THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT ERA "Sanity is just madness put to good use" (George Santayana)

1. THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT ERA"Sanity is just madness put to good use" (George Santayana)

2.   F.W. Taylor (1856-1915)  is known as the "Father of Scientific Management" and was nicknamed "Speedy" Taylor for his reputation as an efficiency expert.  The movement he started, the "Scientific Management" movement, reached its peak in America during 1900-1930, but it has had lasting effects beyond that.  Taylor was a college dropout with bad health and bad eyesight, not a very good speaker, and always had to explain himself over and over again, especially toward the end of his career when he was constantly called before Congressional Labor Committees to explain his concept of "first class man." The federal government (the military, actually) thought his ideas were dangerous, and scientific management was banned by federal law from ever being implemented in that sector. Scientific management is, however, alive and well in many of America's Fortune 400 companies as well as the field of criminal justice.    He was a perfectionist, always looking for the "one best way". He hated "soldiering", which was the term in those days for workers just doing what the informal workgroup had established as a fair days work (no rate-busting). By contrast, "Speedy" Taylor wanted everybody to be a "rate-buster", and he thought unions were unnecessary.    He was employed as a chief superintendent or consultant in various steel factories, his most successful experience being at Bethlehem Steel, where after two years, he achieved a 200% increase in productivity with only a 50% increase in wages.

3. Taylorism was the popular name for Taylor's ideas, and is now synonymous with the title "efficiency expert". His techniques were: (1) to initiate a time study rate system; (2) create functional foremen; (3) establish cost accounting; and (4) devise a system of pay for the person and not the position. Let's look at each of these.

4. (1) Time study rate system • Taylor would begin by finding the fastest worker in the organization, the fastest "rate-buster" whom, of course, everybody else in the organization hated. If one didn't exist, he would "scientifically" go out, recruit, hire, and train somebody. He then examined that person's movements on the job, suggested the elimination of unnecessary movements, and took the speediest rate at which this "first class person" could work and make other workers accountable to it (with minor adjustments for newness at the job, rest periods, and unavoidable delays). He defended his concept of "first class man" as the idea of a will to achieve.

5. (2) Creation of "functional foremen" • Taylor fought against using the military model in organizations. No manager was to have disciplinary powers; that was the job of a special "Disciplinarian Office" which are known today as Personnel Offices. The notion of "functional" means supervision over some aspect of work, not supervision over people. This notion essentially meant the creation of specialized clerks with oversight over some aspect of the production, so called "expediters" or "quality control/assurance" clerks. These clerks had the authority and were known as functional foremen while the regular foremen had to practice the exception principle. Because most assembly-line productions involve 8 major steps to a finished product, Taylor advocated a span of control of 8.

6. 3) Establish cost accounting • also known as task management, this approach involves the use of instruction and routing cards and a timekeeping system where workers punched a clock when they finished a job. Labor variance could then be analyzed, and management had the reporting tools they needed to identify bottlenecks. Rewards and punishments would be doled out by how the numbers looked on paper

7. 4) Pay the person and not the position • End-of-year bonuses were considered too late by Taylor, who instituted a system of inequitable pay for workers. Those that looked good on paper (via the Accounting Office) were paid more (a system of high salary rate and low salary rate), and they were supposed to keep their salaries secret, especially from the union (which the unions didn't like). There were no attempts under Taylorism at job rotation; each worker was expected to specialize in a particular task they did well

8. PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT • There is an organization called the Taylor Society which has collected 13 principles of Taylorism, but more briefly, the idea of scientific management boils down to 4 basic principles: 1. Scientific research & analysis of work, its elements, standards, and rates2. Scientific selection, training, and development of first-class workers3. Intimate, friendly, and hearty cooperation for scientific work principles (anti-unionism)4. Equal division of responsibility among managers in functional areas (not just over people)

9. FOLLOWERS OF TAYLORISM (the "Efficiency Experts") • Carl Barth - Norwegian genius who invented the slide-rule that experts carried around in their pockets, as well as other little, nerdy things that went in your pocket protector holders.    Morris Cooke - Taylor's assistant who kept trying to bring scientific management into the public sector. In criminal justice organizations, he found too much Politics; in government orgs, he found too much favoritism, and in other orgs, he found too much unionism. He was only successful in Education, where he was able to get schools to start subcontracting their faculty, initiating the "adjunct professor" movement.    H. Emerson - considered by some the father of "efficiency experts", but basically led the self-motivation movement, writing books, etc., on how to get rich by being a "first class man" (Economic v. Administrative Man Model).    Henry Gantt - famous for inventing "Gantt Charts" which were initially for the vision-impaired, but now used to keep track of project deadlines, similar to Microsoft Project 98 software; also, Gantt contributed to the development of management systems known as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) and CPM (Critical Path Method). PERT was eventually accepted by the military and criminal justice sectors.

10. FOLLOWERS OF TAYLORISM (the "Efficiency Experts") • Frank & Lillian Gilbreth - consultants known as the "father of motion studies" and "1st lady of management", invented various devices (the chronocyclegraph) using stopwatches and strobe lights which workers put on and had their movements tape-recorded while they worked; discovered 17 basic movements of the hand (all based on the ability to search, grasp, load, select, hold, and transport) and more efficient eye-tracking habits; also experimented with different types of factory whistle blasts, suggestion boxes, and intramural programs among employees.  Lillian is also known for her contributions to administrative theory in general.    Hugo Munsterberg - famous social psychologist (in the area of memory & eyewitness testimony) who did some consulting work in business and helped start the boom-craze of industrial Personnel Departments, the first ones of which were called "Sociology Depts" or "Psychology Depts" at places like Ford Motor Company and B.F. Goodrich; advocated extensive use of psychological tests on workers and probably single-handedly started the field of vocational guidance counseling.