History Of Management Theory

"History of Management Theory"

Topic: Scientific Management

CHAPTER1:BACKGROUND

Frederick W. Taylor is known as the father of Scientific Management, a major theory of management and administration that has been utilized in both the private and the public sectors. Taylor was a mechanical engineer whose writings on efficiency and scientific management were widely read, and he was also the founder of "systems engineering." Taylor's influence is still felt in the structure and operation of management and in bureaucracies both public and private around the world, and much of the development of public and private sector administration in this century owes a debt to Taylor and his writings. His approach has had psychological consequences in terms of the way we view and respond to management issues as well as considerable influence on ideas about efficiency. Scientific management itself was a form of industrial engineering that established the organization of work as in Henry Ford's assembly line. This discipline, along with the industrial psychology established by others at the Hawthorne Works of Western Electric in the 1920s, altered management theory from early time and motion studies to the latest total quality control ideas.

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in Philadelphia in 1856. He prepared for college at Philips Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and was accepted at Harvard. After his eyesight failed, he became an industrial apprentice in the depression of 1873, one of the two major depressions in this country prior to the Great Depression in the 1930s. At Exeter, he was influenced by the classification system invented by Melvil Dewey in 1872 (known today as the Dewey Decimal System). In 1878, Taylor became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Company. He wrote a book in which he described some of his promotions to gang boss, foreman, and finally, chief engineer. He introduced time motion studies in 1881 following ideas of Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth, strong personalities who immortalized in books by their dozen children, such as Cheaper By the Dozen. In 1883, Taylor earned a degree by night study from Stevens Institute of Technology, an institution which today archives his papers and has announced plans to put them online soon. Taylor became general manager of Manufacturing Investment Company in 1890, and he was then made a consulting engineer to management.

Taylor wrote about his ideas and was influential as a result. However, though his ideas were clearly enunciated in his writings, they were also widely misinterpreted as employers did such things as use time and motion studies simply to extract more work from employees at less pay. Unions condemned such practices and noted the lack of voice in they had in their work, blaming what they called "Taylorism" for this. Quality and productivity declined when Taylor's principles were simplistically implemented in this fashion. His influence, though, has been evident in the discipline. Modern management theorists such as Edward Deming often credit Taylor with creating the principles upon which they act to this day. There are others, though, such as Juran, who continue to denigrate Taylor's work. For one thing, modern theorists generally place more emphasis on worker input and teamwork than was usual in much of Taylor's time. A more careful reading of Taylor's work, though, shows that he placed the worker's interest as high as the employer's in his studies and that he recognized the importance of such things as the suggestion box in a machine shop to increase worker participation ("Frederick W. Taylor" eldred.ne.mediaone.net).

The beginnings of Taylor's ideas can be found in stories he tells in his writings about his period at Exeter. He cites George A. Wentworth, a professor of mathematics, and Taylor wondered at the time how Wentworth could give a lesson that always took Taylor two hours to get. He finally discovered how Wentworth did it: "Mr. Wentworth would sit with his watch always hid behind a ledge on his desk, and while we knew it was there we did not know what the darn thing was for" (Wrege and Greenwood 5). Through observation, Taylor found that Wentworth would test to discover how many minutes it took the average boy in the class to do an example he would give, and Wentworth would then time himself when he first tackled these problems. He would get a ratio of change to get the class working at a proper pace: "That was the first instance of time study of mental operation which I have ever seen" (Wrege and Greenwood 5).

Many of Taylor's experiences served to add to his understanding of management and of issues related to time and motion. His work at the Midvale plant was among the most important in shaping his view of management and in developing his theories. He was made superintendent of machine shops when he was only 23, leading to some resistance on the part of men he had worked with before: "The resistance offered by the men when he demanded more work gave Taylor his first problem as an executive... Just as his mother demanded work and discipline, Taylor demanded work from his men, disciplining them if he believed they did not work to their full capacity" (Wrege and Greenwood 31).

Taylor's first important writing came in 1893 with a paper presented to the American society of mechanical Engineers--"Notes on Belting." He also wrote about his differential piece rate system, part of his effort against "soldiering," which meant that a worker would meet his daily standard and then had no reason to work beyond that point: "Whether they produced slightly above that standard, twice that standard, or three times that standard, or whatever, they were still paid the daily rate" (Wrege and Greenwood 36). The "differential piece rate" was intended to eliminate this problem, and it meant substituting piece rates for day rates. This led to new problems, for "when the piece rate increased daily earnings, the rates were reduced" (Wrege and Greenwood 39). Taylor found a way to address this problem, though it took many years to implement the two steps involved:

(1) give each workman each day in advance a definite task, with detailed written instructions, and an exact time allowance for each element of the work; and

(2) pay extraordinary high wages to those who perform their tasks in the allotted time, and ordinary wages to those who take more than they have been allowed.

The work of Frederick Taylor on scientific management constituted a major phase in public personnel management. Taylor

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