Two approches to the scientific management /english/
Two approches to the scientific management /english/
Project done
by Tsingovatova Elena
TWO
APPROCHES TO THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Historical Review
of the Principals of Management
The traditional model characterised as administration under
"the formal control of political leadership, based on a strictly hierarchical
model of bureaucracy, staffed by permanent , neutral and anonymous officials,
motivated only by the public interest, serving any governing party equally and
not contributing to policy but merely administering those policies decided by
the politicians" (Public Management and Administration and Introduction by
Owen E Huges, p.23).
By the 1920s this model was fully formed and continued with
extremely little change for at least fifty years. "Young"
practitioners were so assured of their theories and they believed that the
improvement of government and its administration would promote a better life
for all.
After the critique of the theory of the separation between
administration and politics considered as the myth to tolerate that
politicians and administrators could be separated, the argument took place
between scholars of public administration.
Nevertheless the political control and the theoretical basis of the
bureaucracy were thoroughly established and unchanged, there were public sector
adaptations of management theory. The row of imports from the private sector
took place and the most important is the scientific management. That was
explained by pretending that Public Management is able to be non-political and
hence the operational methods used in the public sector would be the same as
those used in the private sector.
But the larger waste is still human resources, like human efforts,
which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed
or inefficient, and which referred to as a lack of "national
efficiency".
Scientific
Management School
The basic assumption of this school is the philosophy that workers,
at the operational level, are economically motivated and that they will put
forth their best efforts if they are rewarded financially. The emphasis is on
maximum output with minimum strain, eliminating waste and efficiency. The work
of Frederick Winslow Taylor dominates the thinking of this "school".
Biography of
F.Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was a mechanical engineer
whose writings on efficiency and scientific management were widely read. Taylor
devised the system he called scientific management, a form of industrial
engineering that established the organisation of work. The main goal of his
theory was to increase productivity. And at the same time he did not favour
unions or industrial democracy. That's why his theory is regarded as
authoritarian style of administration.
Efficiency was the most important
theme of Taylor's works. As a steel works manager in Philadelphia, he was
interested in knowing how to get more work out of workers, who are
"naturally lazy and engage in systematic soldiering." This attitude,
he found, was contributed to by poor management. He observed "when a
naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of
the situation is unanswerable. "Why should I work hard when the lazy
fellow gets the same pay that I do and does only half as much work?". He
proposed using scientific research methods to discover the one best way to do a
job.
Taylor's efforts were resented by
unions and managers alike: managers because their intuition and discretion were
challenged, unions because their roles were questioned. Taylor was fired from
his original job in Philadelphia. He then went to Bethlehem Steel, where he
again was fired after three years. The unions, indignant by this time, were
instrumental in getting his methods investigated by a special congressional
committee; they succeeded in forbidding the use of "stop watches" and
"bonuses" in army arsenals until World War II. However, his concepts
spread to Europe and Great Britain and received impetus in the Soviet Union
after the Revolution. Many maintain that this movement represents techniques
only and "hinders" the development of a philosophy.
Conception of
Frederic Taylor
Tayrol's attitude toward work was that man and machine are similar.
He stated that "it is no single element, but rather this whole
combination, that constitutes scientific management, which may be summarised
as: Science, not rule of thumb; Harmony, not discord; Co-operation, not
individualism; Maximum output, in place of restricted output; The Development
of each man to his greatest efficiency and prosperity."
Taylor believed that the best management is the true science,
resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles of scientific
management which are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our
simple individual acts to the work of our great corporations, which call for
the most elaborate co-operation. He also believed that whenever these
principles correctly applied, results must follow which are truly.
Taylor expounded several basic principles:
1)To gather all traditional knowledge and classify, tabulate, and reduce
it to rules, laws, and formulas so as to help workers in their daily work.
2)To develop a science of each element of man's work to replace the
rule-of-thumb method.
3)To scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the
worker.
4) To co-operate with workers to ensure is done according to
developed science principles.
5) To effect an almost equal division of work and responsibility
between workers and managers are to be given work for which they are best
fitted, as are employees.
He felt that faster work could be
assured only through:
1)enforced standardisation of methods
2)enforced adaptation of best instruments and working conditions
3)enforced co-operation
Scientific management as a process involves:
1) time-and-motion studies to decide a standard for working;
2) a wage-incentive system that was a modification of the piecework
method already in existence;
3)changing the functional organisation.
Although he hasn't invented time-and-motion studies but did carry
them out more thoroughly than predecessors.
Among the experiments he performed to
prove his theory were:
1. Work study:
One experiment detailed movements of workers in a shop and suggested short cuts
or more efficient ways of performing certain operations. Within three years the
output of the shop had doubled.
