The Impact Of Scientific Management Within The Modern Organization

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

Amazingly, productivity rapidly raised in the first 24 hours. The study concluded that for maximum productivity, the best worker had to be chosen to perform that task and had to be provided with training for efficient work. Every worker and his output had to be closely monitored and he had to be rewarded for greater productivity. Taylor also wanted to reduce conflicts between managers and workers by convincing them that they would benefit mutually from a rise in productivity, as this would favour society and the organisation as a whole.

Scientific management is defined by (Robbins et al., 2012) as ‘an approach that involves using scientific methods to define the “one best way” for a job to be done’. Frederick W. Taylor is said to be the forefather of scientific management, during his time many people criticised Taylor and his work, however it is easy to see that many of his approaches are used in contemporary management systems. This essay will provide a review of the article ‘The Ideas of Frederick W. Taylor’, Academy of Management Review (Locke, E., 1982) which discusses the positives and negatives of Taylor’s theory. A further 3 articles will be analysed on the critiquing or support of scientific management and Taylor.

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.

What are the main features of Taylor’s approach to ‘Scientific Management” and what criticisms have been made of it? Do firms use scientific management today?

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 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

Taylor believed that people in all aspects of a business should do the work that they were best equipped to. “Managers would therefore direct and allocate work, and workers would complete the task”. Managers should be the ones responsible for the selection process, training and development of the employee. (Morley 2013,p15). This is extremely similar to what Weber believed in. He thought that a well defined hierarchy was one of the main characteristics of a bureaucracy. Organisations were designed with a clear structure from top to bottom. The people with the most power and authority in a business were located at the top. The people with the least authority were located near, or at the bottom of the organisation. “All positions within a bureaucracy are structured in a way permitting the higher positions to supervise and control the lower positions.” (Taylor 1939,44-54). Weber strived to provide a clear chain of command, which would mean that workers knew who they were answerable to and would prevent work overload for a particular manager or supervisor. It facilitated control and order throughout the business. The division of labour has many strengths within a business but there are also a few weaknesses. The division of labour ensures that the right person has a job to which they are well suited. They are assigned jobs which suit their skills and furthermore, this improves efficiency

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 was first developed by an American, Frederick Winslow Taylor in the1880s ~1910s and has evolved a lot since then. It is a theory or school of thoughts about process improvement and management. It aims at maximizing efficiency, productivity, output with least cost and minimizing wastes. It was criticized as inhuman by many organizational theorists. However, it is widely applied in manufacturing industry and service industry in both developing and developed countries nowadays. This article is to investigate the reasons why scientific

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

Successful management requires an understanding of the fundamental concepts of effective management techniques and principles. In order to gain such insight, and manage effectively and efficiently, managers must develop an awareness of past management principles, models and theories. From the turn of the 20th Century, the

Today, there is increasing evidence of scientific management becoming dated as we become more focused on incorporating ideologies of modern management approaches. Chowdhury claims that, “There is much truth in the saying that every living practitioner is prisoner to the ideas of a dead theorist.” (2000, pp. 21). It is emphasised here how our view of theorists has dramatically changed over time and one of the reasons for this different perspective as seen in this century is discussed by Grint, “Management theory, especially American management theory, has generally been construed to represent this rational development towards a more effective system over time.” (1997, pp. 48). Due to gradual changes in management practices, it is evident that Taylor’s theory is arguably becoming less significant.

Frederick W. Taylor’s stared working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He started the Scientific Management movement, and he and his associates were the first people to examine the work process scientifically. They all developed scientific management the earliest people of scientific management were Frederick W. Taylor’s (1856-1915), Frank Gilbreth (1868-1924), and Lillain Gilbreth (1878-1972). They studied how the work was performed, and they looked at how this affected worker productivity. He believed that increased efficiency could be achieved by selecting the right people for the job and training them to do it in exact terms in the one best

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.