Organizational Theory of Behavior of Frederick Taylor, Max Weber, and Henri Fayol

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Organizational Theory and Behavior: Frederick Taylor, Max Weber, and Henri Fayol Since its emergence as a field of study, there have been some important contributions to public administration. Its goal has always been to improve productivity which then improves workplace performance. All of the contributions have been aimed at completing the work with the highest level of efficiency and at the lowest cost. Public administration disciples have sought to find the best way to rid organizations of inefficiency and waste. This led to changes to the very foundations of management and motivation theories. To increase efficiency, Max Weber and Frederick Taylor made changes to the process and the rules; while Henri Fayol fixated on the human element. While Weber, Taylor, and Fayol all sought to enhance workplace operations, they differ in their assessments of what and/or who could be the catalyst for this change. Frederick Taylor thought that changes in the work process and/or rules would advance efficiency and productivity. He originated the scientific management approach in public administration. It was based on the idea that work processes should be observed via experiments which would greatly improve productivity. It would do so by doing away with the rule of thumb work methods and replacing them with the results of actual timed observations (14). The application of the scientific approach to management methods would lead to optimizing task time by simplifying the job. It would mean observing work processes to find the one best way to perform each job (15). Once the best way was discovered, all employees were to use it. The simplification of the job would improve task time. This method would lead to increased productivity, higher wag... ... middle of paper ... ...n highly repetitive tasks which could lead to boredom and employees feeling like machinery. Third, Taylor and Weber’s systems ignored employee relationships and group dynamics which play some role in employee happiness. Both Taylor and Weber’s systems reduced worker discretion, flexibility, and motivation. Neither believed that specific employees were essential to efficiency and effectiveness and dehumanized the workers. Every job should be a learning experience, in that, employees should be able to learn new duties if capable and get feedback. Employees should also be accountable for his/her work. Accountability means you’ll be concerned about the work and motivated to act. All of the aforementioned systems provided that but still offered no proof that one was better than the other. Unfortunately, none of them can do that because each will always lack something.

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