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Contributions of Scientific Management
Key concepts in Scientific management
Using frederick taylors scientific management in todays work
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Many people and companies have rejected the theory of scientific management that Frederic Taylor developed in the early 1900’s because it wasn’t working effectively for the companies. However as Rober Kanigel make clear in his biography of Frederick Taylor One Best Way the problem wasn’t with the theory of scientific management , but with the Frederic Taylor and his attempts at managing his own theories. Frederic Taylor was an engineer, a perfectionist; he didn’t have personality skills necessary to be an effective manager or leader. Someone how had these skills could manage a company well with his theory. What scientific management really is "a complete method of creative problem solving and decision making."
Many of the ideas in scientific management, like setting time goal and streamlining the workload are good ideas and are used presently in the work force. The primary objectives of scientific management are to maximize profit for the company, to use the fullest potential each employee and for prosperity for employees. To accomplish this people must exert themselves to their maximum potential every minute of the time at work. Still many of Taylor’s ideas did not work out because there he was too much like a robot and treated others like robots. He was inflexible, and failed to consider human emotions. For example he timed each person with a stopwatch and forced him or her to meet an inflexible and extreme time goal everyday no matter what. The job was not adjusted to meet the person but the person was forced to adjust to the job.
Frederick Taylor wasn’t capable of managing people under the scientific management theory the way he designed it. His use of the system eliminated the human aspect of the workplace, by treating people like machines. He described people as in capable of working in anything but what they were currently doing.
Furthermore he doubled their work load and made them work at the most efficient pace that he conceived of and enforced this by timing people with a stop watch. His essential theory was: management decided what a fair day of work was and made all the decisions. The employees were only capable of doing manual work and were hired only for their manual labor. Scientific management the Taylor way was imperfect because he eliminated the human part. No one can manage other people eff...
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...bility to think. One mechanic said that Taylor mistreated him, that Taylor gave him more abuse he had before taken and that he would take what he did from Taylor from any other person.
All of Taylor’s ideas go against the basic ideas and principles that managers learn in the classroom and use in the workforce when dealing with employees. He used mean, overbearing, Theory X ideas, which resulted in all the problems mentioned above. The principles that Taylor should have used are to treat employees fairly, allow flexibility, and ask for their input, not to be a micromanager. Basically everything that Taylor didn’t do he should have done. The Taylor system of efficiency can work in the hands of someone who knew how to manage people, which Taylor did not know how.
References
Kanigel, R. (1997). The One Best Way. New York, New York; Penguin Putnam Group, Inc.
Modern History Sourcebook: Frederick W. Taylor: The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911 . [WWW document]. URL: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1911taylor.html
Reshef, Y. Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) Scientific Management [WWW document]URL: http://courses.bus.ualberta.ca/orga417~reshef/taylor.html
The major change came through the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor and his theory of scientific management system. It was not that Taylor was unique or completely new; only time and motion study could be put in that category. The trend was already moving towards systematic management such as formal management methods or by cost ...
“Management is a process of planning, organisation, command, coordination, and control” (Morgan 2006, p.18). Rational organisation design is a bureaucratic method of management which emphasizes efficiency to achieve the end goal and the management of multiple companies have taken upon this system. Figures such as Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford have both shown and laid a path way for Rational Organisation which has become known as Taylorism and Fordism. The design has received criticism and both Taylor and Ford have been portrayed as villains with Taylor being called “enemy of the working man” (Morgan 2006, p.23) as the system dehumanised workers by taking all of the thought and skill from them and giving it to the managers this is because the tasks given were simple and repetitive. As staff needed little training they became an easily replaceable asset and thus more machine than human.
Based on research so far in this essay, it seems that the whole reason behind Frederick Taylor’s theory is that he tends to aim for making the most of his employees, to work to their highest standards for a successful company. When we look at the Ryanair case study on Management, D. Boddy pg 23 we can see that one of the key points is that the staff must turn an aircraft round between the flights in a matter of 25 minutes, which has a positive effect on increasing revenue. However, this leaves the employees under pressure, but this also tells us that the Ryanair organisation makes the most out of their employees, just like Frederick Taylor’s theory. Getting these tasks completed by the employees is all in the manager’s responsibility, Ryanair regulates their staff so that the managers are held responsible for providing the strategies for the employees as mentioned in the case study on Management, D. Boddy pg 23.
