Assignment on Article Review

Book of Review: The ideas of Frederick W. Taylor an evaluation

Done by:-

1
Introduction

According to Frederick W. Taylors, there are many factors can influence modern management.
Such as team work, leadership and truest of a leader. Extraction company in order to solve the
problem which is morale and productivity. The ideas and techniques of Frederick W. Taylor are
examined with respect to their validity and their acceptance in modern management. With
respect to the principle of scientific decision making and techniques such as time study,
standardization, goal setting, money as a motivator, scientific selection, and rest pauses, Taylor's
views were fundamentally correct and have been generally accepted. Most of the major
criticisms that have been made of Taylor are unjustified. Taylor's genius has not been
appreciated by many contemporary writers. Taylor’s scientific approach did not escape criticisms
from other theorists. One of the known accusations of his works is treating employees as
machines and his antiunionism (Locke, 1982). Also, the theory of human interaction developed
by Mary Parker Follett is one of the principles that opposes his Individualized work technique.

1. Taylor’s philosophy of management

An essential element of Taylor’s philosophy of management, as the name of movement implies,

was a scientific approach to managerial decussation making. Taylor's philosophy of management
is focused on the belief that making people work as hard as they could was not as efficient as
optimizing the way the work was done. In 1909, Taylor published " The Principles of Scientific
Management." In this, he proposed that by optimizing and simplifying jobs, productivity would
increase. Taylorism, is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its
main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the
earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. The
techniques which Taylor regarded as its essential elements or features may be classified as under:
Scientific Task and Rate-setting, work improvement, etc.
The second elements of Taylor’s philosophy of management, and other key aspect of a mental
revolution. Taylor introduced the concept of 'mental revolution'. Often it is seen that there is a
huge gap in mindset between employers and employees. As per Taylor, a change in the mindset
of the management and the employees would lead to increased productivity and profits.
According to Taylor’s mental revolution is a change in thinking both on the part of management

2
and workers. Success of implementation of scientific management depends on the mental
revolution of management and workers both as to their duty to cooperate in producing the largest
possible surplus and to the necessity. for substituting exact scientific knowledge for opinions or
the old rule of skim of individual knowledge.

Taylor’s Techniques
Time and motion study
Before Taylor’s, there was no objective methods for determining how fast job should be done.
Managers simply used past experience as a guide. Taylor’s solution was to break down the work
task in to its constituent elements or motives; to eliminate wasted motives.
Taylor advocated the following elements of scientific management: work stud, standardization of
tools and equipment, scientific selection, placement and training and development of fictional
foremanship.
Taylor believed that all workers were motivated by money, so he promoted the idea of "a fair
day's pay for a fair day's work." In other words, if a worker didn't achieve enough in a day, he
didn't deserve to be paid as much as another worker who was highly productive. A time and
motion study are a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick
Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth.
According to Taylor’s motion study evolved into a technique for improving work methods. The
two techniques became integrated and refined into a widely accepted method applicable to the
improvement and upgrading of work systems. This integrated approach to work system
improvement is known as methods engineering and it is applied today to industrial as well as
service organizations, including banks, schools and hospitals.
Standardized Tools and Procedures
Standardization also has been extended beyond the sphere of tools used to include other types of
organizational producer, especially in large firms. Taylor and his disciples cited the search for
efficiency, “the one best way” to do a job, as justification for such changes. Because scientific
management consultants claimed they understood the “natural laws” of human behavior and
endurance, they argued that the implementation of scientific management would benefit both
workers and society at-large. Nevertheless, skilled workers and their unions often vociferously
protested these changes because Taylorism made their work monotonous and also trespassed
upon what they perceived as their traditional prerogative to manage their own time on the job.

