HR management essay: Management essay on Taylor’s scientific management
Management
The main purpose of this essay is to talk about the scientific management theory of Fredrick Taylor. In this regard, the essay presents a brief introduction of Fredrick Taylor and the key constituents of its management theory. Further segment of essay has revealed the applicability of his theory in contemporary organizations. In support, both the sides Taylorism’s advantages in today’s organizations and inappropriateness have been discussed along with the reasons based on research and analysis.
Before beginning with Taylor’s scientific management theory, it is required to outline the brief introduction to Fredrick Winslow Taylor. He was a mechanical engineer based in America born in 1856. He is considered as the father of scientific management and was one of the most known consultants of management field. Besides, He had started his career as an operator and touched the level of a chief engineer. Apart from this, Taylor introduced several management methods for industrial plants, shops and entities which were effectively adopted in multiple industries. He wrote the principles of scientific management, concrete cost, scientific management and shop management in year 1911, 1912, 1914 & 1911 respectively. Taylor was also awarded with a degree of doctor of science in October 1906 that was honored by the University of Pennsylvania (Taylor, 1998)
Furthermore, Taylor presented a scientific management theory which is also known as Taylorism. In this, he stated that how the productivity can be improved by applying the scientific method to the worker’s management. The main aim of the scientific management methods was to make the ways optimum to perform the tasks, simplification of the jobs so that employees could be trained as per their sequence of specialization to perform best. Scientific management mainly refers to the theory of management which synthesizes the flow of work among employees of an organization. The theory’s main focus and objective was to make improvement in economic efficiency such labor productivity. In other words, it can be demonstrated that scientific management revealed by Taylor talk about the control of production between management of a firm and its employees. His main idea behind bringing this management forward was to design such a framework so that both the people and machined could be involved with their efficient level (Sky mark, 2012).
Scientific management is referred with the understanding of work expectation from people and then to see whether they do it in the efficient and cheapest way or not. In this context, Taylor provided four principles of scientific management after he made several experiments and determined work methods which were quite optimal. First he illustrated that the work methods which are base on rule-of-thumb should be replaced with the methods in which the tasks can be studied scientifically. Second, he raised a point that each employee should be selected, trained and developed scientifically rather than leaving all the employees to train themselves passively (Taylor, 2005).
Next, the key principle he highlighted was that it should also be ensured that all the scientific methods articulated for work management are being followed properly. Following this, he added to assist the workers in that context and process. Then, according to the last principle of Taylorism, division of work should be equal between managers and the employees so that managers execute scientifically developed management methods to plan the work and employees perform the task accordingly in an effective manner. Many of the factories executed these principles in their business’ practices and resulted in higher level of increased productivity (Harvard business review, 2009).
Similarly, key elements of scientific management can be discussed in brief. Its first primary level of element is disconnection of planning from actual performance by employees. For this solution, Taylor formed the planning departments allocated with experienced engineers and experts. The main responsibility given to them was to build up scientific methods for work performance, set up of goals for targeted productivity, introduce reward structure for achieving the targets and finally provide training to individuals on use of methods and then achieving the set goals. Then, he discussed about the functional foremanship that was based on work’s specialization. He made a noticeable point that each employee should be employed on the basis of their specialization in particular field so that efficiency generates automatically. In addition, he noted that if in any case an employee is forced to do the work which is not of his/her interest that will eventually lower the productivity and will result in less production. Next main element was the job analysis in order to find out and identify the best possible and cheapest way to do the things effectively (Caldari, 2007).
Furthermore, he emphasized on the standardization of things that should be made fixed in advance based on analysis of job performed. Afterward, he initiated that there should be financial incentive system in the organizations so that the employees could be kept motivated and encouraged timely. Apart from this, Taylor also pointed out that not only scientific and technical aspects should be considered but also the economic and profitable aspects should be considered equally. Rather than focusing on training and development of employees only a well-organized and most suitable environment should be created in an organization in order to maintain the mutual co-operation between management and the employees (Cameron & Pertuze, 2009).
