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W.F. Taylor is known as the “Father of scientific management” and his book “The Principles of Scientific Management” (1911) is the Bible for task managers. He presents struggle for control of production between management and labor. To control production, he developed methods for the measure and design of machining methods as part of a general plan for increasing the planning functions of management. He designed a production system that would involve both men and machines and that would be as efficient and well-designed. The institutions that he set out to change were his own workplaces: at Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel, and Gulick in New York City administration.
Taylor was born to a well-to-do family. His father was a wealthy landowner with Quaker origins and his mother came from a wealthy whaling family. He graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey and received his Mechanical Engineering degree in 1883 while working his six-day, sixty hour-a-week job at Midvale. It was during his years as gang boss at Midvale that he began implementing change that ultimately evolved into his theory of scientific management. After he left Midvale, Taylor had several tumultuous years at Bethlehem Steel. After leaving Bethlehem, Taylor began a new career as a management consultant. During this time, the public demanded Taylor’s attention; he devised a series of lectures at his home, in Boxly. Eventually, he brought in a stenographer who took down his words. This was the foundation of his two-chapter treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management, which first appeared in 1911.(Kanigel, 1999).
Taylor’s scientific management theory grew from his work at Midvale. His experiences as a gang boss there taught him the need to defeat the practice of “soldiering.” Soldiering was the logical result of the corrupt practice of management to create monetary incentives for workers doing piecework and then when productivity rose, to impose a rate drop. Labor developed a strict group norm that prevented any gang boss from raising productivity. When Taylor became gang boss at Midvale, his first order of business was to stop the practice of soldiering. In return, he was threatened and machinery was deliberately broken but to no avail. Management stood behind him and in return Taylor had a living laboratory to test and develop the central concepts of his scientific management theory.
Taylor evolved a system of incentives, offering workers money for performing their tasks correctly. Training and specialization were crucial to his methods of efficiency and management. Also, accounting increased tenfold because each individual’s work was monitored. He analyzed that work was more efficient when broken down into its constituent parts, and the management, planning, and decision-making functions were developed elsewhere. Taylor viewed the majority of workers as ill educated and unfit to make important decisions; this is illustrated as, “One of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles […] the ox… Therefore the workman…is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work” (Taylor 1911).
Taylor stressed that proper selection and training of each individual matters. He understood that ‘the way’ was tied directly to technology and to understand this phenomenon of man and machine he focuser on R&D. He developed appropriate equipment, improved machinery, and even developed high-speed steel all in the name of efficiency and productivity through better utilization of science.
Taylor’s system insured the most efficient way would be used by all workers, therefore making the work process standard. Invariably managers found that maximal efficiency was achieved by a subdivision of labor. This subdivision entailed breaking the workers tasks into smaller and smaller parts; in short, “specifying not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it” (Taylor 1911).
The benefits of scientific management lie within its ability to coordinate a mutual relationship between employers and workers. His treatise records for posterity his four principles of scientific management:
1. Scientific job analysis
2. Selection of personnel
3. Management cooperation,
4. Functional supervising
The theory provides a company with the focus to organize its structure in order to meet the objectives of both the employer and employee. With the application of scientific management the company can achieve economies of scale. The company is able to produce desired minimum output with piece rate payment system brings commitment in workers.
If we compare the work of Taylor with Marx, Taylor’s book was published during the Industrial Age as an attempt to standardize the labor that served as a weakness in the booming capitalist system, therefore making the system work better. Taylor provides all the negative aspects of capitalism as determined by Marxism. It focuses on the human development of the individual not for his own self-worth, but to the advantage of the organization. The way in which this occurs is to make the worker himself a commodity in order to better control the single variable aspect of the Taylor theory. In theory, scientific management attempts to derive the greatest benefit for both the employer and employee through “high wages” and “low labor cost” (Taylor 10). To do so, it must ensure that “the individual has reached his highest state of efficiency…turning out his largest daily output” without overtiring or straining himself for the next day’s work" (Taylor 11).
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aneel SALMAN
aneel SALMAN Lecturer, Dept of Economics Forman Christian University, Pakistan. Currently a Fulbright Scholar, pursuing PhD in Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Troy, NY USA 12180-3590 Email: aneelsalman@yahoo.com
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