Scientific Management

Keshav Raj Pande

Lecturer
Central Department of Public Administration
Tribhuvan University

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 Frederick Winslow Taylor - Father of
Scientific Management. Biography

• Frederick Winslow Taylor is born in 1856 to a

wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia. In 1874
he becomes an apprentice patternmaker and
machinist at Enterprise Hydraulics Works,
gaining shop-floor expertise. In 1878 he takes up
an unskilled job at Midvale Steel Works where he
does his first experiments. In 1881 he gains a
master degree in mechanical engineering.

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 Conti.
• In 1890 he is appointed to general manager of
Manufacturing Investment Company (MIC). It is
important to understand that the circumstances
during the life of Taylor were quite different from
those today: there had been a series of
depressions and production methods at the time
were very inefficient.

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 Conti.
• Also there was a need to employ many
immigrants into the US, to raise the living
standards and to meet rising demands for goods
of every sort. All of this influences Taylor when
he publishes The Principles of Scientific
Management in 1911. Taylor dies in 1915.

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 Usage of Scientific
Management. Applications
• Basis or inspiration for many later management
philosophies, including
Management by Objectives, Operations Research,
CSFs and KPIs and Balanced Scorecard,
Just-in-time and Lean Manufacturing,
Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and
Business Process Reengineering.
• As a contrast to modern business or management
methods.
• Old-fashioned, inefficient industrial environments.
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 Conti.
• Taylor was pragmatic and he was a strong
advocate of Learning-by-Doing. Contrary to
today's theorizing, hypothesis formation and
testing, the One Best Way came from the workers,
not from the managers or owners (Spender and
Kijne, 1996). Peter Drucker saw Taylor as the
creator of Knowledge Management, because the
aim of scientific management is to produce
knowledge about how to improve work processes.

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 Taylor's scientific management
consisted of four principles:

• Replace rule of thumb work methods with

methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.

• Select, train, teach and develop the most suitable

person for each job, again scientifically, rather
than passively leaving them to train themselves.

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 Conti.
• Managers must provide detailed instructions and
supervision to each worker to ensure the job is
done in a scientific way.

• Divide work between managers and workers. The

managers apply scientific management principles
to planning and supervising the work, and the
workers carry out the tasks.

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 Strengths of Scientific Management (Benefits)

• One of the first formal divisions between workers

and managers.
• Contribution to efficient production methods,
leading to a major global increase of living
standards.
• Focus on the individual task and worker level.
Compare: Business Process Reengineering
(process level)
• Direct reward mechanisms for workers rather than
pointless end-of-year profit sharing schemes. 9
 Conti.
• Systematic. Early proponent of quality standards.
• Suggestion schemes for workers, who should be
rewarded by cash premiums.
• Emphasis on measuring. Measurement enables
improvement.
• Pragmatic and useful in times and circumstances
as described above .

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 Limitations of Scientific Management (Disadvantages)

• Taylorism can easily be abused to exploit human

beings. Conflicts with labor unions.
• Not useful to deal with groups or teams.
• Leaves no room for individual preferences or
initiative.
• Overemphasis on measuring. No attention for
soft factors.

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 Conti.
• Mechanistic. Treating people as machines.
• Separation of planning function and doing.
• Loss of skill level and autonomy at worker level.
Not very useful in current knowledge worker
environments (except as an antithesis).

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 Assessment of Classical
Organization Theory

• There is “one best way” to perform a task

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 SUMMARY
• Classical Theories of Organizations (p. 36)
– Taylor’s Theory of Scientific Management
– Fayol’s Administrative Theory
– Weber’s Theory of Bureaucracy
• All 3 theories attempt to enhance management’s ability to
predict and control the behavior of their workers
• Considered only the task function of communication
(ignored relational and maintenance functions of
communication)
• Designed to predict and control behavior in organizations

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 Classical organizational theory
espouses two perspectives:
• Scientific management – focusing on the
management of work and workers

• Administrative management - addressing

issues concerning how overall organization
should be structured

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 Major contributors to the
Classical Organizational Theory:
Scientific Management:
» Frederick Taylor
Administrative Management:
» Henri Fayol
» Luther Halsey Gulick and Landal
Urwick
» Max Weber

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Common Criticisms of Classical
Organizational Theory
Classical principles of formal
organization may lead to a work
environment in which:
• Employees have minimal power over their
jobs and working conditions
• Subordination, passivity and dependence
are expected
• work to a short term perspective
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 Conti.
• Employees are lead to mediocrity
• Working conditions produce to
psychological failure as a result of the
belief that they are lower class employees
performing menial tasks

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 References
Book: Taylor, Frederick Winslow - The
Principles of Scientific Management, 1911
-
• Book: Spender, J.C. and Kijne, H. (Eds) -
Scientific Management: Fredrick Winslow
Taylor's Gift to the World? 1996 -

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 NEXT- CLASS
Humanistic Theories of Organizations
or
Neo-Classical Theory

Human Relations Theory

• The Hawthorne Studies
• McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Hughburgh two factors theory

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