Taylor made a note that there is only one best method of work to maximize the efficiency and that can only be developed by scientific study and analysis of the work. In this framework, he also discussed about a great barrier to the scientific management method’s use which was the limited understanding of supervision’s lower level as well as of the workforce. Throughout his method implementation the major challenge was with respect to the proper task allocation to the employees. It was breaking of a task into smaller tasks so that each task would be performed at their optimum level.
In simple words it can be said that in his principles and methods Taylor talked about the performance standards that are scientific in nature. To make it a point for all the organizations that there is no any metric available with the help of which it may know that how much work an employee can do per hour or day. Then, Taylor introduced the time and motion method to study the work capacity and to fix the performance standard. After that, it became possible to know the level of performance on the basis of cost, work quality, capacity which further entailed the work uniformity. Consequently, the employees’ efficiency could be judged and compared with one another in the organization (Wagner-Tsukamoto, 2007).
Similarly, Taylor also explored one of the elements which were differential piece rate system. A standard result or output of the entire work was established first under this system. From this system’s perspective, the workers performing below standard output will be provided low wage rates and the workers performing above the standard output will be offered high wage rates. Afterward, functional foremanship proposed by Taylor in his scientific management principles set the two supervisory departments. First at the planning level there would be four supervisors consisting of time & cost clerk, route clerk, discipline and instruction card clerk. Second at the doing level of work there would be gang boss, speed, repair and inspector boss who will be responsible for work performance and quality (Chandra, 2012).
Likewise, other major elements were mental revolution, time study of work done, fatigue and motion study and Gantt charts under which the critical path method and program evaluation review technique were also defined to identify the best possible path to accomplish the work. On the other hand, the applicability of Taylorism can be noticed and discussed in the context of contemporary organizations. It is not that much difficult to find out the examples of scientific management in today’s modern organizations of twenty first century. The best examples are car manufacturing and computer technical departments, the work environment, the hospitals, and even in some of the restaurant’s the work efficiency can be noticed due to scientific management (Harris, 2012).
To see the best example of scientific management’s applicability, one of the examples of an industry food chain can be considered. In most of the food chains, the management applied the most efficient way to work that is used by all the workers. For that, they have created their own work and output standard. After putting these standards in work the food chain industry found that maximum efficiency is received by the subdivision of labor (Mentzer, 2010). In addition, it was noticed that subdivision also helped reducing the cost and time for the work. It built the mutual understanding and relationship between the workers and employers of the organization. It did not only help meeting the objectives of both the employees and the employer but also provided the companies with means of meeting the goals set for economies of scale (Bern university of applied sciences, 2012).
In today’s modern organizations, managers identify the ways to work through which cost can be minimized and accounted at an optimum level. It further entails the division of labor and functions’ specialization among the workers so that they could be greatly efficient and effective in carrying out their allotted tasks. Subsequently, most of the modern organizations have their in-house production methods and techniques. Another benefit the firms are having today by adopting scientific management in business’ practices is that they can control fully over their workforce. Moreover, by accepting piece wage rate system in work’s context, organizations can ensure the required output from workers (Hubpages, 2012).
Alternatively, the negative side of scientific management’s applicability in organizations can also be viewed and explained on the other front. Sometimes, it is considered as an incomplete system which refers to the de-skilling of the workers. As the works are divided and broken down in their key constituents and the work is made quite easier for the workers, their involvement is automatically becoming less in the entire chain. Besides, they are becoming of little more concern then the machines in usage. Hence, they do not get capable enough to develop themselves and make the cognitive input which is not required from them (New wave essays, 2012).
