Classical Theory Of Scientific Management

Management plays an important part in how business operates. Robbins & Coulter (2014, p. 54) state that “The first studies of management, often called the classical approach, emphasized rationality and making organizations and workers as efficient as possible. Two major theories comprise the classical approach: scientific management and general administrative theory.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor is the father of scientific management. In the 20th century, he formulized the principles of scientific management and the theory of his approach by using scientific methods to define the “one best way” for a job to be done. Frederick studied various jobs, and breaking them into smaller task, determined the most efficient way of accomplishing them. Before Taylor’s effort, workers performed jobs according to their intuition and techniques, which lead to inefficiency and inconsistent performance standards (Montana & Charnov, 2008, p. 15). Scientific management has influenced the way business operates and many big companies today are still using the principles of scientific management to run their organization. “McDonald's is the world's leading global foodservice retailer with over 35,000 locations serving approximately 70 million customers in over 100 countries each day” (Aboutmcdonalds.com, 2014). McDonald’s has implemented scientific management principles in their business operations.

Taylor

They have weekly meetings with the crewmembers to discuss what’s new on that particular day or additional things they may need to do. Also, staff at the Innovation Centre gather orders, productivity and performance data to assure that tests mirror the actual world as closely as possible, plus they track the orders to see where bottlenecks are most potential to happen and make alterations to their operating system (Bloomberg.com,