3
The money bonuses and training views of Taylor’s
Taylor’s claimed that money was what the worker wanted most, and he argued that the worker
should be paid from 30% to 100% higher wages in return for learning to do his job according to
scientific management principle that is for carrying out order. Workers and their unions objected
not only to the efforts of scientific managers to determine what workers did all day, but also to
efforts to tell workers exactly how they should do it.
According to Taylor’s the most efficient way of performing any job. He believed that there were
universal laws which governed efficiency and that these laws were independent of human
judgment. The goal of Scientific Management was to find this “one best way” of doing things as
efficiently as possible. Taylor brought a very scientific approach to productivity. He did not
value the human needs of workers.
On the issues of training and tools, Taylor’s says the task of factory management was to
determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and
to provide incentives for good performance. He broke each job down into its individual motions,
analyzed these to determine which were essential, and timed the workers with a stopwatch. With
unnecessary motion eliminated, the worker, following a machinelike routine, became far more
productive.
Criticisms of Taylor’s
A number of criticisms have been made of Taylor and his idea. The major criticisms on Taylor’s
view on modern management are:

The classic Hawthorn experiment of Elton Mayo and other research studies on human relations
and group dynamics in industry rejected Taylorism. Apart from these Taylors works was
criticized on the ground.

1. Taylor was criticized on the ground that he was excessively utilitarian and impersonal, paying
too little attention to the human element and that in his schemes, wages of labor did not increase
in direct proportion to productivity increases. His scientific management was considered to be
autocratic or at best paternalistic.

2. The Taylor’s philosophy were generally lazy and try to avoid work has also been disputed. It
is evident from Brown’s analysis that ‘work is a essential part of man’s life, since it is that aspect

4
of life which gives him status and binds him to the society. When they do not like it the fault lies
in the psychological and social conditions of the job, rather than the worker.

3. Another criticism of Taylor is that he did not properly understand the autonomy of the work.
His emphasis on the minute division of the work and the specialization was severely criticized on
several grounds.

(a) The work gets depersonalized; the worker becomes a mere cock in the machine and the
relation between the worker and executive become remote as a result of which he lacks the sense
of participation in the work more than everything the worker finds no outlet to exhibit all his
abilities and potentialities.

(b) Secondly it may be bad to automation of the worker which may have psychological and
neurological Consequences.

(c) Thirdly, Taylor’s division of work, people in planning and executive division, has severely
been criticized. It is argued that in such a situation it is difficult to develop proper team spirit and
if planning is totally diverted from execution it is difficult to secure the participation of the
workers in the progress of the firm.

The major contribution of Taylor articles on modern management.

Despite ‘the limitations and adequate understanding of human psychology sociology and the
anatomy of work Taylor work remain supremely important. The major contribution of Taylors is
summarized as the following points

1. He was the first to apply scientific principles to the problems of management.

2. He was the first to state that it was the duty of management to tell the workers what was
expected of them and also to specify the way in which the job is to be performed.

3. He was the first to advocate the mental revolution on the part of both employers and
employees.

4. He was the first to give us systematic experiments on time and motion study.

5. He was the first to recognize the need to separate the planning of work from its execution.

5
6. He was the first to innovate the concept of the use of “functional foreman”.

Conclusion
Taylor's theory and the implication for contemporary management practice Taylor's Theory was
developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, it was mainly associated with Scientific Management.
Taylor endeavored to increase labor and productivity in the workplace through study of a
worker's role and design a more efficient and productive approach to their jobs, this procedure
derived from the observation.
Taylor’s scientific management has served to shape the behaviors witnessed in today’s
organizations. However, various improvements to Taylor’s principles have been done by various
other scholars. For example, Henry Fayol was able to integrate the social aspects of workers in to
the principles. For the success of any organization, effective leadership is critical. It is for this
reasons that effective managers are sought for by many institutions in order to succeed and pull
through the high competition that have been witnessed in the present world. How well a leader is
able to influence the team that he/she is leading will either lead to the success or to the failure of
the organizations. In order for a leader to be able to lead, he/she must gain and apply power in
order to see that work is performed to the given standards. They work at reinforcing their own
organizational positions while at the same time striving to achieve the broad and strategic
objectives of their organizations. Modernization and formations of workers union has served to
shape the scientific principles as proposed by Taylor. With this in mind it is worth to note that
Taylor’s scientific management principles although proposed over a century ago are being felt
even in the modern-day practices in institutions.