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Frederick W. Taylor – Scientific Management and Scientific Management Movement

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Frederick W. Taylor came up with Scientific Management principles in his book ” The principles of scientific management “ in 1911. These principles were widely applied across many organisations, and many scholars consider it a scientific management movement. Taylor was chief engineer at Midvale steel Company before he became General Manager of Manufacturing Investment Company. He started his career as an apprentice without any wage and progressed as a labourer, then as a chief engineer, and finally as a manager. This gave Taylor immense experience in the field of industrial engineering and management. He was thoroughly aware of all aspects of industries right from shop flower manufacturing to apex-level management with its intricacies, loopholes, shortcomings, and inefficiencies.

While he was working he was disturbed by the fact that organizations suffered from inefficiency, wastage, and low productivity. For all these shortcomings, he blamed the non-scientific, individualistic, ad-hoc management which he called ” rules of thumb “ instead of ” scientific management “ using scientific methods and principles.

So he came up with many ideas through his writings –

  • A piece-rate system – 1895
  • Shop management – 1903
  • The art of cutting tool – 1906

Finally, he summed up all his efficiency techniques and research works in his book ” The principles of scientific Management “ in 1911. According to him, these principles are universal, replicable, sustainable, and standardized ( which he called ” one best way of doing each and everything in an organization” ). These principles were based on logic, inquiry, analysis, and scientifically discovered with an ultimate aim to improve efficiency, economy, effectiveness, and productivity to meet the demand of rapid industrialization.

Scientific Management Model

Scientific Management has 3 parts

  1. Reason for inefficiency – Why organizations are inefficient? – Diagnosis
  2. Principles of Scientific Management – What should an organization do? – Prescription
  3. Techniques of Scientific Management – How to actually apply these principles? – Description

Taylor’s Scientific Management model is also considered a complete theory as he gave both ” prescription and description ” to management problems.

Reasons for Inefficiency

  1. Initiative and Incentive-based Management
    • Earlier managers take all incentives or credit for any success and didn’t take any responsibility for failure instead, they passed on the responsibility to workers. But under scientific management whoever takes the initiative is rewarded with an incentive and also the responsibility is shared between workers and managers.
    • Also, workers don’t want to take any initiative to improve productivity because they didn’t have any incentive to improve productivity. Instead, any increase in productivity results in the layoff of unproductive or surplus workers
  2. No Scientific principles in management but only ” Rules of Thumb “
    • Earlier Organisations are run by ” Rules of thumb “ based on ” trial and error ” with ” an individualist “ touch of managers.
    • They didn’t take any initiative to create ” scientific methods “ based on ” logic and reasoning “ that they could “institutionalize “ and pass it on to future managers as ” Institutional memory “ or ” Institutional Best Practice “.
  3. Soldiering
    • Soldiering means deliberately restricted output. It can happen in two ways
      1. Non-deliberate – Natural Soldiering
        • Demand Side – Managers lack methods to enhance worker’s productivity
        • Supply Side – Workers lack the ability to increase output
      2. Deliberate – Systematic Soldiering or Second thought Reasoning
        • Company Side – No incentives given to workers for more production
        • Worker Side – Wages were based on no of days worked and any increase in productivity will make workers unemployed

Principles of Scientific Management

Principles of Scientific Management can also be called the thought/philosophy/prescription of Taylor. These principles are collectively called scientific management which prescribes ‘ what an organization should do ‘ to achieve efficiency, economy, and productivity. He wants to replace ” Rules of Thumb “ with ” scientific management “. He gave the following principles which are overlapping with one principle flowing from another.

  1. Science, not Rule of Thumb
    1. An organization should find ” One best way of doing work or job ” using ” Time and Motion Study “.
    2. This body of knowledge needs to be discovered and standardized
  2. Harmony, not discord – Can be achieved by an equal division of work and responsibility
    1. Harmony and peace between workers or unions and managers is a pre-condition for organizational property and productivity.
    2. He believed the discord is due to viewing wages (workers) and profits (organization) as contradictory goals.
    3. And also unfair and disproportionate sharing of
      1. Rewards of Industrial Productivity – ‘ yet no fair wage ‘
      2. Credit for success on managers and blame for failure on workers – ‘Win-lose solution ‘
    4. In this context, he observed ” The issue should be how to overgrow the size of the pie instead of struggling over sharing a stagnant pie “ to create a ” Win-Win Solution “
    5. By this, he argued by the maximization of wages should be as much as the goal of management as maximizing profits, i.e ” fair-days wage for fair day’s work “
    6. This can be achieved by increasing efficiency and genuine cost-saving instead of wage separation.
  3. Cooperation, not individualism
    1. This idea flows from the 1st principle to develop science rather than the ” rule of thumb “.
    2. Management should not depend on a few indispensable individuals, instead, it should be teamwork done by the cooperation of specialists.
    3. So he recommended
      1. Separation of Planning and Execution – ( Vertical division of Work )
      2. Functional Foremanship – One boss for one function or work instead of traditional one boss for one worker – ( Horizontal division of work )
    4. Because of this vertical and horizontal separation, there needs to be cooperation and not individualism
  4. Maximum Output, not restricted output using scientific recruitment, training, and wage incentives
    1. Restricted Output due to natural soldiering can be solved by scientific recruitment, training, and development of workers
    2. Restricted output due to systemic soldiering can be solved by ” a piece-rate system “, a system of wage incentives where wages depend on the productivity of workers rather than the days of work
  5. Mental Revolution
    1. Many scholars regarded ” Mental revolution ” as a 5th principle even though Taylor only gave 4 principles.
    2. Mental revolution is the theme or philosophy behind Taylorism, without which scientific management doesn’t exist.
    3. Metal revolution is a combination of all principles of scientific management. Piecemeal implementation of scientific principles invites only trouble and discord not harmony and efficiency in the organization
    4. For example without scientific training workers’ productivity can’t be increased even if the piece rate system is employed natural soldiering will restrict the output.

