The Principles of Scientific Management
Outline in full the principles of scientific management. What does this theory contribute to management in contemporary organisations?
The main objective of management is maximum prosperity for both the business or owner and the employees. Maximum prosperity for a business means higher dividends and the development to its highest state of excellence. For employees it means higher wages than given in other businesses of the same industry and the ability to work at their highest rate of efficiency.
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856- 1915) published the book The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, with which he abolished the then present rule-of-thumb method and introduced and entirely new system of scientific management. With ‘time and motion study single tasks would be thoroughly studied, timed and then analysed with the goal of determining one best way of performing a job. It dramatically improved productivity in many businesses and therefore helped achieve maximum prosperity.
Taylor shows a negative bias towards workers in his book. He alleged that most employees deliberately do as little as they safely can. Reasons for what he called ‘Soldiering were; fear that increased output would mean fewer workers would be needed and that increased pay would not increase with productivity. Taylor believed that if his principles of scientific management were applied, this issue of Soldiering would be avoided.
In order for the scientific methods to be applied correctly, workers also had to be scientifically selected and trained. This meant that if a job required a lot of heavy lifting, the worker has to be physically able to do so. Workers were given tasks that equalled their skill so that they would not be over-worked but not under-worked either.
Training meant that they were told exactly what to do and how to do it. This form of standardisation on tools and work methods, for businesses, meant that the same outcomes would always be achieved. Franchises like McDonalds still apply these principles of scientific management today. It allows us to enjoy the same quality of McDonalds meals around the world.
Task allocation was also implemented with Taylors Principles of scientific management. It involved the concept of breaking a task into even smaller separate tasks that would be performed by different individuals. Workers were also giving instruction cards that told them exactly what to do. Therefore people would be very specialised in their job, which in Taylors view, allows the continuously flawless completion of the task.
But these implementations were heavily criticized. They were said to have destroy the soul of the workers, since they were meant to function like machines, which did not require any thinking. Also, specialization lead to having no