Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanic engineer who wanted to improve the industrial efficiency. He was born in March 20, 1856 Philadelphia by Mr. Franklin and Emily Annette. Taylor died on March 21, 1915. His father Franklin was a Princeton law graduate while his mother Emily Annette was an abolitionist and feminist. During his childhood life, Taylor was regarded as self-disciplined child of wealthy and liberal parents. He prepared for college at Philips Academy in Exeter, N.H and was eventually accepted at Harvard. During his youth, his eyesight began to fail. However, by 1973 he became a machinists apprentice at enterprise at Hydraulic works in Philadelphia. In addition, by 1978, he took a job as a machine shop laborer at Midvale steel company. While he was still working there, having an age of 25 years, he went to school at night and he earned a degree in Engineering at the Stevens Institute of technology. At that pint he begins to become famous and he is regarded as the father of scientific management. In addition, he was one of the first consultants in the field of management. Taylor is regarded as one of the intellectual or thinking leaders of the efficiency movement and his ideas broadly influenced the progressive Era. In conjunction, Taylor is a controversial figure in the management of his history. Many of his innovations in industrial engineering, mainly in time and motion studies paid off in dramatic improvements in the entire productivity. In addition, he is accredited with the destruction of dehumanizing factories work that used to make people into automatons. He developed his theory of time, motion and various ways of improving productivity while observing the entire factory workers.
What is scientific management?
Scientific management according to Taylor involved improving operational efficiency at the bottom level. According to him, “scientific management means knowing exactly what you want men to do and seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way.” This type of management is based on the analysis, planning and control functions of the job. This means that the job is accomplished making a set of analysis. Once this has been established the work is selected and trained scientifically. The role of management in this case is to determine which job or work individual employees are suitable for then (Koontz, 1990). This would also mean that the management is responsible for hiring and assigning the workers accordingly. Under scientific management, the management is not responsible for how the work is executed but is responsible for how the work is carried out. Taylor believed that co-operation between the management and workers could enhance the work thereby producing better output (Griffin 2001). He referred to this as ‘mental revolution’ due to the fact that it creates mutual confidence, trust and understanding between the workers and management towards the goal of achieving the grater goal of higher production. Scientific management can therefore be concluded as the art of knowing exactly what one wants from his workers and seeing that it is done in the best way possible. This is basically the application of science to management. When Taylor first introduced this method in the late nineteenth century, it was very popular with the factories. This was preferred to the imperial ‘rule of thumb’ which had been used and had been used in the previous years (Koontz, et.al, 1990, p. 163).Taylor’s scientific management theory
Taylor had noticed while working as a manager at the Midvale Company, that there was much disorder as well as wastage of human and other resources at the work place. The managers and workers in the company had no concept about systematic of efficient task performance. Under scientific management principle, the initiative of the workers which includes their hard work, their good-will, and their ingenuity, has to be obtained with absolute uniformity. Under this system, the managers were to receive new burden, responsibilities and duties. Taylor thus came up with four basic principles that would be applicable for the theory to fully function.
The first principle involved the replacement of the ‘rule of thumb’ also referred to as common sense or simple habit. This was to be replaced by evaluation which was a more scientific method. This principle means that management has to break the task into individual levels and determine which tasks were important and contributed to the final product and which ones did not (Miller, 2010, p.1). This principle ensures that the manager is held accountable for the result if they do not make the right decisions.
The second principle was that rather than just assigning workers to do any job, it is the duty of the manager to assign the worker to a job that they are capable of as well as motivated to do. Having archived that, it is their duty to ensure that they train the workers at a maximum efficient rate. This means that the manager has to scientifically choose, train, teach and develop the most suitable person for each job (Priestley, 2005, p.1). This also lands the duty of selecting the right people for each job and overseeing their training is with the organization mangers or senior employees. This ensures that the training is conducted correctly and professionally.
The third principle involves the Monitoring of workers performance, and provision of instructions and supervision to ensure that they’re using the most resourceful ways of working. This principle requires that the managers of the company stay involved and offer supervision to each worker to ensure the job is done in the best way suitable towards the organization goal.