2. Standardised tools for shops:
In another area he found that the coal shovels being used weighed from 16 to 38
pounds. After experimenting, it was found that 21-22 pounds was the best
weight. Again, after three years 140 men were doing what had previously been
done by between 400 and 600 men.
3. Selection and training of workers:
Taylor insisted that each worker be assigned to do what he was best suited for
and that those who exceeded the defined work be paid "bonuses." Production,
as might be expected, rose to an all-time high.
Taylor, as a result of these
experiments, advocated assignment of supervisors by "function" - that
is, one for training, one for discipline, etc. This functional approach is
evident today in many organisations, including libraries.
Taylor took many of his concepts from
the bureaucratic model developed by Max Weber, particularly in regard to rules
and procedures for the conduct of work in organisations. Weber, the first to
articulate a theory of authority structure in organisations, distinguished
between power and authority, between compelling action and voluntary response.
He identified three characteristics which aided authority:
1) charisma (personality)
2) tradition (custom)
3) bureaucracy (through rules and regulations)
The concept of bureaucracy developed
about the same time as scientific management, and thoughts on specialisation of
work, levels of authority, and control all emerged from Weber's writings. Weber
was more concerned with the structure of the organisation in which people
perform their work roles, rather than with the individual. Most of his writings
and research related to the importance of specialisation in labour, regulations
and procedures, and the advantages of a hierarchical system in making informed
decisions.
Luther Gulick and Lyndal Urvick's Principals of Administration
The culmination of the Principles of Administration Approach was the
publication of Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick's Papers on the Science of
Administration. In that time, 1937, public administration scholars had come to
believe in a static set of principles by which any organisation could be
designed or its function improved. These principles, implied that organisations
were very much like machines, and that managers could follow a set of formulae
to maximise their efficiency.
Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick are known in the world for the work
"Notes on a Theory of Organization" issued in 1937. They developed
the acronym POSDCORB to describe the administrative functions of managers.
POSDCORB stands for:
Planning - Preparing methodical
plans for managing programs;
Organising - Creating the different
sub-units of the organisation;
Staffing - Hiring competent
employees to fill vacancies;
Directing - Issuing directives
with time and performance criteria;
Co-ordinating - Interrelating employees'
effort efficiently;
Reporting - reports for superiors;
Budgeting - Preparing and executing
budgets.
Analysis of
two stands
An often repeated criticism of the scientific management approach is
that it overemphasised productivity and underemphasised human nature. This
criticism is well expressed by Amitai Etzioni, who wrote that "although
Taylor originally set out to study the interaction between human
characteristics and the characteristics of the machine, the relationship
between these two elements which make up the industrial work process, he ended
up by focusing on a far more limited subject: the physical characteristics of
the human body in routine jobs - e.g., shovelling coal or picking up loads.
Eventually Taylor came to view human and machine resources not so much as
mutually adapt able, but rather man functioning as an appendage to the
industrial machine". Similar criticism could be levelled at other
movements within the scientific management approach. The Scientific Management
approach directed to create scientific, specialized, technocratic
environment which makes it clear how to be more productive and maximize
rewards. But his theory can be seen as one-sided. You cannot interpret the
human being as a machine as it has it's own interest, it's own needs, that the
human being is a entity of the different moods and emotions. He hasn't counted
that the motivating factor for employees can be not only monetary, worker can
be motivated for example by the interest of working in the particular field
(e.g. teachers do not owe a lot of money from their work but they are usually
motivated by the interest working with people; e.g. some tourists guides also
do not owe a lot of money but they are interested in meeting new people and
travelling), experience that he/she would gain through being on particular
working place (e.g. nurse doesn't get much money for her work, but she wants
to get more experience with time). It is also noted that
design of work
procedures is not possible to establish in every field.
Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick tried to establish
principles of management to motivate worker they believed that economic efficiency
rooted in human tendency toward rationality and order.
As with the Principles of Administration Approach, subsequent
experience has shown public organisations, and the implementation process, to
be far more complex than was imagined in 1937.
The both of theories was searching for the "one best way of
doing work" for increasing of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness
of completing any work. But implementation of each of them has limited effect
on the productivity and depends on particular circumstances.
Not any of listed theories can be implemented in modern society,
specially in modern Public Administration, the reason for that is extremely
complicated human relations. Public Administration is a human science
therefore human behaviour plays the most important role in the subject of PA.
Therefore, there is no use in implementing of the considered
theories of Science Management in practice.
List of Bibliography used:
1. Lecturer Notes.
2. Owen E Huges Public Management and Administration and
Introduction, Great Britain: Macmillan Press Limited, 1994.
3. Public Administration Biographies #"#">http://www.niu.edu/pub_ad/culhane/561.htm.
5. Scope and Theory Of Public Policy
http://www.gsu.edu/~padjem/PHDSYL.html.
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