What is a Taylorism and Scientific Management - Essay Example

Scientific Management” Scientific management was the product of 19th century Industrialpractices and has no relevance to the present day. Discuss Scientific management is also called Taylorism; it is a concept of management designed to analyze complex workplaces and their issues. The main aim was to enhance economic efficiency in workplaces, especially the output from laborers called production. Winslow Taylor in the 1880s initiated this concept with manufacturing companies. In 1920s, it was still in place but it was losing some of its benefits of labor productivity and several conflicting ideas were merging together and making scientific management difficult to follow. But while working for Midvale Steel, Taylor has seen the different outputs of different workers, and he noticed that these were because of several reasons, such as the motivation they were given to perform, their talent pools and their intelligence. (Taylor, 1947) Taylor was the first person to bring science in this field, and he tried to measure why these differences in productivity existed and how to fix them and therefore standardize the entire procedure, to get consistent results. Traditionally rule of thumb and other methods were used for individuals at work, but this brought about ‘one best way’ to bring out the best out of an individual at work by analyzing their time and their motivation etc. The ultimate goal was to raise productivity in the workplace, so that more could be done with the same time and effort. The application of this theory was the job of the top managers to ensure that their workers followed this standardized procedure. There were many issues, including class tensions and issues, because it was difficult to outline who was intelligent and harder working or talented etc. and workers were more submerged under managerial control which they didn’t have to previously. So with this unbalanced ratio, laborers started to have conflicts. (Cheliott, 1948) As a theory, scientific management was out of the system in 1930 but many of its concepts still hold in management today especially in engineering and industrial management. A few of these practices are to analyze, synthesize, rationally view the scenario, gather research and develop a workplace ethic, increase productivity and reduce waste, standardizing of one best way and applying it on the mass production techniques and transferring information to all workers alike. Taylor also perceived that talent wasn’t rampant in the workplace; some workers couldn’t be considered reliable in this regard and they were overall a scarce resource. But in his system that he designed, he didn’t take into account their talent and what they could do with it in their early or later labor years. They would be losing out rather than gaining when they are better than other workers but still have the same path to advance on career wise and achievement wise. And some workers didn’t deserve some jobs and some levels of jobs but they would still need work, so what would they be doing and how were they supposed to be catered to. The ultimate aim was that workers should be satisfied and thus productivity would increase, however, this wasn’t possible in the model that was created; some differentiation was bound to happen. (Taylor, 2003) Taylor addresses these issues by looking at the needs of workers and giving them good pay and breaks from their work; however he also treated the less intelligent pool of workers with less respect and he was so engrossed in mass production and standardization that he didn’t cater to individual needs and the next steps of the process were not thought through as particularly as the previous ones. However, in later years, better years came about by different thinkers such as James Hartness, Lillian Moller etc. and some even offered tweaking to the original Taylorims model. Management moved towards a more humane perspective with the school of human relations management. Maybe this was the only procedure that began to be used in some places, but mostly it was a combination of scientific management and human relations that was seen. Taylorism ensured that the organization followed with the mass procedures and practices and that the work was done which was easy to understand, and human relations allowed each worker to adapt to different situations and different work procedures. There are new concepts in the world, such as respecting workers and their needs, and focusing on the customer’s value of the product with the concept of ‘lean manufacturing’ which aimed at getting less work and more value for that amount of work in the workplaces, such as Toyota which initiated this concept and benefitted by reducing its waste and benefitting consumers as well as employees. Many managers also lack the capability of ensuring that these theories are also executed according to plan and the issues in synthesizing have occurred throughout time. Lean managers however has brought about good results in the workplace in competent manager’s hands, and destroyed companies in a bad manager’s watch. However, scientific management has had several issues since it ignores some aspects of situations. Firstly, it ignores that each individual has their own unique work style, their own intelligence and motivation and their way of working may be different from another person’s way of work. The measurement process is also fairly standardized where as the means of payment and staying in the company is also different for different individuals. Therefore individual workers may resent the mass gratification and especially the more intelligent workers would feel exploited. (Tsutsui, 1998) Taylor also tried to resolve these kinks in his theory. However, he wasn’t ever really able to do so and the organizational implementation was usually uneven and sometimes changed completely after that era. So his execution strategy was lacking because his followers were even worse than him in actually putting the theory to practice. Managers thought that standardization would reduce their costs of production and just get efficiency high, without any trouble, and so they implemented this theory thinking this would get those benefits. However, the aim of Taylorism was to benefit the workers themselves so that they would be motivated to work; however, managers were usually seeking their own profit and become more authoritarian than before, asserting their power in the organization and reaping benefits at the expense of their workers. Workers soon began to retaliate because they felt suffocated that they were being treated like robots, unable to have their own time off, and a monotonous drill of a job which didn’t allow them to grow or innovate. (Aitken, 1960) Initially, workers tried to increase their effort to get more results and when this didn’t work out; they became unhappy with their work and eventually became angry. During Taylor’s own lifetime, he faced a strike which brought into light the fact that power had gone to the head of managers, and they couldn’t be controlled and thus they couldn’t handle it. The method was banned in some areas such as the Water Town Arsenal because of the resentment that workers had developed for their managers, so much so that they were unwilling to work for them. There was also a crisis of labor unions and other conflicts that were brought about by laborers in that era and this just added to those problems and negative feelings in the mid 20th century. The overall effect of scientific management seemed to be nothing, since the good aspects were cancelled out by the negative ones, and managers, in their profit seeking motive got nothing. Therefore, alone, the theory isn’t relevant, however, when mixed with other practices and implemented properly, it can help organizations prosper under low costs and better organized workplace. There were some issues which scientific management managed to resolve however there were many other things that it gave to the workers to be unhappy and dissatisfied about. They were already unhappy due to their bad and greedy managers and this further enhanced their problems by leading to not only by automation but also off shoring; two practices which were brought about by scientific management and its element of transferring of knowledge. Knowledge transferred was to all kinds of workers and the skilled work was now done by machines and therefore workers weren’t required to know any skills and this was the process of ‘deskilling.’ Labor had thus become equivalent to a commodity and anyone could do the unskilled work that was required of laborers. Workers were paid lower wages as a result and they were more worried about job security than before. Jobs could be given to others since they were unskilled ones, and so the older population didn’t benefit from being part of the organization or being skilled and they could be laid off the next day because of the advent of machines doing the job of the humans. The overall result was that the economy began to go down since employees would be paid less and thus spent less, and labor union powers also failed to increase the respect of workers. Scientific management or Taylorism viewed workers as a part of the machine which was the organization and they began to be misunderstood and taken advantage off. Jobs as a result became unpleasant, they became less paid and didn’t lend any security to workers, and this was also if they were available, which in many cases, they were not. (Taylor, 1972) No industry has been immune to this deconstructing effect of Taylorism and its successors tried to reengineer this philosophy in order to bring back the morale of the workers. There are many examples of scientific management in the 21st century as well especially in computer and car manufacturing industries. Even hospitals and restaurants may function under this principle. Every industry is more or less benefitting in some area from scientific management. These theories however are ingrained in the worker of the present century; to them it is something that has to be done and they don’t feel that it is something that actually betters the workplace. However, not even all aspects of scientific management are applicable in the modern day workplace. It has been evolving over the years since it started off with Taylorism. It was developed in the 20th century and started by Taylor, but moderated by Gantt and Gilbreth as well. Taylor’s most famous method to increase productivity was his time and motion study, in which he used a young man to see the work performed by him in each time and movement duration with a stop watch. He would see how long it took for the young man to carry out each area of his work and from this Taylor derived his productivity over the actual time period and therefore the “fair day’s work.’ Taylor had also observed that work was done better if it was done in pieces rather than as a whole, and if the other functions were done somewhere else. Many employees were also seen as being unskilled and therefore unfit to make decisions in the organization that were important and if wrongly done, could be detrimental to the organization. Taylor gave incentives such as money to find out what he wanted to know. He saw what kind of skills and tools workers used to do the task or job they had to so that they were not wrongly over working or under working themselves, and they were also tested so that their capabilities were checked and it could be seen what kind of job would be suited best to their capability. This ensured that workers were using the best way and this would make the entire work more efficient and less faulty. Workers would do better if the task was broken down into parts; and also if they were given a certain time frame to complete the work in. McDonalds had done this in its organization; it told its operators the time they should cook and how long they should cook all the products in its menu, from the hamburgers to the French fries. McDonalds is still using this method of scientific management throughout its chains in the world, since uniformity is equal in all countries, where ever you consume McDonalds, they will have the same method of making food, cleanliness, their staff, their products and their opening and closing times as well. This has actually made it possible for them to be one of the biggest fast food chains on the planet and they have been unbeaten. Ford also used this method in his organization. He developed mass production techniques by developing an assembly line production and payment by pieces. Jobs were broken down and mostly automated apart from some unskilled or semi skilled tasks which workers would perform. He benefitted from some aspects of Taylorims but he also suffered in some areas. Mangers became too autocratic in order to get the work done, and they made their workers feel out of place and they felt that they were less important than the machines in the workplace. However, workers were still driven by the wages that they were given, but this was the only hold that managers had on them; they knew that they would be paid at the end of the day. Therefore some of the benefits of scientific management that came across were that the organization’s structure could be focused so that both the employer’s and the employee’s needs were met. Companies such as Ford and McDonalds were also able to achieve economies of scale with this method. Scientific management keeps its focus on less waste and highest possible efficiency and this means that they would work better and look at economies of scale in the long run. Division of labor also leads to specialization of labor which means that workers will be good at what they do, rather than doing everything and not being good at anything. Thus resources can be allocated efficiently. Managers will also be important in the system and they would have a good control over the workforce to see that everything goes according to plan. Therefore, it is still used in the 21rst century and is not obsolete, however in many cases of mass production where the work doesn’t require much skill. However some view it as a system that needs more in order to be fulfilling rather than just deskilling labor and making life easier for workers and paying them less for menial work. Employees will have to do little to develop them and use their brains and this is the problem that scientific management is facing in the 21rst century; that this model will not challenge employees and they would never be better than machines, nor paid as much. Intelligence in the present century has risen as well and people are more aware and want to develop themselves more. They also want more than fiscal rewards; intrinsic motivation such as happiness and self satisfaction are also important aspects. Therefore, Taylorism or scientific management can be used, but modified, and especially in cases where there isn’t mass production and only a standardized procedure, scientific management wouldn’t work out. (Taylor, 2003) Bibliography Aitken, H. G. J., 1960. Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal; scientific management in action, 1908-1915. s.l.: Harvard University Press. Cheliott, G., 1948. Scientific management. s.l.: Manchester Municipal College of Technology, Dept. of Industrial Administration. Taylor, F. W., 1947. The principles of scientific management. s.l.: Norton. Taylor, F. W., 1972. Scientific management; comprising Shop management, The principles of scientific management [and] Testimony before the special House committee.. s.l.: Greenwood Press. Taylor, F. W., 2003. Scientific management. s.l.: Taylor & Francis. Tsutsui, W. M., 1998. Manufacturing ideology: scientific management in twentieth-century Japan. s.l.: Princeton University Press. Read More