By Brendon Tazvinga

TAYLOR(1856-1915) AND
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Who is Frederick Taylor?
(expertprogrammanagement.com)
 Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American
mechanical engineer who lived from 1856 to
1915. He brought an engineer’s viewpoint to the
world of workplace productivity and applied
engineering principles to the factory floor.
 He was the first management consultant and the
first to look at work and productivity
scientifically. He is known as the father of
Scientific Management and the efficiency
movement.
 INTRODUCTION
(Peter Stimpson and Alastair)
 F.W. Taylor made the first serious attempt to
analyze worker motivation in order to advise
management on the best ways to increase worker
performance or productivity
 The techniques he used- of establishing an idea or a
hypothesis, studying and recording performance
are still used in modern industry.
 This approach has become known as ‘scientific
management’ due to the detailed recording and
analysis of results that it involves.
 Cont’d
 Taylor’s main aim was to reduce the level of inefficiency that
exists in US manufacturing industry.
 Any productivity gains could then, he argued, be shared
between business owners and workers.
 The scope for efficiency gains in early twentieth-century
manufacturing plants was huge.
 The vast mass of workers was untrained and non-
specialized.
 They were poorly led by supervisors and managers with
little or no formal training in dealing with people.
 There was usually no formal selection or appraisal system of
staff and many were recruited on a daily or weekly basis
with no security of employment.
 How to improve output per worker or
productivity- Taylors scientific
approach (Peter Stimpson and Alastair)
1. Select workers to perform a task.
2. Observe the performing the task and note the key elements
of it.
3. Record the time taken to do each part of the task.
4. Identify the quickest method recorded.
5. Train all workers in this quickest method and do not allow
them to make any changes to it.
6. Supervise workers to ensure that this ‘best way’ is being
carried out and time them to check that the set time is not
being exceeded.
7. Pay workers on the basis of results – based om the theory of
economic man.
Taylor’s approach
Economic man
Select the right people for each job Before Taylor there had been few attempts to identify the principles
Observe and record the
performance of staff
Establish the best method of doing Again, this is still accepted as being important as efficiency depends
a job – method study
Piece-work payment systems
Relevance to modern industry
Some managers still believe that money is the only way to motivate
staff. However, the more general view is that workers have a wide
range of needs – not just money – that can be met, in part at least,
from work.
of staff selection. The importance he gave to this is still reflected in
the significance given to careful staff selection in nearly all
businesses.
This was widely adopted and became known as ‘time and motion
study’. Regarded with suspicion by workers as a way of making them
work harder, it is still employed as a technique but often with the
cooperation and involvement of staff.
on the best ways of working being adopted. However, the Taylor
approach of management giving instructions to workers with no
discussion or feedback is considered to be undesirable. Worker
participation in devising best work practices is now encouraged.
This is not a widely used payment system. Quality may be sacrificed
in the research for quantity – workers will vary output according to
their financial needs at different times of year and it discourages
them from accepting changes at work in case they lose some pay. In
most of modern industry, especially service industries, it has become
very difficult to identify the output of individual workers.
 Results of Taylor’s work
 The results of Taylor’s research revolutionized the
way work was organised in many industries.
 The emphasis on increasing efficiency and
productivity was greeted by industrial leaders as a
route towards greater profits.
 Workers’ leaders were more suspicious as they
believed that it would lead to more work but no
more pay or benefits
 They did not necessarily believe Taylor’s view that
the fruits of higher efficiency would be shared
between workers and business owners.
 Cont’d
 The Taylor approach was widely taken up by the manufacturers
of the early twentieth century, where the first forms of mass
production and flow-line techniques were being introduced.
 Workers specialised in one task, strict management control
over work methods and payment by output levels were
important features of successful production- line techniques.
 These principles were the driving forces behind all mass
production until the ‘Japanese style’ of working and people
management became more widespread from the 1960s
onwards.
 Even before this, other research had been undertaken on
people’s behaviour at work and doubt was being cast on the
simplistic nature of many of Taylor’s assumptions about worker
motivation.
 Summary (expertprogrammanagement.com)
 Taylor’s Scientific Management attempts to find 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. This can be seen from the
following quotes:
 “…what the workmen want from employers beyond anything else is
higher wages: what employers want from workmen most of all is low
labor costs in manufacture.”
Frederick Taylor
 “In our scheme, we do not ask the initiative of our men. We do not want
any initiative. All we want of them is to obey the orders we give them,
do what we say, and do it quick.”
Frederick Taylor
Cont’d
 Because Taylor believed that workers were only motivated by pay and
money, then:
Workers don’t usually enjoy work. Because of this, they need to
be monitored and controlled closely. Essentially, Taylor believed
that employees had a natural tendency to take it easy of slack off
whenever they could. He called this natural soldiering.
To help with this, managers should break down each employee’s
job into more manageable, bite-sized tasks.
Training should be given so that all employees perform these
tasks in a standard way.
Workers should be paid based on how much they produce (piece
rate).
This will create a win-win situation. Workers are incentivized to
work hard to earn more and the businesses production is as
efficient as it can be (profits are maximized).
How to apply it in today
(expertprogrammanagement.com)
 Since Taylor’s Motivation Theory is based on
managers telling employees what to do, it is closely
related to an autocratic style of leadership.
 It is also closely related to 
Douglas McGregor’s Theory X model of management,
where it is assumed that employees are
fundamentally lazy and unmotivated.
 Taylor’s work heavily influenced production methods
at the start of the 20th century. It formed the
foundation upon which Henry Ford introduced his
mass-production techniques to the production of cars.