Human Relations And Classic Management Theories

Frederick Taylor (1917) developed scientific management theory (often called "Taylorism") at the beginning of this century. His theory had four basic principles: 1) find the one "best way" to perform each task, 2) carefully match each worker to each task, 3) closely supervise workers, and use reward and punishment as motivators, and 4) the task of management is planning and control.

Scientific management or "Taylorism" is an approach to job design, developed by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) during the Second World War. With the industrial revolution came a fast growing pool of people, seeking jobs, that required a new approach of management. Scientific management was the first management theory, applied internationally. It believes in the rational use of resources for utmost output, hence motivating workers to earn more money. Taylor believed that the incompetence of managers was the major obstacle on the way of productivity increase of human labour. Consequently, this idea led to the need of change of management principles. On the base of research, involving analysing controlled experiments under various working

This paper analyzes five great management theorists: F. W. Taylor, Max Weber, Mary Parker Follett, and Douglas McGregor. Each theorist will be compared by four management functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling as detailed in the textbook: The Essentials of Contemporary Management-Sixth Edition from Gareth Jones and Jennifer M. George. We begin by discussing commerce prior the industrial revolution and then we define the key management functions, followed by an examination of each theorist, applying a template of analysis and critique.

Scientific Management is also known as Taylorism. Fredrick Winslow Taylor wanted to divide the work process into small, simple and separate steps (Division of Labor). Division of Labor meant every worker only had one or two steps, this was created to boost productivity. Taylor also believed in Hierarchy, he wanted a clear chain of command that separated the managers from workers. He did this so managers would design work process and enforced how the work was performed and employees would simply follow directions. Taylor wanted to select and train high performing workers or first-class employees and match them to a job that best suited them. Taylor believed the most productive workers should be paid more. Employees who could not meet the new higher standard were fired.

Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer born in Philadelphia, was responsible for putting together the system called Scientific Management. Taylor’s introduction of new ideas and methods in industrial engineering, distinctly in time and motion study, proved to be fruitful in improving productivity. Taylor outlined the methods and techniques of Scientific management in his book which was published in 1911. Taylor was not an admirer of the ‘rule of thumb’ principle. The rule of thumb concept means that management would implement methods within the enterprise, based on their past experiences. Hence, Taylor found this to be flawed, as specific outcomes were not guaranteed. Taylor’s main objective was to ensure that wastage and inefficiency

The twentieth century has brought in a number of management theories which have helped shaped our view of management in the present business environment. These emerging theories have enabled managers to appreciate new patterns of thinking, new ways of organising and new ways of managing organisations and people. Over the years these different theories have enabled the study

F.W Taylor introduced a scientific management, Taylorism, in the early 20th century to solve the problem of inefficiency. The aim of Taylorism is to maixmise productivity and minimise waste of resources using specialisation of labour. There are three main components of Taylorism and it will be discussed in detail in the later paragraphs.

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1865 - 1915) define Scientific Management or Taylorism with 4 principles as explained in appendix A.

Taylorism is a scientific management system that was developed by Fredrick Taylor in the 1880s. Taylorism works in a method based on F. Taylor’s scientific study of accomplishing different tasks instead of empirical methods or methods inspired by past experience and knowledge. Taylorism also tends to scientifically train and help develop employees’ skills instead of letting them train themselves during their time in the workplace. Another principle of Taylorism is that it gives comprehensive and detailed guidelines and supervision for each worker to perform tasks. Furthermore, workload must be split equally among the workers, which also allows the manager to apply Taylorism in order to plan their work and perform actual tasks.

The fourth principle was equal division of work and the responsibilities of employers and employees. Taylor designed a way of having management ensure that workers had knowledge of the job, the amount of time to do the job and how to do the job. These management principles aimed at finding the optimum performance value in an organization. Taylor’s principles were adopted in several enterprises but during the second half the century the theory started receiving criticism due to lack of flexibility and inhumanity.

The two management theorists that I have chosen are Frederick Winslow Taylor and Elton Mayo. I chose these two theorists due to their very different ways of approaching their craft. Frederick Winslow Taylor and Elton Mayo both came from very different schools of thought and social and economic times that are bound to affect what theories they make. Taylor came from a mind-set of pure scientific thought. He saw success in management through making it a more measurable commodity. He went down the thought that everything had a definite and optimal answer. Elton came from a mind-set of human relations. He focused more on the human aspects of management. He had the mind-set of focusing on the employees and their work space above all else. These are very differing mind-sets for two theorists to have. In the piece that follows I will compare and contrast these two theorists and see what overlap they had and how these two radically different mind-sets lead to the creation of radically different practices.

Managing has become one of the most important human activities today. As society continues to rely on team effort, and many organisations have expanded into different departments, the work managers perform has gained some importance and complexity; thus managerial theories has become essential.

This led to lowered overall productivity and systematic underproduction. Hence, this provoked Taylor to develop scientific management. The principles behind Tayor’s management concept were based on the idea that workers put in the least amount of effort and that they are motivated solely by material gains. As a result, the theory implied that greater external control is needed for more productive operations. Furthermore, the theory basically built an instrumental view of human behaviour making the human factor a mere component in a machine (Morgan, 2006) . Taylor’s concept was considered a milestone in the development of management as it proposed a different, efficiency-orientated approach that relied on how work was organized. From his point of view surely it was the increased productivity, predictability and control of the system that made the idea better. H e himself states that if applied in a correct manner his methods would lead to far larger and better results (Taylor, 2007) . However, when the scientific management theory was applied the negative effects of the system manifested. Frederick Taylor was even called “enemy of the working man” because of the principles he introduced (Morgan, 2006) . The separation between execution and conception and tightened control led to workers going to strike or leaving their jobs. Furthermore, the fact that the applied system presumed that workers had no other

The overall purpose of developing the management theories is to bring out better ways to manage people. According to Aguinaldo & Powell (2002), management theory evolves con-stantly with the continuous stream of new ideas that come from the attempts to transform theory into practice, and vice versa. As essential personnel identify promising methods that assist in managing responsibilities, it will lead to management theories progressing. This paper will il-lustrate how management theories have emerged over the years and it will point out the primary reason why it has prospered.

Management theory constantly evolves when there are new ideas or when there is and intention of attempts of transforming the theory. Hence this theory can also be called as the “condensed theory” To know the history of the management theory is the fundamental task (Sarshar, 2002).