Mechanistic and bureaucratic organizations are known to have a well-structured hierarchy to achieve the most efficient and effective operation, the specialization of task, and repetition of procedures. Mechanistic organizations are rather easier and simpler to organize and maintain. However, it has it difficulties to cope with change and will most probably struggle to encourage organizational learning. The purpose of this essay is to discuss and study the difficulties that mechanistic and bureaucratic organizations might face to encourage organizational learning. Organizations will be analysed and discussed through mechanistic and learning perspectives.
There are several key theories and concepts about the mechanistic perspective. One of it is the principle of scientific management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), an industrial engineer from the United States of America. It is also known as Taylorism. According to Taylor (1911), Taylorism is about using the most efficient way to produce the maximum amount of production. Taylor proposed the idea of simplifying tasks and optimizing jobs would increase the productivity. Jobs were defined and workers would be assigned to task according to their capability and ability to produce maximum effort at that specific task. Worker’s performance would be monitored to ensure that the maximum of efficiency is to be achieved. Organizations are articulated by clear purposes and objectives, specific hierarchical structure and responsibilities to a specific job and formalization of system control and ability to achieve the optimum of efficiency. Taylor’s concept is usually practices by factory industry workers where workers are all been assigned accordingly by their capabilities. However, t...
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Taylorism is a system that was designed in the late 19th century, not only to maximise managerial control, but to also expand the levels of efficiency throughout workplaces. With this being said, productivity levels increased and fair wage distribution was the main result. However, with other, more recent theories and systems, such as Maslow and Herzburg’s theories, these helped to focus on the satisfaction and motivation of the workers rather than the concern of managerial control and empowerment. Fredrick W. Taylor ended up developing 4 main principles to help increase the work efficiency and productivity in workplaces; these will be discussed later on. Other theories relating to this include, Fayol, Follett, Management Science Theory as well as Organisational-Environmental Theory. All theories listed have an influence on the way businesses work effectively and put their skills to action. This essay will highlight how Taylorism was designed to maximise managerial control and increase productivity, furthermore, showing how more recent theories were developed to focus on empowering employees and to extend the use of organisational resources.
Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization (revised ed.). New York: Random House.
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.
Frederick Winslow Taylor said about the Efficiency Movement and Scientific Management, We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a lack of "national efficiency," are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated. We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them.
Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and Practice of the learning organization (1st ed., Rev.). New York, NY: Doubleday.
The learning organization is the opposite of the traditional organization. It believes that there is always a better way to do things, it listens to those who work within the company, utilizes a systems approach, is orientated towards people and ideas, prevents problems, quality and customer-service is essential, and accountability to the team is essential (Anderson, 2003). The lear...
Frederick W Taylor was an American inventor and engineer, considered the father of "scientific management". Although born to a wealthy family, Taylor began his work life when he signed on as an apprentice at a small Philadelphia pump works. Four years later, at a plant in Midvale, he developed the basic elements of what later came to be known as "scientific management" - the breakdown of work tasks into constituent elements, the timing of each element based on repeated stopwatch studies, the fixing of piece rate compensation based on those studies, the standardization of work tasks on detailed instruction cards and generally the systematic consolidation of the shop floor's brain work in a "planning department."
As the popularity of systematic management rose, there were many organizations that were implementing its main features such as employment of more unskilled workers and work standardization methods (Thompson and Mchugh, 2009, p.28 a). It had several features, a few of which included focusing on the manner in which production took place, being precise about how the activities were going about and to ensure that productivity and overall efficiency improved. Thus, the primary focus was on methods of production as compared to the end result of the production activity. This is when the role of Taylorism came about. Frederick Winslow Taylor, a name that transformed the management scheme forever. Also known as the Father of scientific management, Taylor was the brain behind recognizing the need for efficiency in the workplace. He first started off with his research at Midvale Steel Works, where he meticulously observed the workers and in order to develop his principles and theories with the prime focus of constructing a way to have full control over the activities taking place (Thompson and Mchugh, 2009, p.28 a).
The founding father of scientific management theory is Fredrick Winslow Taylor. He was an American mechanical engineer and an inventor. Modern management theorist Edward Deming credited Taylor for his contributions while Joseph Juran criticized his work for extracting more work from workers. However a careful reading of Taylor’s work will disclose that he placed workers interest as high as the employer’s in his studies. Before the principles of management are discussed it is very important to understand the causes which led Taylor to derive the four principles of management. The three causes are as follows:
Taylor’s scientific approach is based on the planning of work to achieve efficiency, standardization, specialization and simplification. Factories are managed through scientific methods and productivity is increase through a mutual trust between management and workers. Weber's bureaucratic approach embellishes the scientific management theory and focuses on dividing organizations into hierarchies, establishing strong lines of authority and control. Weber believed that organizations are accountable to and part of a broader the social order.
The evolution of management though the decades can be divided into two major sections. One of the sections is the classical approach. Under the classical approach efficiency and productivity became a critical concern of the managers at the turn of the 20th century. One of the approaches from the classical time period were systematic management which placed more emphasis on internal operations because managers were concerned with meeting the growth in demand brought on by the Industrial revolution. As a result managers became more concerned with physical things than towards the people therefore systematic management failed to lead to production efficiency. This became apparent to an engineer named Frederick Taylor who was the father of Scientific Management. Scientific Management was identified by four principles for which management should develop the best way to do a job, determine the optimum work pace, train people to do the job properly, and reward successful performance by using an incentive pay system. Scientifi...
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...
Learning is defined as a measurable and the act or the process of acquiring a relatively permanent change in a behavioural tendency through knowledge, skills and experience. People learn in their lifetime. The learning process continues throughout our life and it is the first step in becoming an outstanding performer. In today’s rapidly developing world, if you do not keep learning, you are not standing still, you are falling behind. This is not only applied to individual, but also for the organizations. But here comes the questions: Is individual and the organization can learn? In order to answer this question, we need to imply the use of the theories and ideas and also discuss how the culture, group and emotion of the individuals or organization will affect the learning organization.
This paper describes on one of the famous management theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor, who introduced to society about the scientific management theories. This method was established a hundred years ago in 1911 early stage by Taylor in his work place. This article critically discusses about Taylor’s early stage, background, education, and his contribution to management theory, practice and society.