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Scientific Management

Good Essays

Critically discuss the notion that Scientific Management was a ‘good’ idea in the history of management thinking.
Since the thousands of years, people use the management in the great projects such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China. According to Robbins, et al. (2006), Henri Fayol said that all managers perform five functions: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling in the early part of the twentieth century. Robbins stated that, in the mid-1950s, management functions changed to planning, organizing staffing, directing and controlling. However, management functions have been reduced to four such as planning, organizing, leading and controlling.
There are six major approaches to management: …show more content…

Cole (2004, p-20) stated that Gantt introduced a payment system that although the employee’s performance was below on the individual’s instruction card, he still qualified for the day-rate but performance of all the work allocated on the card qualified the individual for bonus. Gantt found that when one worker found that he could achieve the task, the rest quickly followed. As a result, supervision improved, breakdowns were minimized. Gantt’s bonus system also allowed for the employee to challenge the time allocated for a particular task.
There are a lot of benefits from scientific management. First, the productivity increases dramatically by improving the working method. Second, the supervisors can measure the performance base on the working methods. Third, it motivates the employees by incentive payments base on the results on the performance. Finally, the physical working conditions for employees also improved because of scientific management. (Cole, 2004)
Although scientific management has a lot of benefits, it also has some disadvantages. Firstly, the worker’s role is reduced by the rigid methods and procedures. Another drawback is the employees will be bore because of same steps of procedures. Next one is scientific management generates a ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach to the motivation of employees by enabling pay to be geared tightly to output (Cole, 2004). As stated by Buren (2008), proponents of

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