Fordism and Scientific Management are terms used to describe management that had application to practical situations with extremely dramatic effects. Fordism takes its name from the mass production units of Henry Ford, and is identified by an involved technical division of labour within companies and their production units. Other characteristics of Fordism include strong hierarchical control, with workers in a production line often restricted to the one single task, usually specialised and unskilled. Scientific management, on the other hand, "originated" through Fredrick Winslow Taylor in 1911, and in very basic terms described the one best way work could be done and that the best way to improve output was to improve the techniques or methods used by the workers. (Robbins p.38)
The term “workaholism” appeared in the beginning of the 20th century after Frederick Taylor integrated new organization of work system. Taylor, famous businessman was born in 1856 in Philadelphia, and was known as “father of scientific management”. His new theory of work management has been known as “Taylorism”. The term “Taylorism” is seldom used in a positive way. For a short description, according to JoAnn Greco, the journalist of “The Journal of Business Strategy”, “Taylorism” is “a sort of ruthless and quasi-Victorian efficiency that melds man with machine, often to man’s disadvantage.” According Taylor’s theory of work organization the worker is nothing but a tool for gaining profit. (Greco)
Management Theorists such as F.W Taylor created the concept of scientific management, which is made up of six key aspects including observation, experiment, standardisation, selection and training, payment by results and co-operation. Despite some facets of his theory becoming outdated, scientific management can still be seen in the some way in current business structures. For example within Virgin, despite its reputation for having a relaxed working environment, some aspects of scientific management are used. Such as the selection and training and payment by results, with certain employees being offered rewards for showing ambition to set up their own businesses and showing signs of creative thinking.
Taylor contended that the success of these principles required "a complete mental revolution" on the part of management and labor. Rather than quarrel over profits, both sides should try to increase production; by so doing, he believed, profits would rise to such an extent that labor and management would no longer have to fight over them. In short, Taylor believed that management and labor had a common interest in increasing productivity.
Today’s era of business world adapts to everything new but these modern concepts are an indirect tribute to the theories produced by Taylor, Fayol, Mayo and Weber. Taylor’s Scientific management theory is one such example which has become such an important aspects of modern management that it feels unbelievable that his concepts were a part of the history. It is falsely assumed that as the society progresses, the older theories tend to lose their importance. The thing to be noted here is that these theories are based on basic human needs which do not change with time; the thing that changes is the method to fulfil those needs. Investigating earlier management theories is important because these theories are less complex and provide immediate solution to the problems. These theories basically help us to go to the root of the problem and understand its complexity. The better understanding we have about the problem, the easier it is to accomplish the objectives of the company. The following essay states the importance of the Taylor’s Scientific management theory and how it is implemented even today in the business world.
There are several theories that examine an organization and it’s approach to managing work in an effort to develop efficiency and increase production. Two classical approaches to management are Taylor’s scientific management theory and Weber's bureaucratic management theory. Both men are considered pioneers of in the study of management.
Frederick Taylor thought that changes in the work process and/or rules would advance efficiency and productivity. He originated the scientific management approach in public administration. It was based on the idea that work processes should be observed via experiments which would greatly improve productivity. It would do so by doing away with the rule of thumb work methods and replacing them with the results of actual timed observations (14). The application of the scientific approach to management methods would lead to optimizing task time by simplifying the job. It would mean observing work processes to find the one best way to perform each job (15). Once the best way was discovered, all employees were to use it. The simplification of the job would improve task time. This method would lead to increased productivity, higher wag...
Taylor, Frederick Winslow (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York, NY, US and London, UK: Harper & Brothers. Print. 8 Feb. 2014.
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.
In the past, managers considered workers as machinery that could be bought and sold easily. To increase production, workers were subjected to long hours, miserable wages and undesirable working conditions. The welfare of the workers and their need were disregarded. The early twentieth century brought about a change in management and scientific management was introduced. This sort of management, started by Frederick Winslow Taylor, emphasised that the best way to increase the volume of output was to have workers specializing in specific tasks just like how a certain machine would perform a particular function. His implementation of this theory brought about tremendous criticism by the masses arguing that the fundamentals of Scientific Management were to exploit employees rather than to benefit them (Mullins, 2005)
Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s within the manufacturing industries. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s; by the 1920s, it was still influential but had begun an era of competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas. Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today.
According to (Leonard et al, 2004) explored on how great ideologies turn to become great works. They explained how Frederick Taylor preached the gospel of scientific management. Even though it has been criticised it sites example and explain how the theory of scientific management came to being and the impact is still having on both private and public organisation.