Introduction
“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.”
In the late 19th century, Frederick Winslow Taylor, known to many the forefather of scientific management, sparked the automation revolution, the third great transition in the history of humanity (after the Neolithic Revolution, a result of the development of agriculture around 6,000 B.C and the industrial revolution in the 18th century) (Souza, 1999). However, it can be argued that Taylor’s greatest contribution to capitalism was not the revolution itself, but how Taylorism brought about the era of competition and syncretism with contrasting or corresponding concepts on organisational management and workplace practices, particularly Fordism, which arguably extended the dynamics of Taylorism, centered on the use of the assembly-line. This essay will examine how Fordism developed organisational management and modified workplace practices by exploring known historical application of its principles and theories. Thereupon, it will further analyse how elements of Fordism still exist in modern management sciences, taking example from Nike’s organizational system.
How Fordism changed organisational management and workplace practices
First of all, it is essential to explore the pre-Ford era to understand the changes Ford instilled in workplace practices. The pre-Ford era mainly involved skilled craft workers operating general-purpose machinery with non-standardised parts to assemble small quantities of high quality products (Edgell, 2006, p.74). A real-life example of this is Ford’s first enterprise, the Detroit Automobile Company, which its gasoline-powered delivery truck proved to be expensive, unreliable, and complicated to manufactur...
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By 1927, Ford was a very successful industrialist, who had made a fortune out of manufacturing cars and displayed a new model of industrial production. He paid his workers much higher than average wages and offered various other incentives to encourage them to live the lives he thought they should. However, he was not a totally honest employer. He was violently anti-union and employed thugs to intimidate anyone who tried to organize and represent his workforce. Ford's generosity as a boss was dependent on letting the company make decisions for the workers, not just in the factories but in the way employees lived their lives, spies were actively out and about observing workers' off duty lives. Ford thought he could create a vast rubber plantation in Brazil, thus ensuring a reliable supply of latex for his new Model A as well as for his Ford trucks and tractors. In the process, he intended to show the world that his system of production would also elevate the lives of his workers.
Henry Ford was the pioneer of the American automobile industry. He was born in 1863 near Dearborn, Michigan. Forty years later he started Ford Motor Company with the help of Thomas Edison. In 1908, Henry Ford forever changed the world with his Model T. Ford was known as a revolutionary person for not only making the automobile inexpensive but also for teaching workers proper skills and paying them steady wages. (Henry Ford Bio, 1) Only a mere six years later, Ford changed the world again with his invention of the moving assembly line in 1914. With the modern assembly line he was now able to mass produce his Model T. Nearly everything mass produced in the world is assembled on an assembly line thanks to Ford’s 100 year old idea. Not only did Ford make life easier for civilians by giving them affordable access to
Meryl Davids is a professional writer/editor with an education from the University of Pennsylvania. With an outstanding twenty plus years of experience under her belt, Davids has work featured in magzines and journals such as: U.S. News & World Report, Wall Street Journal, and The Journal of Business Strategy. In this article Davids brings to our attention the successfulness of Henry Ford as well as the some of the struggles he faced trough out his life. Davids lets us know right from the start that Ford was a smart man and he knew that time was money. Ford states, “Time loves to be wasted.” The solution to this was a large-scale assembly line. With the successfulness of the assembly line and the money Ford was saving he double the wages of his employees from $2.50 to $5 overnight as
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In Britain, industrialization changed the lives of workers in many ways. One way workers lives changed is being able to earn higher wages. They could make more money in factories than on farms. Wi...
Prior to January 4, 1914, the name Ford meant nothing. The Ford Motor Company paid its employees $2.34 for a nine-hour shift, and in 1912 the company made a profit of $13.5 million dollars (Raff 181). Raff continues in his article, “Looking back at the Five-Dollar Day,” that the Ford Motor Company had an employee turnover rate of 370%: “50,448 workers had to be hired during the course of 1913 to maintain an average labor force of 13,623” (181). These
The Industrial Revolution was a time in western cultures when the production of goods became urbanized. Spreading from Great Britain, industrialization had become widespread in Western Europe by the mid-1800’s. France, in particular, progressed in the industrialization process from about 1830 to 1850. Industrialization created an enormous increase in th...
