Throughout its short history, Organizational Theory has provided a way for management to measure and improve efficiency and production and effectively manage their workforce. Efficiency and employee satisfaction sometimes presents a dichotomy that is difficult to reconcile. To varying degrees of success, early Organizational Theorists generally focused on one aspect over another. Frederick W. Taylor took the first leap into measuring organizational achievement and, with technology, his Theory of Scientific Management has morphed into a more exacting approach to measurement. For ill or well and until a more comprehensive theory is found, organizations and scientists will continue to vacillate between efficiency and employee satisfaction to meet changing company values. Measuring Success of Organizations
Over the years, four theories became influential in understanding today’s organizations. Beginning in the early 20th century, Frederick W. Taylor was incidental in analyzing organizational structure for the purpose of improving efficiency. Taylor’s Theory of Scientific Management used science as a basis for evaluating production to maximize output. Employee motivation was based on the idea that as an “Economic Man,” or individual acting in his or her rational best interest based on
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Digital Taylorism allows for an expanded division of labor, with routine and repetitive tasks more cheaply outsourced. More accurate and readily available metrics can help management more accurately tie incentives to performance. According to Bill Gates, “A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code with worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” (Schumpeter, 2015). In the end as the old saying goes, “what gets measured gets
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.
“It is therefore imperative for a company to understand the attitude of its workers and measure the job satisfaction of its employees, as job satisfaction is essential for productivity” (L. Bradshaw para. Therefore, the individual can still attain high job productivity without having the satisfaction in their field of work. This happens when money is just their motivation, or if they’re trying to receive a promotion. Others try to increase their productivity due to just the satisfaction they obtain from their work.
Today’s era of business world adapts to everything new but these modern concepts are an indirect tribute to the theories produced by Taylor, Fayol, Mayo and Weber. Taylor’s Scientific management theory is one such example which has become such an important aspects of modern management that it feels unbelievable that his concepts were a part of the history. It is falsely assumed that as the society progresses, the older theories tend to lose their importance. The thing to be noted here is that these theories are based on basic human needs which do not change with time; the thing that changes is the method to fulfil those needs. Investigating earlier management theories is important because these theories are less complex and provide immediate solution to the problems. These theories basically help us to go to the root of the problem and understand its complexity. The better understanding we have about the problem, the easier it is to accomplish the objectives of the company. The following essay states the importance of the Taylor’s Scientific management theory and how it is implemented even today in the business world.
Rodgers, Robert, and John E. Hunter. "Impact of Management by Objectives on Organizational Productivity." Journal of Applied Psychology 76.2 (1991): 322-36. Print.
Based on research so far in this essay, it seems that the whole reason behind Frederick Taylor’s theory is that he tends to aim for making the most of his employees, to work to their highest standards for a successful company. When we look at the Ryanair case study on Management, D. Boddy pg 23 we can see that one of the key points is that the staff must turn an aircraft round between the flights in a matter of 25 minutes, which has a positive effect on increasing revenue. However, this leaves the employees under pressure, but this also tells us that the Ryanair organisation makes the most out of their employees, just like Frederick Taylor’s theory. Getting these tasks completed by the employees is all in the manager’s responsibility, Ryanair regulates their staff so that the managers are held responsible for providing the strategies for the employees as mentioned in the case study on Management, D. Boddy pg 23.
Frederick Taylor's Contribution to Modern Day Understanding of Organizations Frederick Taylor's work was taking place in a time period when the United States of America was undergoing mass industrialisation after the Civil War. National industries grew out of local trades; what were once small factories rapidly became large organisations with new technologies for production and mass workforces.[1] Many large corporations such as Ford, Esso and United States Steel were developed in this time; however they all faced the same problem; there was only a limited pool of skilled workers to recruit from. Many labourers were based in the agricultural regions of America or were immigrants from Europe. Directing the efforts of workers with little understanding of the English language, few required skills and no experience of working in the disciplined region of a factory, left the organisation with key problems.[2
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...
This essay will discuss the relevance of Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management to organisations today. Taylor’s theory of Scientific Management is based around how efficiently a member of staff works in order to improve their productivity, the theory was introduced in 1911 and has four principles which were tested to determine optimal work methods, and are still seen in organisations today such as fast-food restaurants. Taylor believed that workers left to their own devices would restrict their output and not progress with the task, this was called ‘soldiering’ and it was described in two forms; natural
There are several theories that examine an organization and it’s approach to managing work in an effort to develop efficiency and increase production. Two classical approaches to management are Taylor’s scientific management theory and Weber's bureaucratic management theory. Both men are considered pioneers of in the study of management.
The concept of scientific management is based on the idea that work could be studied to increase efficiency, and specialization. Economist Adam Smith changed the way the world looked at the economy and organization. In his essay, “Of the Division of Labour,” Smith emphasizes the importance of specialization, and how division of labor leads to specialization. He states that this would allow a worker to be more productive and efficient (Shafritz, Ott, & Jang, 2011, p. 41-45). Frederick Taylor introduced the principles of scientific management, which stated that management is a science, workers should be scientifically selected and trained scientifically, and both management and workers should work together.
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...
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.
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).
Furthermore, most organization used the performance to determine the abilities and productivity of the employees. In an organization, employees set their objectives for the year and they monitor it and develop the right skills to achieve the target (Vallerand, 1993).
Frederick Winslow Taylor considered the founding father of the science of business management. He surmised that management is a science, knowledge calculated by experts who have no opinions, but instead use neutral, objective, and universal standards to obtain information. He analyzed the job using scientific management, he found the best method to perform said job. Scientific Management goal is to increase productivity by increasing efficiency and wages of employees. This is done by creating time and motion studies to establish performance standard measures. These performance standards encompassed the use of time, cost, and quality of work, leading to uniformity of work. This resulted in the efficiency of the workers being compared with each other.