Techniques of Scientific Management

  1. Separation of Planning and Execution
    1. Vertical division of Work
    2. This concept later on transformed into line and staff separation and generalist-specialist separation in modern administration
    3. This technique also gave rise to modern-day management principles like Management by Exception. Where management will step in only in the exceptional case of significant deviation from planned outcomes
  2. Functional Foreman-ship
    1. Horizontal division of work
    2. One foreman or boss for one function or work instead of traditional one boss for one worker – This principle actually violates ” unity of command ”
    3. Foreman is a supervisor, who stands in between managers and shop floor workers. Managers delegate the supervisor’s roles to the foreman (decentralization).
    4. There are 8 types of functional foremen divided into two categories
      1. Planning foreman
        1. Work and Route Clerk – Decides on every aspect of a job a cost, method, technique, sequence ..etc
        2. Instruction card Clerk – Puts this detail into the instruction card
        3. Time and cost clerk – Records the details of work
        4. Shop disciplinarian – Enforces norms and regulations
      2. Execution foreman
        1. Gang Boss – Gives instruction cards to workers and arranges equipment and assigns jobs
        2. Speed Boss – Ensures the job is done in time and demonstrates how to do them faster
        3. Inspector – Monitors the quality of production
        4. Repair Boss – Responsible for repair, operation, and maintenance [ O &M ]
    5. He also mentioned 9 qualities for good foremanship – education, special or technical knowledge, manual dexterity and strength, tact, energy, grit, honesty, judgment, and good health.
  3. Standardization
    • Taylor recommended standardization of everything like
      1. Time Standardization
      2. Cost Standardization
      3. Working-condition Standardization
      4. Standardization of machines, tools, and equipment
      5. Standardized operative procedures
  4. Scientific recruitment, placement, and training or Scientific personnel management
    • Taylor’s prescription is to find the ” right man for the right job “
    • Taylor wants the employer to develop the employees to their fullest potential.
  5. Scientific Wage payment system
    • He rejected the prevailing time wage system for the absence of incentive for excellence and disincentive for mediocrity.
    • Instead, he proposed a ” differential piece wage system “ where an ‘ extraordinary wage ‘ is given to those who achieve the target and an ‘ ordinary wage ‘ for those who couldn’t achieve the target
    • In modern management studies, such carrot and stick policy is called auto goal congruence i.e the goals of the organisation and workers are in harmony because when the workers strive to achieve their goal, the organizational goal of higher profit is also achieved.
  6. Work-Study – Soul of scientific management
    • He recommends four elements of work-study
      1. Time Study – least time
      2. Motion Study – least steps
      3. Fatigue Study – least energy
      4. Method Study – the best method based on the above three

He borrowed many of these techniques from his predecessors like Charles Babbage, Henry Metcalf, and Henry Towne. They were also pioneers in administrative theories who attempted to find principles to run organizations successfully. But it was only Taylor’s Scientific management theory that created momentum towards theory building in organizational management. Therefore he is called as Father of scientific management. But some scholars do question the merit of calling Taylor, Father of scientific management. Yet because of the nature of his principles and techniques, is also called as Father of Industrial Engineering.

Critical evaluation of Taylor’s theory

Despite Taylor’s theory gaining widespread acceptance and many of his ideas and principles being applicable even today, his model faced severe criticism in varies aspects. The critics can be categorized as

  • Criticism by neo-classical thinkers
  • Criticism by Modern thinkers
  • Criticism by Workers and Labour Union
  • Criticism by Managers

Criticism by Neo-classical thinkers

The underlining theme of all criticism against classical theories in general and Taylor’s theory in particular is ” it neglected the classical human side of the organisation “.

to be continued…