The final principle involves the allocation of work between managers and workers so that the managers spend their time planning and training, and thereby allowing the workers to perform their tasks efficiently. The principle requires the managers to apply management principles to planning and supervising the work, and the workers carry out tasks handed down by the management (Miller, 2010, p.1).
Taylor believed that motivation played as big a role as incentive in ensuring that the maximum work productivity. He believed that productivity improvements should result in improved pay. Workers are paid according to the number of items they produce in a set period per piece-rate pay. Workers are encouraged to work hard and maximize their productivity as a result. Taylor had found that workers that pay their workers more get better, happier, more efficient workers who make better products in increasing quantity. This means that if the workers efficiency led to improvement in profit margins, then it would only be right for the workers to share in a small part of the profit (Priestley, 2005, p.1).
It may therefore be concluded that Taylor proposed four great fundamental principles of management. First, there is need to develop a ‘science of work’ to replace old rule-of-thumb methods. Know and understand that pay and other rewards linked to achievement are of optimum importance. That it is important to measure work performance and output.
It is paramount that workers be scientifically selected and developed. This means training each worker to be the very best at some explicit task. That trained people be employed for the training of the workers to achieve the best results. Finally, the principle advocates that the work and responsibility in the company be divided equally between workers and management. This would mean that the two parties cooperate in close interdependence. To date, Taylor’s Scientific Management theories have developed and are still relevant and found within the modern workplaces.
Criticism of Taylor’s management
Although Taylor is scientific management are regarded as important as they enables the management to put resources to its best possible use and manner, it is also associated with severe criticism. Scientific management was associated with unemployment as workers felt that management reduces many job opportunities from them. For instance, through the replacement of men by machines and increasing human productivity thus making fewer workers who are needed to work. This in advance, leads to chucking out from job. In addition, workers who were laboring under the new scientific management were complaining about the unreasonable demands to speed work along at pace that was not sustainable over the long term (Anderson, 2001, p.350). In addition, the Taylor’s scientific management was known to put unnecessary pressures on the workers to perform the work. Due to the fact that importance was given to profitability and productivity, this resulted to exploitation of workers making them to join trade union. This in advance, led to mistrust between employees and management. As it is recognized that Taylor used functional foremanship, the workers were to report to eight bosses. This resulted to breakage of the principle of unity of command, where workers are ought to report to only one boss (Daft, 2011, p.25). This will create confusion and chaos in the entire organization.
The other problem is that his approach was a mechanical approach where he gives more importance to efficiency not considering human element. He considers his workers as robots who could speed up the work at any given cost. In relation to that, Taylor assumed that employees are motivated only by financial gains, despite the truth that employees are not only motivated by financial incentives but also personal egos and social needs. Taylor’s scientific management was said to separate planning from doing whereas in real sense it is difficult to separate planning from doing. Planners need also to be engaged in doing thus making realistic plans for the entire organization. It is also considered as an individualistic approach as it gives too much concern to individual performance not to the group performance. For an organization, to become successful it is ought not only to rely on individual performance of workers but also on a group performance of workers.
Application of Taylor’s scientific management in today’s world
Taylor’s scientific management is currently used in Today’s world more especially in current economy. In addition, Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management is being used in organizations. For instance, organization can use it to streamline their roles in organization. In addition, it helps to develop and train people to be subject matter experts. This will in advance turn to put the right people in the right job. In addition, militaries employ these scientific managements. For instance, all but wage incentives for increased output are used by modern military organizations.
Management requires good decision making skills. Prior to the Taylors invention, Managers used to make many gut-based decisions or their own life experience. Managers today however are relying on cold-hard facts to facilitate the decisions they make. A popular example of the application of scientific management is the Metrics-based management. This Management makes sure that statistics are collected on the area of their responsibility. An example of this would be the web metrics that tracks user clicks on any given website. Using this technique, the managers are able to show which parts of the site are most popular, which ones are not being used, and what search terms people are using to get to their sites.
The scientific management theory has played an important role in today’s world other than in organizations. On a global level, it may be concluded that this method has raised different countries standards of living by ensuring workers productivity as well as efficiency. This can be attested by countries such as the United States, Canada, and France who have in their own way applied the principle. Thus, Frederick Winslow Taylor played a very important role in the world of management by introducing not only logic and order but also a sense of corporation and gratitude. In essence Taylor made management more manageable.
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