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Frederick Taylor contributions
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This paper describes on one of the famous management theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor, who introduced to society about the scientific management theories. This method was established a hundred years ago in 1911 early stage by Taylor in his work place. This article critically discusses about Taylor’s early stage, background, education, and his contribution to management theory, practice and society.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 20th March 1856 in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a lawyer’s family. He studied in France and Germany for 2 years and ultimately transferred to the Europe in 1872. Taylor’s family encouraged him to become a lawyer like his father. He works hard and passed his Harvard law exam with honors. But, due to eyesight and poor health condition he turned his way from entering law school to pump manufacturing company in Philadelphia as an apprentice pattern maker. He completed his four year apprentice period in 1878 in same company and moved to Midvale Steel works as a machine shop labor. In his new company became a turning point of his career because he promoted rapidly within short period and eventually he became a chief engineer of the works within six years of the period. F.W Taylor was graduated with a mechanical engineering degree by attending to the exam in Stevens Institute of Technology in 1883. Later stage in 1898, he joined to the Bethlehem Steel company and involved to increase mass production using his principle of scientific management theories until he left the company in 1901. After the Bethlehem steel career period, he thought to promote his scientific management, publicity through seminar, consulting, writing and conducting lectures. Eventually, it became a famous scienti...
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...nagement applies to all sectors including manufacturing, management of government and private sector companies. In addition to that Taylor introduced following systems to the industry.
Accounting cost control
Compensation management
Human resource management
Organized labor relations
Operation process control management
Operations service sector management
Quality management
Technology management
Conclusion
Taylor’s principle of management developed from the positive phenomenon, thinking positively and logically based on practical experience in determining cause and effect. Based on his theory, the management can be collected details and information about workers and work process in order to develop their company. The scientific management technique helps to select and train workers, identify the team work between supervisor and labors.
Taylorism is a system that was designed in the late 19th century, not only to maximise managerial control, but to also expand the levels of efficiency throughout workplaces. With this being said, productivity levels increased and fair wage distribution was the main result. However, with other, more recent theories and systems, such as Maslow and Herzburg’s theories, these helped to focus on the satisfaction and motivation of the workers rather than the concern of managerial control and empowerment. Fredrick W. Taylor ended up developing 4 main principles to help increase the work efficiency and productivity in workplaces; these will be discussed later on. Other theories relating to this include, Fayol, Follett, Management Science Theory as well as Organisational-Environmental Theory. All theories listed have an influence on the way businesses work effectively and put their skills to action. This essay will highlight how Taylorism was designed to maximise managerial control and increase productivity, furthermore, showing how more recent theories were developed to focus on empowering employees and to extend the use of organisational resources.
Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. In F. W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Row.
Ford used Taylor’s scientific management principles and come up with the mass production and assembly line. This benefitted the motor vehicle industry highly. The effects of Taylorism and Fordism in the industrial workplace were strong and between the period of 1919-1929 the output of industries in the U.S doubled as the number of workers decreased. There was an increase in unskilled labour as the skill was removed and placed into machines. It lead to the discouragement of workers ability to bargain on the basis of control over the workplace.
In the article entitled “The Human Side of Enterprise” by Douglas Murray McGregor , McGregor stated that industry has fundamental know how to utilize physical and technology science. The conventional view of management consisted of three propositions which are called Theory X (Shafritz & Hyde,2012).
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)
Compare and contrast the management theories of Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, Elton Mayo, and Douglas McGregor. In what sense(s) are these theories similar and/or compatible? In what sense(s) are these theories dissimilar and/or incompatible? How would a contingency theorist reconcile the points of dissimilarity and/or incompatibility between these approaches? The twentieth century has brought in a number of management theories which have helped shape our view of management in the present business environment.
The founding father of scientific management theory is Fredrick Winslow Taylor. He was an American mechanical engineer and an inventor. Modern management theorist Edward Deming credited Taylor for his contributions while Joseph Juran criticized his work for extracting more work from workers. However a careful reading of Taylor’s work will disclose that he placed workers interest as high as the employer’s in his studies. Before the principles of management are discussed it is very important to understand the causes which led Taylor to derive the four principles of management. The three causes are as follows:
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.
The concept of scientific management is based on the idea that work could be studied to increase efficiency, and specialization. Economist Adam Smith changed the way the world looked at the economy and organization. In his essay, “Of the Division of Labour,” Smith emphasizes the importance of specialization, and how division of labor leads to specialization. He states that this would allow a worker to be more productive and efficient (Shafritz, Ott, & Jang, 2011, p. 41-45). Frederick Taylor introduced the principles of scientific management, which stated that management is a science, workers should be scientifically selected and trained scientifically, and both management and workers should work together.
the study of time and action; b) the management on assignment; c) the theory of organization. (8)Taylor’s theory created a revolution in the subject of management because it was the first scientific method in field of management science. (1)After that, management became a truly scientific knowledge and it expanded and modified by later generations. Therefore, Taylor is “known as the father of scientific management”. (2) Taylor put forward a perspective which was “study the character, the nature and the performance of each workman” and moreover, to “train and help and teach this workman”. (3) In the following paragraphs, will exploring the relevant and irrelevant hypotaxis between Scientific Management and organizations.
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...
There are three well-established theories of classical management: Taylor?s Theory of Scientific Management, Fayol?s Administrative Theory, Weber?s Theory of Bureaucracy. Although these schools, or theories, developed historical sequence, later ideas have not replaced earlier ones. Instead, each new school has tended to complement or coexist with previous ones.
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)
Management plays a significant role in how business operates. The diversity of approaches to the theoretical and practical background of management has come up with several versions of what is meant by such key words as management and organization. The academia views expressed in relation to management theories take a different role than that prescribed to managers. There has not been any concrete definition of management even though the classic definition of Henri fayol still remains in contention to be the preferred choice after eighty years. In the context of what is required I would like to elaborate on the following journals.
The evolution of management though the decades can be divided into two major sections. One of the sections is the classical approach. Under the classical approach efficiency and productivity became a critical concern of the managers at the turn of the 20th century. One of the approaches from the classical time period were systematic management which placed more emphasis on internal operations because managers were concerned with meeting the growth in demand brought on by the Industrial revolution. As a result managers became more concerned with physical things than towards the people therefore systematic management failed to lead to production efficiency. This became apparent to an engineer named Frederick Taylor who was the father of Scientific Management. Scientific Management was identified by four principles for which management should develop the best way to do a job, determine the optimum work pace, train people to do the job properly, and reward successful performance by using an incentive pay system. Scientifi...