Frederik Taylor and Scientific Management

Mechanistic and bureaucratic organizations are known to have a well-structured hierarchy to achieve the most efficient and effective operation, the specialization of task, and repetition of procedures. Mechanistic organizations are rather easier and simpler to organize and maintain. However, it has it difficulties to cope with change and will most probably struggle to encourage organizational learning. The purpose of this essay is to discuss and study the difficulties that mechanistic and bureaucratic organizations might face to encourage organizational learning. Organizations will be analysed and discussed through mechanistic and learning perspectives.

There are several key theories and concepts about the mechanistic perspective. One of it is the principle of scientific management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), an industrial engineer from the United States of America. It is also known as Taylorism. According to Taylor (1911), Taylorism is about using the most efficient way to produce the maximum amount of production. Taylor proposed the idea of simplifying tasks and optimizing jobs would increase the productivity. Jobs were defined and workers would be assigned to task according to their capability and ability to produce maximum effort at that specific task. Worker’s performance would be monitored to ensure that the maximum of efficiency is to be achieved. Organizations are articulated by clear purposes and objectives, specific hierarchical structure and responsibilities to a specific job and formalization of system control and ability to achieve the optimum of efficiency. Taylor’s concept is usually practices by factory industry workers where workers are all been assigned accordingly by their capabilities. However, t...

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