Scientific Management

Scientific management (also called Taylorism or the Taylor system) is a theory of

management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows, improving labour productivity. The
core ideas of the theory were developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and
1890s, and were first published in his monographs, Shop Management (1905) and The
Principles of Scientific Management (1911).

Frederick Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be
replaced by precise procedures developed after careful study of an individual at work. Its
application is contingent on a high level of managerial control over employee work
practices.

Taylorism is a variation on the theme of efficiency; it is a late-19th-and-early-20th-century

instance of the larger recurring theme in human life of increasing efficiency, decreasing
waste, and using empirical methods to decide what matters, rather than uncritically
accepting pre-existing ideas of what matters. Thus it is a chapter in the larger narrative that
also includes, for example, the folk wisdom of thrift, time and motion study, Fordism, and
lean manufacturing. It overlapped considerably with the Efficiency Movement, which was
the broader cultural echo of scientific management's impact on business managers
specifically.

In management literature today, the greatest use of the concept of Scientific Management
(or Taylorism) is as a contrast to a new, improved way of doing business. In political and
sociological terms, Taylorism can be seen as the division of labour pushed to its logical
extreme, with a consequent de-skilling of the worker and dehumanisation of the workplace.

Objectives of Scientific Management

The four objectives of management under scientific management were as follows:

 The development of a science for each element of a man's work to replace the old
rule-of-thumb methods.
 The scientific selection, training and development of workers instead of allowing
them to choose their own tasks and train themselves as best they could.
 The development of a spirit of hearty cooperation between workers and management
to ensure that work would be carried out in accordance with scientifically devised
procedures.
 The division of work between workers and the management in almost equal shares,
each group taking over the work for which it is best fitted instead of the former
condition in which responsibility largely rested with the workers. Self-evident in this
philosophy are organizations arranged in a hierarchy, systems of abstract rules and
impersonal relationships between staff.

Drawbacks of Scientific Management

While scientific management principles improved productivity and had a substantial impact
on industry, they also increased the monotony of work. The core job dimensions of skill
variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback all were missing from the
picture of scientific management.
While in many cases the new ways of working were accepted by the workers, in some cases
they were not. The use of stopwatches often was a protested issue and led to a strike at one
factory where "Taylorism" was being tested. Complaints that Taylorism was dehumanizing
led to an investigation by the United States Congress. Despite its controversy, scientific
management changed the way that work was done, and forms of it continue to be used
today.

Criticism on Scientific Management

Applications of scientific management sometimes fail to account for two inherent difficulties:

 It ignores individual differences: the most efficient way of working for one person
may be inefficient for another;
 It ignores the fact that the economic interests of workers and management are
rarely identical, so that both the measurement processes and the retraining required
by Taylor's methods would frequently be resented and sometimes sabotaged by the
workforce.

Both difficulties were recognised by Taylor, but are generally not fully addressed by
managers who only see the potential improvements to efficiency. Taylor believed that
scientific management cannot work unless the worker benefits. In his view management
should arrange the work in such a way that one is able to produce more and get paid more,
by teaching and implementing more efficient procedures for producing a product.

Although Taylor did not compare workers with machines, some of his critics use this
metaphor to explain how his approach makes work more efficient by removing unnecessary
or wasted effort. However, some would say that this approach ignores the complications
introduced because workers are necessarily human: personal needs, interpersonal
difficulties and the very real difficulties introduced by making jobs so efficient that workers
have no time to relax. As a result, workers worked harder, but became dissatisfied with the
work environment. Some have argued that this discounting of worker personalities led to
the rise of labour unions.

It can also be said that the rise in labour unions is leading to a push on the part of industry
to accelerate the process of automation, a process that is undergoing a renaissance with the
invention of a host of new technologies starting with the computer and the Internet. This
shift in production to machines was clearly one of the goals of Taylorism (or Scientific
Management), and represents a victory for his theories.

However, tactfully choosing to ignore the still controversial process of automating human
work is also politically expedient, so many still say that practical problems caused by
Taylorism led to its replacement by the human relations school of management in 1930.
Others (Braverman 1974) insisted that human relations did not replace Taylorism but that
both approaches are rather complementary: Taylorism (or Scientific Management)
determining the actual organisation of the work process and human relations helping to
adapt the workers to the new procedures.

