Scientific Management Style

Frederick Winslow Taylor started the “Scientific Management Movement”, and attempted to study the work process scientifically. Scientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. It is a system for increasing the efficiency of manpower to its maximum potential and streamlining production to improve efficiency. This article explores this theory in more detail.

Frederick Winslow Taylor:

Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. While advancing his career at a U.S. steel manufacturer, he designed workplace experiments to determine optimal performance levels. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, was highly influential in the Progressive Era. He applied the scientific method to study the optimal way to do any type of workplace task. He found that by calculating the time needed for the various elements of a task, he could develop the "best" way to complete that task.

“Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since – even though he has been dead all of sixty years.”

- Peter Drucker

Scientific Management Movement:

Frederick Winslow Taylor started the “Scientific Management Movement”, and attempted to study the work process scientifically. Scientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. The basis of his scientific management was technological in nature. It was felt that the best way to increase output was to improve the techniques or methods used by workers. They studied how work was performed, and how it affected worker’s productivity.

It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s within the manufacturing industries. Most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today. These include analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality; empiricism; work ethic; efficiency and elimination of waste; standardization of best practices; disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or merely to protect the social status of particular workers with particular skill sets; the transformation of craft production into mass production; and knowledge transfer between workers and from workers into tools, processes, and documentation.

Taylor (1911) stressed the best way of doing a job. Taylor's philosophy focused on the belief that making people work as hard as they could be not as efficient as optimizing the way the work was done. He emphasized the importance of having management and labor work in harmony to maximize profits. Therefore, profit can be maximized by using a systematic and scientifically-based approach to the study of jobs. Taylor was not trained as a manager He relied on the scientific study of time and movement spent and used for a job to improve the performance of the worker. According to the scientific managerial style, management of a work organization must be divorced from human affairs and emotions and people have to adjust to the management and not managed the people. Once jobs are recognized with efficiency in mind, the economic self-interest of the workers could be satisfied through various incentive work plans such as a piece-rate system of payment, etc.

The Principles of Scientific Management:

In 1909, Taylor published "The Principles of Scientific Management." In this, he proposed that by optimizing and simplifying jobs, productivity would increase. He also advanced the idea that workers and managers needed to cooperate with one another. This was very different from the way work was typically done in businesses beforehand.

The leader is assumed to be the most competent individual in planning and organizing the work of subordinates according to Taylor's principle of scientific management. A factory manager at that time had very little contact with the workers, and he left them on their own to produce the necessary product. There was no standardization, and a worker's main motivation was often continued employment, so there was no incentive to work as quickly or as efficiently as possible.

Differential Piece Rate System:

Taylor believed that all workers were motivated by money, so he promoted the idea of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work" and “differential piece rate system”.

Taylor observed that workers did as little work as possible. He felt that under the existing wage system, an efficient worker gained nothing extra. So, Taylor used these systems to gain efficiency in the output:

1. If a worker didn't achieve enough in a day, he didn't deserve to be paid as much as another worker who was highly productive.

2. A standard output was first fixed. Then two wage rates were fixed, a low wage rate was fixed for those workers who did not produce the standard output and a higher wage rate was fixed for those workers who produced the standard output or who produced more than the standard output.

Four Principles of Scientific Management:

Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks.

2. Rather than simply assign workers to just any job, scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves. Match workers to their jobs based on capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.

3. Provide detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task. Monitor worker performance, and provide instructions and supervision to ensure that the most efficient ways of working are being used.

4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and training the workers and the workers actually perform the tasks.

Time and Motion Studies:

A time and motion study (or time-motion study) is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism). After its first introduction, time study developed in the direction of establishing standard times, while motion study evolved into a technique for improving work methods. The two techniques became integrated and refined into a widely accepted method applicable to the improvement and upgrading of work systems. This integrated approach to work system improvement is known as methods engineering and it is applied today to industrial as well as service organizations, including banks, schools, and hospitals.

These "time and motion" studies also led Taylor to conclude that certain people could work more efficiently than others. These were the people whom managers should seek to hire where possible. Therefore, selecting the right people for the job was another important part of workplace efficiency.