Henry Ford was one of the most important and influential inventors and businessmen in the short history of America. He revolutionized the business world and he changed forever the efficiency of factories around the world. One of the reasons that Henry Ford can be considered such an important man is that his ideas and concepts are still used today. Boron on July 30, in the year of 1863, Henry Ford was the oldest child of the family. His parents, William and Mary Ford, were “prosperous farmers” in his hometown of Dearborn. While they we’re well off for farmers, Ford certainly wasn’t spoiled and fed from silver spoons. Ford was just like any other typical young boy during the rural nineteenth century. From early on there we’re signs that Henry was going to be something more than a farmer. He looked with interest upon the machinery that his father and himself used for their farming, and looked with disdain at the rigorous chores of a farmer. In the year 1879, Henry being a meager 16 years old, he moved to the city of Detroit where he would work as an apprentice machinist. Henry would remain in Detroit working and learning about all varieties of machines. Although he occasionally came back to visit Dearborn, he mostly stayed in Detroit, picking up more and more valuable knowledge. This apprenticeship allowed him to work in the factories of Detroit and learn what a hard working blue-collar job was like. When he did return to Dearborn he was always tearing apart and rebuilding his fathers machines, along with the dreaded farm chores. Henry Ford was a hard worker and that was proven by him getting fired from one of his jobs in Detroit because the older employees we’re mad at him because he was finishing his repairs in a half hour rather than the usual five hours. Clara Bryant would represent the next step in now twenty-five year old Henry Ford’s life. The two lovers we’re married in 1888 and would endure good times as well as bad. In order to support his new wife Henry was forced to work the land as he ran a sawmill that was given to him by his father. His father actually attempted to bribe Henry to stay in the farming business as he gave him the land only under the condition that he would continue on as a farmer.
This paper takes a look at the ways in which the ideas of Fordism and Taylorism helped the success of the U.S motor vehicle industry. The motor vehicle industry has changed the fundamental ideas on the process of manufacturing and probably more expressively on how humans work together to create value.
To summarise, this essay has critically evaluated the main features of Taylorism and analysed some other later-developed production methodology as criticism. Taylorism is theoretically an efficient methodology but applies in a narrow space. Taylor’s idea of separating planning from doing is also far from reality. Treating workers as ‘ox’ cannot be a good idea as well. In reality, it can cause the action of trade union, which is the reason why trade union would be subdued in Fordism which developed from Taylorism. Then it used Piore’s idea of post-Fordism taking the place of Taylorism and Fordism in modern life as a criticism of them. It later mentioned the McDonaldisation and Disneysation to analyse the increasingly complex service industries in modern times.
Spatz, J., & Nennenkamp, P. (2002, January). Globalization of the automotive industry-traditional locations under pressure. Retrieved January 14, 2012, from http://www.uni-kiel.de/ifw/pub/kap/2002/kap1093.pdf
The automobile industry is a pillar of global economy. Globally automotive contributes roughly 3 % of all GDP output. It historically has contributed 3.0 – 3.5 % to the overall GDP in the US. The share is even higher in the emerging markets, with the rates in china and India at 7 % and rising. China produces the highest number of automobiles followed by US and Japan (oica.net, 2015). The industry supports direct employment of 9 million people to build 60 million vehicles and parts that go into them (oica.net, 2015). Many other industries such as steel, iron, glass, aluminium, textiles etc. are associated with the automotive industry and resulting in more than 50 million jobs owed to the auto
“Management is a process of planning, organisation, command, coordination, and control” (Morgan 2006, p.18). Rational organisation design is a bureaucratic method of management which emphasizes efficiency to achieve the end goal and the management of multiple companies have taken upon this system. Figures such as Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford have both shown and laid a path way for Rational Organisation which has become known as Taylorism and Fordism. The design has received criticism and both Taylor and Ford have been portrayed as villains with Taylor being called “enemy of the working man” (Morgan 2006, p.23) as the system dehumanised workers by taking all of the thought and skill from them and giving it to the managers this is because the tasks given were simple and repetitive. As staff needed little training they became an easily replaceable asset and thus more machine than human.
Many comparisons can be made between the two theories, such as the mechanisation, fragmentation and specialisation of work and that a lack of intellectual or skilled content will speed up the work at hand. Fordism's mechanisation of mass production further emphasised many of Taylor's popular beliefs about management being divorced from human affairs and emotions, using 'humans as instruments or machines to be manipulated by their leaders' (Hersey p.84). Fordism fused and emphasised the scientific methods to get things done by Ford's successful mass-production processes. Contrasts also exist between the two theories. Fordism dehumanisied the worker whereas scientific management convinced the workers that their goals could be readily achieved along with their employers goals, therefore they should all work together in this direction. Fordism suited industrial companies participating in mass production, whereas Scientific Management could be used in many types of organisation. Large companies such as Ford Motors, The Reichskuratorium fur Wirtschaftkichkeit (RKW) in Germany examples these theories in practice. These theories of the past are lessons for the way modern organisations are run today. Managers now realise that they should treat their workers more democratically and since the mid-70's, sweeping changes in markets and technology have encouraged managers and manufacturers to use greater product diversity and more flexible methods of production. Movements towards a more flexible organisation have become apparent. Examples of orgainisations such as Nissan, NASA and Toyota serve as modern day examples of post-Fordism and depict movement towards a modified Scientific Management.
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