SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT THEORY

Just over one hundred years ago Frederick Taylor published Principles of Scientific
Management, a work that forever changed the way organizations view their workers and
their organization. At the time of Taylor’s publication, managers believed that workers were
lazy and worked slowly and inefficiently in order to protect their jobs. Taylor identified a
revolutionary solution:

The remedy for this inefficiency lies in systematic management, rather than in searching for
some unusual or extraordinary man.

You might think that a century-old theory wouldn’t have any application in today’s fast-paced,
technology-driven world. You’d be wrong, though! In fact much of what you’ve already
learned in this course is based on Taylor’s work, and plenty of what you’ll experience in
the workplace will be indebted to him, too. If you recognize any of the following, you have
already seen his principles of scientific management in action: organizational charts,
performance evaluations, quality measurements and metrics, and sales and/or production
goals.

Scientific management is a management theory that analyzes work flows to improve

economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. This management theory, developed by
Frederick Winslow Taylor, was popular in the 1880s and 1890s in U.S. manufacturing
industries.

While the terms “scientific management” and “Taylorism” are often treated as synonymous,
a more accurate view is that Taylorism is the first form of scientific management. Taylorism
is sometimes called the “classical perspective,” meaning that it is still observed for its
influence but no longer practiced exclusively. Scientific management was best known from
1910 to 1920, but in the 1920s, competing management theories and methods emerged,
rendering scientific management largely obsolete by the 1930s. However, many of the
themes of scientific management are still seen in industrial engineering and management
today.

Taylor was a mechanical engineer who was primarily interested in the type of work done in
factories and mechanical shops. He observed that the owners and managers of the factories
knew little about what actually took place in the workshops. Taylor believed that the system
could be improved, and he looked around for an incentive. He settled on money. He believed
a worker should get “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”—no more, no less. If the worker
couldn’t work to the target, then the person shouldn’t be working at all. Taylor also believed
that management and labor should cooperate and work together to meet goals. He was the
first to suggest that the primary functions of managers should be planning and training.

A significant part of Taylorism was time studies. Taylor was concerned with reducing process
time and worked with factory managers on scientific time studies. At its most basic level,
time studies involve breaking down each job into component parts, timing each element,
and rearranging the parts into the most efficient method of working. By counting and
calculating, Taylor sought to transform management into a set of calculated and written
techniques.
Taylor proposed a “neat, understandable world in the factory, an organization of men whose
acts would be planned, coordinated, and controlled under continuous expert direction. ”
Factory production was to become a matter of efficient and scientific management—the
planning and administration of workers and machines alike as components of one big
machine.

In 1909, Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management. In this book, he

suggested that productivity would increase if jobs were optimized and simplified. He also
proposed matching a worker to a particular job that suited the person’s skill level and then
training the worker to do that job in a specific way. Taylor first developed the idea of breaking
down each job into component parts and timing each part to determine the most efficient
method of working.

One of Taylor’s most famous studies was from his time at the Bethlehem Steel Company in
the early 1900s. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials, even though
the various materials differed in weight. By observing the movements of the workers and
breaking the movements down into their component elements, Taylor determined that the
most efficient shovel load was 21½ lb. Accordingly, he set about finding or
designing different shovels to be used for each material that would scoop up that amount.

Scientific management has at its heart four core principles that also apply to organizations
today. They include the following

• Look at each job or task scientifically to determine the “one best way” to
perform the job. This is a change from the previous “rule of thumb” method
where workers devised their own ways to do the job.
• Hire the right workers for each job, and train them to work at maximum
efficiency.
• Monitor worker performance, and provide instruction and training when
needed.
• Divide the work between management and labor so that management can plan
and train, and workers can execute the task efficiently.

HENRI FAYOL AND ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY

Henri Fayol was born in France in 1841. Fayol was a mining engineer who became the
head of a large mining company. He wanted managers to be responsible for more than
just increasing production. The story goes that he came to this insight when a mine was
shut down after a horse broke a leg and no one at the mine had authority to purchase
another. Fayol saw this as a direct failure of management to plan and organize the work.
Following this, Fayol began experimenting with different management structures.

He condensed his ideas and experiences into a set of management duties and principles,
which he published in 1916 in the book General and Industrial Management. Fayol
incorporated some of Weber’s ideas in his theories. However, unlike Weber, Fayol was
concerned with how workers were managed and how they contributed to the organization.
He felt that successful organizations, and therefore successful management, were linked
to satisfied and motivated employees.

Fayol’s five duties of management were as follows:

• Foresight: Create a plan of action for the future.

• Organization: Provide resources to implement the plan.
• Command: Select and lead the best workers through clear instructions and
orders.
• Coordinate: Make sure the diverse efforts fit together through clear
communication.
• Control: Verify whether things are going according to plan and make
corrections where needed.

These duties evolved into the four functions of management: planning (foresight),
organizing (organization), leading (command and coordinate), and controlling (control).

Fayol also proposed a set of fourteen principles that he felt could guide management
behavior, but he did not think the principles were rigid or exhaustive. He thought
management principles needed to be flexible and adaptable and that they would be
expanded through experience and experimentation. Some of Fayol’s principles are still
included in management theory and practice

KEY FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT TODAY

Over the years, management theorists have built upon and refined Fayol’s original work
and, more recently, have combined the “command” and “coordinate” functions into one
function: leading. Today, the key functions of management are considered to be the
following: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, controlling, and motivating.

• Planning: Deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week,
next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for
action.
• Organizing: Implementing a pattern of relationships among workers and
making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful
carrying out of plans.
• Staffing: Job analysis, recruitment, and hiring of people with the necessary
skills for appropriate jobs. Providing or facilitating ongoing training, if
necessary, to keep skills current.
• Leading/directing: Determining what needs to be done in a situation and
getting people to do it.
• Controlling/monitoring: Checking current outcomes against forecast plans
and making adjustments when necessary, so that goals are achieved.
 • Motivating: Motivation is a basic function of management because without
motivation, employees may feel disconnected from their work and the
organization, which can lead to ineffective performance.

All levels of management perform these functions; however, as with the skills required for
effective management, the amount of time a manager spends on each function depends on
the level of management and the needs of the organization. In the next readings we will
explore each of these functions in greater depth.