Scientific Management Worldwide Essay

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Fredrick Taylor in his work The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) said that a leader not only has to have inborn qualities but also has to have some qualities that he acquires over the years. Any man who does not have both can not compete with a man who has acquired these skills and thus is properly organized to efficiently cooperate.

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In the same work, Fredrick Taylor (1911) said that scientific management is something that will enable both the employees and the employers to resolve their disputes and eventually these issues will be eliminated. The wages for a day and the work that will be carried out within a day will not be something that will cause argument. It will be something that will be determined scientifically. To motivate the workers, the increase in wages will be large enough. This will remove all reason for arguments and disputes over wages and the hours worked.

The article, ‘Where Scientific Management went awry,’ by Morgen Witzel, (2005) tells us that although Taylor’s Scientific management helped the industry at that time to make much profits but the negative effects are still existing in some way or the other. Scientific management does have its advantages and these have been experienced by people who had adopted this approach at that time. The advantages of it were a more professional approach and there was preciseness in the research and the measurement that was carried out.

The response to scientific management outside the U.S. was not what was expected. Countries like Britain and France, the concept was not accepted from the beginning but in the Soviet Union, the concept was accepted and people did adopt this approach but the end result was not what they had expected and was a total disaster.

At the time that this theory was introduced, productivity was at an all time low and Taylor with his colleagues though that they could help the workers with this approach as they workers would be paid more with better working conditions. The came up with the scientific method of doing the job and according to them once this method was established there could be no better method of doing the job.

An experiment was carried out in Bethlehem Steel, productivity increased but the costs were high. As a matter of fact the costs were so high that the productivity gains were not sufficient to cover for these costs. The workers thought that the management was playing some kind of trick and by using the piece rate system would eventually lower the real wage. In the American industry, the theory was famous.

In France, this theory saw competition from the theory of Henry Fayol. He concentrated on principles that were generic and could adjust themselves according to the situation they were in. this technique or theory went against the theory of scientific management and the concept of having only one method which is the best method. The two principles went against each other in many other ways. Eventually Fayol admitted defeat and the two organisations merged. After all of this the French were still not interested in Taylor’s Scientific Management.

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In Britain, the response was a little better and people did accept the theory but in the end the traditional methods that were being followed proved better. There was worker resistance to the program; they would not do their best when they knew they were being observed. One of the reasons for the General Strike of 1926 is said to be Taylor’s Scientific Management.

In the Soviet Union, the response was the best out of all three. Eventually all that was being done was the workers were working hard; the objective of efficiency was not achieve through this approach. The approach did give way to many studies and did start a revolution in the process of human management. It gave power to the company to put whatever measure possible to ensure that the worker completes his job.

The second article by G.R. Butler, (1991) tells us that Taylor’s writings did not coincide with his views that he voiced. His views seem to be more appropriate for today than the time he introduced them. His basic four characteristics for employee management include, higher wages, formulation of processes which become the standard and these processes will be formulated through scientific research, training and scientifically placing workers in their jobs and analysing the need of that job and cooperation between the management and the workforce. Companies such as Toyota still apply some of these principles with their workforce today.

Many companies today have realised that some elements of Taylor’s theory need to be implemented and work very well in situations.

He also gave some principles for management which can still be seen today. These are: every man’s work should be developed as a science, train the workforce scientifically, cooperate with the workforce to ensure that all work is being done properly, and not all responsibility should be on the workforce, jobs that managers are good at should be performed by them.

Scientific management according to Taylor, in G.R. Butler’s article, ‘Frederick Winslow Taylor: the father of Scientific Management and His Philosophy Revisited,’ (1991) says “Scientific Management is not an efficiency device, not a device of any kind of securing efficiency; nor is it any bunch or group of efficiency devices. It is not a new system of figuring costs. It is not a new scheme of paying men. It is not a piecework system.”

All these things are included in Scientific Management but these things do not make scientific management. Scientific Management needs a mental revolution from all the people involved in the production process. According to Taylor it is not the mechanism that is changed through this theory but the underlying principles.

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Today, many firms follow some of Taylor’s approaches not because of a scientific formula but because of the humanistic instinct to do the right thing. Many of the other things that were mentioned by Taylor have not been followed and the pressure has always been on one principle of higher wages and the scientific man.

Works Cited

Frederick Winslow Taylor, (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management, New York: Harper.

G.R. Butler, (1991) Frederick Winslow Taylor: the father of Scientific Management and His Philosophy Revisited, IM page 23-27.

Morgen Witzel, (2005) Where Scientific Management went awry, EBF, page 89-91.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Scientific Management Worldwide." October 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/scientific-management-worldwide/.

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