Taylorism, Scientific Management and Fordism

With more recent management systems focusing on empowerment and promoting employee initiative, is there any role for Taylorism, Scientific Management and Fordism?

Introduction:

Taylorism is a form of scientific management; it improves production efficiency by breaking down every job, action and task into smaller simpler segments as a way to improve efficiency, which could be easily taught to the workers in the organisation. The effect of Taylorism is aimed to maximise productivity, which relies on more efficient production methods to occur so that the organisation can reduce costs for production to allow for more profit. Initiated by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911, Taylorism was a theory-designed to improve efficiency of the production of goods. This method however involved using a divisional skill method, which put one worker on a single task, which was repeated through the day. This method however caused deskilling of workers because there was no skill aspect to working a repetitive action all day long. The use of taylorism allowed for control over the workers, which allowed for increased productivity. The focus of taylorism was to control and manipulate the decisions that were made by the workforce in order to increase the productive capacity of the organisation without having to increase the wages of the workers.

A theory that branched from Taylorism was Fordism. “Fordism combines the manufacturing division of labour with Taylorism and adds the moving line”(A. Hoffman, 2009, page 3). There are 3 components of Fordism. 1. The manufacturing of division labour. 2. Creating a job plan to set out the simplest of tasks for the workers. 3. The moving line, which led to an increase in the deskilling of workers that allowed...

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...get it far more conveniently”. (Ritzer, 2004) As the demands of society get higher and more expansive, newer ways of production will be found. More efficient methods will be found and they will have fewer costs to the organisations that use them.

Works Cited

L. Ryan, “are you getting paid enough’, 1/24/2014, date retrieved 16/04.2014.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/01/23/are-you-getting-paid-enough/

D. Boje, ”the resurrection of taylorism: total quality managements hidden agenda”, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California, US, page 60,

A. Hoffman, 2009, “Taylorism and Fordism”, quote found on page 3

J. Pfeffer, 2012, “Putting People First for Organizational Success”

Parker, 2002, against management chapter 1, quote found on page 2

Ritzer, 2004, “an introduction to Mcdonaldization”, quote found on page 20