However, Taylor's theories were clearly at the roots of a global revival in theories of
scientific management in the last two decades of the 20th century, under the moniker of
'corporate reengineering'. As such, Taylor's ideas can be seen as the root of a very
influential series of developments in the workplace, with the goal being the eventual
elimination of industry's need for unskilled, and later perhaps, even most skilled labour in
any form, directly following Taylor's recipe for deconstructing a process. This has come to
be known as commodification, and no skilled profession, even medicine, has proven to be
immune from the efforts of Taylor's followers, the 'reengineers', who are often called
derogatory names such as 'bean counters'.

Classical management theory (Fayol and Urwick)

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) is often described as the ‘father’ of modern management. He had been managing director of a large
French mining company, and was concerned with efficiency at an organisational level rather than at the level of the task. Drawing
on his experience of what worked well in an organisation, he developed a general theory of business administration.
He first broke management down into five distinct elements:

 forecasting and planning – looking into the future and drawing up action plans

 organising – building up the material and human structure of the undertaking

 commanding – maintaining activity amount personnel

 coordinating – unifying and harmonising activity and effort

 controlling – ensuring that things conform to rules and instructions

This is a logical, rational and normative analysis of what needs to be done. But this was not a wholly abstract piece of theorising.
Fayol was writing on the basis of his own, highly practical experience of management. On the basis of the five elements of
management, he then proceeded to identify what he presented as 14 principles for improving managerial effectiveness.
Interestingly, Fayol’s principles share a lot with those of Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983), an army officer turned management
consultant, who combined ideas of scientific management and those of classical organisation theory in his writings. Like Fayol, he
also came up with a list of general principles for managerial effectiveness. The two writers’ sets of principles are compared here.

General principles of managerial effectiveness

Henri Fayol (1917)

1. Division of work – specialisation encourages continuous improvement, both in terms of

skill and methods.
2. Authority – the right to give orders and the power to require obedience.
3. Discipline – a successful organisation requires the shared effort of all staff. Employees
must obey, but this is two-sided – they will only comply if management play their part
by providing good leadership.
4. Unit of command – employees should have only one boss with no other conflicting lines
of command.
5. Unity of direction – the entire organisation should be aligned and be moving towards a
common goal.
6. Subordination of individual interests – individual needs and interests should be
subordinate to the needs of the organisation.
7. Remuneration – payment is an important motivator, but should be fair and reward well-
directed effort.
8. Centralisation – an element of centralisation must always be present and is part of the
‘natural order’ in an organisation.
9. Line of authority – a hierarchy is necessary for unity of direction.
10. Order – an organisation’s requirements must be balanced against its resources.
11. Equity – employees must be treated equally and fairly.
12. Stability of tenure of personnel –employees need a period of stability in a job to
perform at their best.
13. Initiative – encouraging staff to show initiative is a source of strength in an
organisation.
 14. Esprit de corps – management should foster harmony, cohesion and morale among the
organisation’s staff.

Lyndall Urwick (1943)

1. The principle of the objective – the overall purpose of an organisation it its raison
d'être.
2. The principle of specialisation – one group, one function.
3. The principle of coordination – the purpose of organising is to facilitate coordination or
unity of effort.
4. The principle of authority – in every organised group, supreme authority must be
located somewhere, and there should be a clear line of authority to every member of
the group.
5. The principle of responsibility – a superior may be held accountable for the actions of
subordinates.
6. The principle of definition – jobs, duties and relationships should be clearly defined.
7. The principle of correspondence – in every position, responsibility and authority should
correspond with one another.
8. The principle of span of control – no person should supervise more than 5–6 line
reports whose work is interlocked.
9. The principle of balance – it is essential that the various units of an organisation are
kept in balance.
10. The principle of continuity – reorganisation is a continuous process and provision
should be made for it.

Stop and reflect

Although many of the above principles have been adopted as good practice for many years by managers in all kinds of organisation,
it is less certain whether they are still relevant today given the complexity of the modern manager’s role and the high-paced
environment in which most managers now operate. Are the principles timeless or are they now outmoded? How do they fit with
your experience of being a manager?

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