Strategic HR & Leadership

Assignment 1
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915)
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in Philadelphia on March 20, 1856. In 1883, Taylor got his
degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering and became chief
engineer at Midvale in 1884. Due to his interest in management, he left his job from Midvale and
became General Manager and consulting engineer at Manufacturing Investment Company. He
served many firms but ended with Bethlehem where he performed outstanding experiments in
shoveling and bricklayers.
Taylor was an American Engineer who developed the “Scientific Theory of Management” by
applying his scientific knowledge to management. His two famous books on Theory are named
Shop Management (1903) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).
He was entitled as the “Father of Scientific Management” because of his exceptional work in
management practices for improving the efficiency and productivity of Labor. In the principles,
he suggested that productivity can be maximized by optimizing the jobs. He also proposed that
the supervisors needed to coordinate with their workers. This was altogether different from the
manner in which work was regularly done in workplaces previously. A supervisor had almost no
contact with the workers and left them to produce the product on their own. There was no control
and no incentives were provided to the workers for working efficiently and quickly.
Taylor introduced the idea of giving fair pays for fair work. He thought that the workers should
be incentivized by providing them money according to their work efficiency so they are
motivated to work harder for a good pay.
Taylor was much interested in productivity being a mechanical engineer. During his career at
Bethlehem Steel Corporation, he performed experiments at workplace to create optimal levels of
performance. He experimented the process of shoveling and concluded that by using a shovel of
specific design, workers were able to move large amounts of iron with less motion that is the
optimal level achieved. This increased the productivity as well as decreased the labor costs. He
also examined the various movements required to lay bricks in an efficient manner. He studied
the optimal way of doing any kind of work with scientific methods.
The studies of “time and motion” drove Taylor to reason that specific individuals could work
more proficiently than others. These were the individuals that supervisors should look to contact
when needed. Thus, choosing the right people for the right jobs was one of the most important
factors in increasing work productivity. These principles of Taylor were also known as
“Taylorism”.
While these Management Principles increased productivity and affected the industry, they also
increased the dullness of work. Even though the new methods of working were acknowledged by
many workers, some were against it stating that it was dehumanizing. Despite of the arguments,
scientific management modified the way things were done at workplace and is still being used
today.
Taylor died of Influenza in 1915. Taylor’s ideas are rooted in Engineering and social sciences
and are still of great interest to Management and business schools worldwide.