management was a major breakthrough in traditional approach to management process, and employing a healthy degree of scientific management would remedy the problem of low visibility in Google. Scientific Management is an approach that emphasizes 1) A clear division of tasks and responsibilities; 2) determining the “one best way” of performing a task; 3) Scientific selection of best person for the newly designed job; 4) Ensuring workers are trained to perform the job the “one best way”; and 5) Strict surveillance of workers using a hierarchy of authority and close supervision. Organizations using scientific management are defined as “Collectives oriented to the pursuit of specific goals and exhibit formalized structures” (Scott, p. 29). A basic tenet of scientific management was that employees were not highly educated and thus were unable to perform any but the simplest tasks. Thus, Taylor, who advanced the theory, advocated that work should be reduced to a series of routine, predictable and standardized tasks. He also assumed that workers are motivated by money so he introduced payment on a piecework basis as an incentive which would increase productivity. The phrase “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” was used by Taylor to motivate workers to work harder.

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.

Even though scientific management was considered background in the 1930s, it continues to make significant contributions to management theory today. With the advancement of statistical methods used in scientific management, quality assurance and quality

Scientific management has played a significant role in how workers are managed to provide efficiency to production lines. The question here is whether or not this approach has improved or worsened the experience for the workers in the modern day and how this approach has been adapted to fit the technological advances of this day and age. I will consider what the scientific management includes and how this may affect the non-managerial workers. In the approach to answering this question I will use McDonalds as one of the main companies which still use scientific management and how successful it is.

Scientific Management established a great influence on the strategy and competitive formulas used in modern organisation.

• Describe the important contributions made by Frederick W. Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. • Explain how today’s managers use scientific management.

A definite aim is another main feature of scientific management because its the process of organising, directing and controlling human activities; thus this links back to the principle of allocation of roles; i.e. managers must plan and aim to achieve their goals and there must be set of rules with the aid plan so that the objectives can be achieved. According to F.W. Taylor, It is no single element but rather the whole combination that constitutes the scientific management.

Thanks to these contributors and others, the basic ideas regarding scientific management developed. They include the following: