The author makes a comparison between scientific management and ordinary type of management. For workmen to work effectively and deliver, they must have initiative. Initiative in this context is the hard work, good will and ingenuity that employees portray as they perform their duties. The writer introduces the first type of management which is based on incentives.
According to this approach, the employer must give the workmen an incentive on top of their average remuneration in order to obtain their initiative. The incentive can be given in various ways such as promises of rapid promotion, higher wages, shorter working hours and better working conditions.
This form of incentive should be accompanied by a genuine interest of the employer in the welfare of the workmen. This management approach stresses the fact that employers can only obtain the initiative of their workmen after a certain inducement or incentive has been offered.
On the contrary, initiative in scientific management is obtained in a different way and does not rely on incentives or inducements. This approach focuses on improving the workmen and the managers taking up new duties and responsibilities that do not exist in ordinary management approach.
For instance, the managers assume the burden of gathering traditional knowledge previously possessed by the workmen and then transforming it into rules, laws and formulae which are used by the workmen to perform their duties. This process is basically a science that is developed to guide scientific management approach.
Under scientific management, managers believe that all the work should not be left to the workmen. This explains the reason why they assume new tasks that are new and difficult to perform.
The first duty managers under scientific management perform is developing a scientific concept for every task the workmen do, while the second one is that they scientifically train, teach and develop the workmen.
This increases effectiveness of the workmen contrary to what happens in ordinary management approach where individual workers train themselves. The third burden that managers under scientific management carry is the duty of cooperating with the workmen in order to ensure that they follow the scientific principles developed as they perform their duties.
The fourth duty of the managers under scientific management is to divide work equally between the workmen and themselves. This is based on the premise that there are tasks that the managers can perform better than the workmen. Leaving the tasks to the workmen only leads to poor performance.
Ordinary management approach focuses on obtaining the initiative of the workmen. On the other hand, scientific management shows the importance of combining the initiative of the workmen with new types of work done by the management.
This makes scientific management more efficient than the old plan. Scientific management approach makes use of planners who eventually realize that subdividing work leads to better and economical performance. The roles performed by workmen should be preceded by preparatory tasks that are performed by other people like managers.
Scientific management approach holds the view that every form of labor has a science behind it. An individual who is best suited to perform a certain class of work is carefully selected after the science of doing the work has been developed, and then trained to work according to the science. This leads to results that are evidently better than those which could be achieved in ordinary management which is based on initiative and incentive.