Classical!

Taylor’s Theory of Scientific Management

Frederick Taylor (1856-1915)

 “The Father of Scientific Management”

 Maximize worker capacity and profits
 PROBLEM: Get employees to work at their maximum capacity
 PRIMARY FOCUS: TASKS

Systematic Soldiering
 Deliberately working slowly as to avoid expanding
more effort than deemed necessary
 Reasons
 Reduction in workforce due to decreased
need
 Piecework system of remuneration - raise
production requirements without
increasing pay
 Rule of thumb training methods -
inefficient
Elements of Scientific Management
 Scientific design of every aspect of every task
 Time and Motion Studies
 Careful selection and training of every task
 Proper remuneration for fast and high-quality work
 Maximize output - increase pay
 Equal division of work and responsibility between worker and
manager
 Underlying Themes
 Managers are intelligent; workers are and should be ignorant
 Provide opportunities for workers to achieve greater financial
rewards
 Workers are motivated almost solely by wages
Maximum effort = Higher wages
Manager is responsible for planning, training, and
evaluating

Application in the Modern Workplace

 Assembly Line Plants as Prototypical Examples
 “Prisoners of Taylorism”
 System of Remuneration (quotas - commission)
 Re-Design - Reengineering
 Benchmarking
 Data are used to refine, improve, change, modify, and
eliminate organizational processes
 Lean Manufacturing
Fayol’s Administrative Theory
Henri Fayol (1841-1925)
 General and Industrial Management
 Principles and Elements of Management - how managers
should accomplish their managerial duties
 PRIMARY FOCUS: Management
Functions of Administration
 More Respect for Worker than Taylor
 Workers are motivated by more than
money
 Equity in worker treatment

 Five Elements of Management -- Managerial Objectives

 Planning
 Organizing
 Command
 Coordination
 Control
 Keep machine functioning effectively and efficiently
 Replace quickly and efficiently any part or process that did not
contribute to the objectives
Tools for Accomplishing Objectives)
 Division of work - limited set of tasks
 Authority and Responsibility - right to give orders
 Discipline - agreements and sanctions
 Unity of Command - only one supervisor
 Unity of Direction - one manager per set of activities
 Subordination of Individual Interest to General Interest
 Remuneration of Personnel - fair price for services
 Centralization - reduce importance of subordinate’s role
 Scalar Chain - Fayol’s bridge
 Order - effective and efficient operations
 Equity - kindliness and justice
 Stability of Tenure of Personnel - sufficient time for
familiarity
 Initiative - managers should rely on workers’ initiative
 Esprit de corps - “union is strength” “loyal members”
Weber’s Theory of Bureaucracy
Max Weber (1864-1920)
 German Sociologist
 Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1947)
 Principles and Elements of Management - describe an
ideal or pure form of organizational structure (general
policy and specific commands
 PRIMARY FOCUS: Organizational Structure
 Worker should respect the “right” of managers to direct
activities dictated by organizational rules and procedures
 More DESCRIPTIVE
Bureaucracy allows for the optimal form of authority - “rational
authority”
Three types of Legitimate Authority
 Traditional Authority - past customs; personal loyalty
 Charismatic Authority - personal trust in character and
skills
 Rational Authority - rational application of rules or laws
Tenets of Bureaucracy
 Rules
 Specified sphere of competence
 Hierarchy
 Specialized Training
 Workers do not own technology
 No entitlement to “official position” by incumbent
  Everything written down
 Maintenance of “ideal type” - bureaucracy

Concerned with describing the ideal structure of an organization

Cornerstone: existence of written rules
The rational application of written rules ensures the promotion of
legitimate authority and the effective and efficient functioning of
the organization.

Application in the Modern Workplace

 Large organizations guided by countless rules are
bureaucracies
 Linked with inefficient, slow-moving organizations
 Organizations have several characteristics of bureaucracies
Human relations theory by
Elton Mayo
Human relations theory is largely seen to have been born as a
result of the Hawthorne experiments which Elton Mayo
conducted at the Western Electrical Company.
The “Hawthorne Effect” was not foreseen by the study. Instead,
the Western Electrical Company wished to show that a greater
level of illumination in a working area improved productivity,
hence encouraging employers to spend more money on electricity
from the company.
They carried out a study of how productivity varied with
illumination levels. However, the results of the study showed that
any changes in light levels tended to increase productivity levels.
The core aspect of Human Relations Theory is that, when workers
were being observed and included in the research, they felt more
important and valued by the company. As a result, their
productivity levels went up significantly.
The concept that managers need to become involved with workers
at a more individual level is at the core of human relations theory,
and is what differentiates it from scientific management theory.
Two theories have emerged from this study:
1. Workers will not support management attempts to get them to be
more productive, and hence management needs to take control of
the working process itself, hence leading to scientific management
approaches.
2. Productivity is largely determined by social and group norms,
and by tapping into these norms and fulfilling their workers’ needs,
managers can encourage employees to motivate themselves to
work harder and be more productive.

