Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management

Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management

(1865-1915)

Biography of Frederick Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born on 20th March 1865 in Philadelphia,

U.S.A. Taylor was brought up by his upper class family. His father was

a Princeton graduate and lawyer, who do not need a regular job

because, he made enough money from mortgages. His mother was an

abolitionist, who managed an underground railroad for runaway slaves.

Taylor’s parents were Quakers (member of a Christian division, the

Society of Friends) and believed in high thinking and simple living.

The Taylor family were very aristocratic that, they responded to each

other as “thee” and “thou”. At an early age, Taylor learned

self-control and his parents helped him to avoid conflicts with his

peers and to resolve disagreements.

Taylor was a young teenager, who had remarkable ideas of inventions.

At the age of twelve, he invented a harness for himself to prevent him

from sleeping on his back, to avoid the nightmares he was

experiencing.

At the age of twenty-five, he received an engineering degree from the

Steven Institute of Technology in New Jersey, while working in a

full-time job. Another of his achievements was winning the U.S. Lawn

Tennis Association double championship, which he used a spoon-shaped

racket which he had designed.

Although Taylor was excellent in mathematics and sport, and had a

degree, he decided to work as a machinist and pattern maker at the

Enterprise Hydraulic Works, in Philadelphia.

After his apprenticeship at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works, Taylor

became a common labourer at the Midvale Steel Company. He began as a

shop clerk and quickly became a machinist, foreman, maintenance

foreman and chief draftsman. Six years later, he became a research

director then chief engineer.

After the Civil War, Taylor began to realise that all employees

received little money for their effort at work because, of the

industrial change. At that time, the managers decided to give

employees incentive bonuses, to encourage them to work better, even

though, they do not reach their daily goal. Taylor disagrees with

this; he believed that the secret of productivity was finding the

right challenge for each employee, and then paying him for increased

output. He wanted the managers to pay incentive bonuses to those who

fulfilled their goal. T...

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...or felt that employees needed to be closely supervised and told

what to do. This was because; employees tend to do as little as

possible and would not work in the most efficient way. Also, he found

out that employees do not want to accept responsibility, such as

organising their work.

The suggestions of Taylor’s theory for managing human conduct at work

were:-

· The main form of motivation is high wages, linked to output

· A manager’s job is to tell employees what to do

· Employees’ job is to follow their manager’s instructions and get

paid for that reason

Frederick Taylor’s theory became very popular with management because,

it leads to the development of the work-study analysis and work

appraisal.

Unfortunately, it became unpopular to the union and the workforce

because, employees were treated as ‘inefficient’ machine, and

production-line approach makes the work more monotonous and

repetitive. Another most obvious weakness in Taylor’s approach is

that, whilst money is an important motivation at work for many

employees, it isn’t for everybody. This was because; Taylor discovered

that employees work for other reasons rather than financial reward.