On the basis of these general issues due to scientific management system in the context, it can be articulated that it is inappropriate in some conditions at work. Next, as per Taylor’s scientific management theory in which he talked about the division of work between employees and experts caused the anti-motivation and dissatisfaction among the employees. In this case if employees feel that they are not respected or treated well then they may refuse to work with the maximum potential or capability. Apart from this, applicability of scientific management methods leads to the employees getting too highly specialized in a particular field that it obstructs their flexibility to dynamic and new situations (Maqbool, Zakariya & Paracha, 2011).
Nonetheless, it can easily be observed that it is still a major part of the modern enterprises of contemporary world. It is still there in organizational business’ practices at work because through a line of standards and measures set under scientific management theory management can fully control its workforce to ensure the desired productivity and result. On the other front, Taylorism focuses on increasing efficiency only and not quality. Hawthorne’s experiment human resource movement also revealed some of the negative aspects of Taylor’s theory that was discusses from both the employee and employer’s end and totally disapproved Taylor’s theory. First he found in his experiments that high level of productivity can also be achieved by working in a group while Taylor gave importance to individual performance. Second, as Taylor told that there is only one way to do the work effectively, Hawthorne proved in his experiments that by varying the work methods also high level of productivity can be achieved. Finally, Hawthorne’s experiment made a point against Taylor’ theory and shown that even without the proper supervision, work can be accomplished easily (Sheldrake, 2003). Moreover, from employees’ point of view, management is focusing on replacing men with machines by following the scientific management theory and thus lessening the opportunities of employment from them. Similarly, scientific management theory presented by Taylor pressurizes the employees to work faster and the significance is provided to the level of productivity and profitability only. It results in employees’ exploitation and many workers start joining trade unions.
Additionally, Henry Fayol also criticized Taylor’s theory and described its one of the negative aspects that it creates the issues of unity of command. Taylor introduced functional foremanship in work as one of the elements of his theory. According to this constituent, worker will have to report to more than one boss and that will create the conflicts and confusion for the workers. Therefore, Taylor’s proposed element breaks the principle of unity of command presented by Henry Fayol. Apart from this, theory of scientific management also forms monotony among the workers in an organization. Due to excessive specialization in a specific field, employees job become dull and poor and they lose concentration in work and thus derive low level of pressure from job. In sum, from some of the employer’s point of view, implementing scientific management is quite costly and great investment is needed for that. Like in case of small firms, it can be expensive to invest that much for standardization, workers’ training and work study & analysis. Moreover, it requires a complete mental revision and rearrangement of enterprise for which it requires good time that makes it avoidable in this term (Sheldrake, 2003).
It has also been noticed that Taylorism is successful and efficient in some industries and not in some others. For an instance, food chain has applied scientific management theory very quickly in its business’ practices at workplace to get the desired result and efficiency. On the other front, steel industry is not finding it up to the mark at workplace where this theory is spreading de-skilling among the workers and making them less interested toward the work (Caldari, 2007).
On the basis of overall discussion, a conclusion may be drawn out of that to define the key points at the end. This essay defined Fredrick Taylor as the father of scientific management theory who proposed management theory for work and provided methods for the work to be done in the best and cheapest way. He defined that organizations should identify the best path and should avoid the rule of thumb at workplace. His main focus was on increasing efficiency and level of –productivity but not the quality. For this, he introduced a number of methods and standards through which each individual can be judged on the basis of performance given by them in comparison to the desired result.
Taylor’s strongest point of his concept was to break down the job into smaller task so that it could be done based on specialization of workers and experts. Moreover, the applicability of his theory in today’s modern organizations has also been discussed in the essay. On the basis of analysis, it was noticed that companies are following scientific management methods and improving the efficiency and production. Apart from enhancing productivity and efficiency, modern organizations are able to reduce the cost and time at workplace and achieving the desired output. Negative side of its applicability has also been presented in terms of men becoming less important than the machines and anti-motivation and displeasure among them regarding work.
On the other hand, Hawthorne’s human relation movement and Fayol’s theory also criticized Taylor’s work and disapproved some of his principles such as focus on individual performance, one best way and reporting to more than one boss.
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