F.W Taylor and Scientific Management

1. F.W Taylor and Scientific Management

2. Frederick W. Taylor (1856- 1915) founder of scientific Management one of the first people to study the behavior and performance of people at work was a manufacturing manager Wrote a book ‘Principles of Scientific Management, to address issues of efficiency and performance. Taylor felt that there was a need of increasing efficiency at individual, organizational and national level. Presented four main principles.

3. Scientific Management • The systematic study of relationships between people and tasks for the purpose of redesigning the work process to increase efficiency.

4. 4 Principles To Increase Efficency • Study the way workers perform their tasks, gather all the informal job knowledge that workers already have, and introduce new methods for performing tasks better. • Write the new methods of performing tasks into written rules and standard operating procedures. This way workers can follow these rules and implement standardization.

5. 4 Principles To Increase Efficiency • Carefully select workers who possess skills that match the needs of the task. Then, provide training to them according to written rules and procedures. • Establish an acceptable level of performance for a task, and then develop a pay system that provides a reward for performance above the acceptable level.

6. Implementation Problems • It increased the amount of work that each worker was expected to do. • Increase in performance meant fewer jobs and greater employee terminations • Workers became dissatisfied with monotonous and repetitive jobs. • Managers did not care about the Well Being of workers. • Workers kept job knowledge to themselves and did not share with others, to protect their jobs and pay. • Workers develop informal work rules that discourage high performance .

7. Organizational Results • Increased mechanization of the work process. Example: Henry Ford introduced moving conveyor belts in factory. Machine imposed speed to push employees to perform at higher levels. • The combination of 2 management practices: 1) achieving the right task specialization and 2) linking people and their tasks by the speed of the production line .This combination resulted in savings in cost and increase in output. • Ethical issues in work places were introduced and highlighted too.