Contingency theory
Contingency theory is a class of behavioural theory that claims that there
is no best way to organize a corporation, to lead a company, or to make
decisions. Instead, the optimal course of action s contingent (dependent)
upon the internal and external situation.
Fred Fiedler's contingency model focused on individual
leadership.William Richard Scott describes contingency theory in the
following manner: "The best way to organize depends on the nature of the
environment to which the organization must relate".
A major empirical test was furnished by Johannes M Pennings who
examined the interaction between environmental uncertainty, organization
structure and various aspects of performance.
Four important ideas of Contingency Theory are:
1. There is no universal or one best way to manage
2. The design of an organization and its subsystems must 'fit' with
the environment
3. Effective organizations not only have a proper 'fit' with the
environment but also between its subsystems
4. The needs of an organization are better satisfied when it is
properly designed and the management style is appropriate both to
the tasks undertaken and the nature of the work group.
Behavioral theories
The behavioral management theory is often called the human relations
movement because it addresses the human dimension of work. Behavioral
theorists believed that a better understanding of human behavior at work,
such as motivation, conflict, expectations, and group dynamics, improved
productivity.
Elton Mayo's contributions came as part of the Hawthorne studies, a
series of experiments that rigorously applied classical management theory
only to reveal its shortcomings. The Hawthorne experiments consisted of
two studies conducted at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric
Company in Chicago from 1924 to 1932.
The first study was conducted by a group of engineers seeking to
determine the relationship of lighting levels to worker productivity. They
discovered that worker productivity increased as the lighting levels
decreased — that is, until the employees were unable to see what they
were doing, after which performance naturally declined.
A few years later, a second group of experiments began. Harvard
researchers Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger supervised a group of five
women in a bank wiring room. They gave the women special privileges,
such as the right to leave their workstations without permission, take rest
periods, enjoy free lunches, and have variations in pay levels and
workdays. This experiment also resulted in significantly increased rates of
productivity.
In this case, Mayo and Roethlisberger concluded that the increase in
productivity resulted from the supervisory arrangement rather than the
changes in lighting or other associated worker benefits. Because the
experimenters became the primary supervisors of the employees, the
intense interest they displayed for the workers was the basis for the
increased motivation and resulting productivity. Essentially, the
experimenters became a part of the study and influenced its outcome. This
is the origin of the term Hawthorne effect, which describes the special
attention researchers give to a study's subjects and the impact that
attention has on the study's findings.
Abraham Maslow
Maslow broke down the needs hierarchy into five specific areas:

 Physiological needs. Maslow grouped all physical needs necessary

for maintaining basic human well-being, such as food and drink, into
this category. After the need is satisfied, however, it is no longer is a
motivator.

 Safety needs. These needs include the need for basic security,
stability, protection, and freedom from fear. A normal state exists for
an individual to have all these needs generally satisfied. Otherwise,
they become primary motivators.

 Belonging and love needs. After the physical and safety needs are
satisfied and are no longer motivators, the need for belonging and
love emerges as a primary motivator. The individual strives to
establish meaningful relationships with significant others.
 Esteem needs. An individual must develop self-confidence and
wants to achieve status, reputation, fame, and glory.

 Self-actualization needs. Assuming that all the previous needs in the

hierarchy are satisfied, an individual feels a need to find himself.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory helped managers visualize employee
motivation.
Douglas McGregor was heavily influenced by both the Hawthorne
studies and Maslow. He believed that two basic kinds of managers exist.
1.Theory X manager, has a negative view of employees and assumes that
they are lazy, untrustworthy, and incapable of assuming responsibility.
2.Theory Y manager assumes that employees are not only trustworthy and
capable of assuming responsibility, but also have high levels of
motivation.
An important aspect of McGregor's idea was his belief that managers who
hold either set of assumptions can create self-fulfilling prophecies — that
through their behavior, these managers create situations where
subordinates act in ways that confirm the manager's original expectations.
Systems theories
Systems theory is an interdisciplinary theory about the nature
of complex systems in nature, society, and science, and is a
framework by which one can investigate and/or describe any
group of objects that work together to produce some result. This
could be a single organism, any organization or society, or any
electro-mechanical or informational artifact. As a technical and
general academic area of study it predominantly refers to the
science of systems that resulted from Bertalanffy's General
System Theory
Systems theory thus serves as a bridge for interdisciplinary
dialogue between autonomous areas of study as well as within
the area of systems science itself.
General theory of systems should be an important regulative
device in science, to guard against superficial analogies that are
useless in science and harmful in their practical consequences.
 For example, Ilya Prigogine, of the Center for Complex Quantum
Systems at the University of Texas, Austin, has studied emergent
properties, suggesting that they offer analogues for living
systems. A system from this frame of reference is composed of
regularly interacting or interrelating groups of activities. For
example, in noting the influence in organizational psychology as
the field evolved from "an individually oriented industrial
psychology to a systems and developmentally
oriented organizational psychology," it was recognized that
organizations are complex social systems; reducing the parts
from the whole reduces the overall effectiveness of
organizations [3]. This is at difference to conventional models that
center on individuals, structures, departments and units separate
in part from the whole instead of recognizing the interdependence
between groups of individuals, structures and processes that
enable an organization to function. Laszlo [4] explains that the new
systems view of organized complexity went "one step beyond the
Newtonian view of organized simplicity" in reducing the parts from
the whole, or in understanding the whole without relation to the
parts. The relationship between organizations and
their environments became recognized as the foremost source of
complexity and interdependence. In most cases the whole has
properties that cannot be known from analysis of the constituent
elements in isolation. Béla H. Bánáthy, who argued - along with
the founders of the systems society - that "the benefit of
humankind" is the purpose of science, has made significant and
far-reaching contributions to the area of systems theory. For the
Primer Group at ISSS, Bánáthy defines a perspective that iterates
this view:
The systems view is a world-view that is based on the discipline of
SYSTEM INQUIRY. Central to systems inquiry is the concept of
SYSTEM. In the most general sense, system means a configuration
of parts connected and joined together by a web of relationships. The
Primer group defines system as a family of relationships among the
members acting as a whole. Von Bertalanffy defined system as
"elements in standing relationship.