Introduction
President and Republican Theodore Roosevelt the youngest U.S president elected in September 1901, addressed the lack of national efficiency, by seeing the waste of human effort, lumbering, ill-directed being unproductive and not making an effective use of their time. He wanted to bring upon a national efficiency by turning the natural resource into a more tangible, visible and more appreciative in order to leave something behind for the generations to come.
With this the search for more competent men, better ideas elevated, from the presidents of great companies down to household servants (Taylor, 1911).
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) was an American mechanical engineer and later a consultant who sought to improve the
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Scientific Management established a great influence on the strategy and competitive formulas used in modern organisation.
We will analyse the impact on organizations and have an insight view on the implications of the use of scientific management strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths of Scientific Management
Apple Corporation: Apple an American multinational corporation Apple’s organizational culture includes a policy of selecting only the best workers for the specific role. Apple employees are selected for their knowledge, skills, and innovative talents. The company organizational culture highlights the importance of creativity.
By selecting the best person to do the designated job ensuring they had suitable physical and mental qualities for the role. One of the reasons of the success of Apple is selecting the expertise and those with high skills order to produce unique designs and innovations.
With this selection process they have expanding their products from Macintosh computers, The iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Etc.) to peripherals (Apple TV, digital video displays) and applications (iTunes, iLife, Final Cut Studio).
Apple management as successfully used the implementation of scientific management by selecting the best person to do the job, separating the high skilled and high educated for the creative roles and the low skilled and low educated to for the manual labour jobs.
Pret A Manger: An international sandwich
Scientific Management – a method which sought to identify most efficient techniques for management through “time and motion” studies and then motivated worked to adopt these ways of working through the use of
Taylors Method was known as the Time & Motion Studies. Time was the least amount of time it took to perform each task and even each part of each task, whereas motion was where the fewest numbers of motions required for each small task. Taylor wanted employees to work as if they were machines. From Taylor’s Theory to Taylorism the outcomes were that it boosted in productivity by 200% to 400%. More work was also accomplished with fewer people meant more profit for companies from Taylorism and the final outcome was that more consistent products were of higher quality (Frederick Taylor Scientific Management). In Frederick Winslow Taylor’s ‘The Principles of Scientific Management 1910, he states that ‘under the old
Scientific management was introduced by Fredrick Winslow Taylor in 1898. The basic attributes of this perspective were giving incentives to employees, training them in a standard method and developing a standard procedure of performing a task. These procedures were established by numerous studies and observations (Samson et al., 2012).
Scientific management is essential to some extent not only for service economy but any type of business these days. It enhances the level of production considerably by introducing new and improved methods of management and production which even promotes service economy more since the economy aim is to transform productivity into competency and profitability. Summing up, under scientific management, the work is carried out systematically according to pre-determined plans, time-wastage is reduced by large, work and products quality is
a, Example: Scientific management is still applied by many types of today organizations. There are a considerable number of well-known companies that still apply scientific management to their business operation. The fist typical example is Mc Donald (MCD)- the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurant which serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries. The principles of scientific management have been applied by MCD in its business operation for 3 functions: the development of the workman and the scientific education, the method of performing every job and the system of rewarding in order to achieve goals as shown on Mc Donald’s corporate website, 2008. Specifically, MCD provides an incentive system of wages, in which offers bonuses for workers base on the amount of work that they produce. Long term incentives are offered to
The productivity under Taylor’s method dramatically increased and costs of the manufactured goods were reduced by 1/10 to 1/20 of the previous manufactured cost. These changes allowed more people to purchase the goods [6]. It looks like the scientific management theory was the perfect solutions to the problems in organizations in the 20th century. But is scientific management appropriate in a modern world? The next section will look at pros and cons of this theory and the use of scientific management in today’s organizations.
Product quality is one factor that both customers and companies are keen about. The way that scientific management works helps workers especially in work fields that require repetitive work (for example factories) since it would help to reduce inaccuracies during production. Scientific management can also improve product quality since the whole system allows the managers to supervise the work schedule closely to prevent mistakes and faults. Taylorism has not just brought benefits to companies but also to workers themselves. In order to gain more revenue from better productivity and efficiency, companies would give training to their employees in order to improve their competency. From all the positive effects, the society and consumers can have the chance to purchase products of better quality, whilst also improving standard of living within the society.
The term scientific management is the combination of two words i.e. scientific and management. The word "Scientific" means systematic analytical and objective approach while "management" means getting things done through others. Scientific management theory seeks to improve an organization 's efficiency by systematically improving the efficiency of task completion by utilizing scientific, engineering, and mathematical analysis. The goal is to reduce waste, increase the process and methods of production, and create a just distribution of goods. This goal serves the common interests of employers, employees, and society.
Although scientific management does not always work effectively and can be criticized somehow, the scientific
Apple Inc. is the most revered corporation of the USA, both in terms of brand equity and market capitalization. The company’s international competitive strategy is focused on the innovative product development, which Apple controls through its eight business segments: Portables, Desktops, iPads, iPhones, Music related products and services, peripherals and hardware (Lam et al. 2005).
Scientific management is an organizational theory that was discovered by Frederick Taylor. He was concerned with scientifically developing the worker to become more efficient. Taylor wrote a book called, The Principle of Scientific Management (Rimer, Waring, Wrege, & Greenwood, 1993). In this book he highlights four major principles to his theory. The first is that there is one best way to do every job. This is determined through time and motion studies to determine what’s the most effective way. The second point is proper scientific selection of workers. Thirdly, is properly training the workers in what is deemed as the best practice. The last point is defining the inherent differences and relationships between manager and worker. Managers should be in charge of administrative tasks, as well as being the thinkers, and planners of the organization. Workers on
The early study of management as we know today began with what is now called the classical perspective. Scientific management that is the focus of this essay is branched from classical perspective. This essay will argue the annexation of scientific management concept to the context of knowledge-based economy and its effectiveness in the modern learning organisations. The essay will begin by explaining the background of scientific management followed by highlighting its core principles and the reason for its effectiveness that time. It will then explain the
Fredrick Taylor was a significant figure in operation management history. He played a major part in innovations during the industrial revelation through his scientific methods that made great improvements when it came to productivity and efficiency. The improvements that he made were highly criticized for being to harsh on workers and dehumanizing factories. http://www.skymark.com/resources/leaders/taylor.asp
With those evocative words, Frederick W. Taylor had begun his highly influential book; “The Principles of Scientific Management” indicating his view regarding management practices. As one of the most influential management theorists, Taylor is widely acclaimed as the ‘father of scientific management’. Taylor had sought “the ‘one best way’ for a job to be done” (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg & Coulter, 2003, p.39). Northcraft and Neale (1990, p.41) state that “Scientific management took its
As the course suggests, there are various theories to lead by. The Scientific Management theory suggests that standard work flow and work conditions give the best outputs and that proper planning, effective training and careful recruitment are parts of scientific management. I agree whole-heartedly with F. W. Taylor in this theory and I plan on looking for ‘one best way’ to do any task so that quality can be assured in the coming future. Along with that, a clear but concise bureaucracy needs to exist so that elements such as chain of command, order, unity of direction, unity of command and lines of authority can be well defined.