In his work The Principles of Scientific Management, Fredrick Winslow Taylor introduces and discusses the main aspects of implementing the key notions of scientific management within industries and companies. Taylor is inclined to focus on the principle of the ‘initiative and incentive’ management in relation to its effectiveness with the help of comparing it with the ideas of scientific management.
Thus, the author claims that the traditional approach to managing the employees’ work which is known as the ‘initiative and incentive’ principle or ordinary type of management is less effective than the methods based on the concepts of scientific management.
That is why, Taylor supports his point of view with references to the comparison of scientific management or task management with aspects of the ‘initiative and incentive’ principle which is usual for the traditional management.
According to Taylor, the ordinary type of management is based on the definite incentive provided for employees to receive the feedback in the form of the increasing initiative.
However, there can be another approach to encourage workers and improve their performance depended on the principles of scientific management where the usage of a pay system is only one element of the large and complex system (Taylor, 2010). From this perspective, scientific management can be defined and discussed referring to four new duties of managers.
Thus, those managers who use the scientific approach in their work are oriented to the development of “a science for each element of a man’s work” (Taylor, 2010).
Moreover, they “scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the workman” and cooperate with the workers “so as to insure all of the work being done in accordance with the principles of the science”, and the accents are made on the almost equal “division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen” (Taylor, 2010).
To provide the illustration for the usage of these four methods typical for scientific management, Taylor concentrates on the science of handling pig iron.
The author supports his discussion with references to the introduction of the principles of scientific management in the Bethlehem Steel Company. To increase the workers’ productivity, the managers decided to use the principles of scientific management within the company.
The task was to change the rates of loading from the rate of 12 and a half tons to the rate of 47 tons without the threats of the employees’ striking or worsening their working conditions. Taylor discusses all the stages of implementing the new system developed according to the concepts of scientific management in detail (Taylor, 2010).
Demonstrating the positive changes in the performance of one worker, Taylor pays attention to the effectiveness of the further usage of the new system for the whole company.
The author concludes that scientific management with its main principles and determined duties of managers is oriented to the usage of the most successful methods which effectiveness is scientifically studied in order to organize the work of employees with focusing on the higher productivity, but less dissatisfaction of the human resources.
Taylor finally states that it is really effective to select the worker and test the method basing on training and monitoring the working man until the definite working habit develops. Thus, even elementary work can be more effectively organized when the methods of scientific management are used.
Reference
Taylor, F. W. (2010). Selections from The Principles of Scientific Management. Web.