Scientific Management Analysis

Scientific management

  In the 19th century, Frederick W. Taylor proposed that workers could enhance their productivity through a specific management strategy namely scientific management,  it means that retool employees like a machine to gain a better productivity. It plays an essential role in business management especially in production efficiency until today. In this article, the concept of scientific management will be provided, then essay describes its functional nature and propose is to improve the economic efficiency. Next, article will show its applications of bricklaying in early time and the supermarket model in current situations following with impacts of those application. Finally, the essay is going to state the linkage between scientific management and business ethics.

  Samon&Deft (2015) states that scientific management is a classical management perspective that focus on scientifically determination of changes in management activities as the solution of increasing worker productivity. In other words, scientific management suggests that managers should break down the job into different and individual components then develop the standard method to do the each part, then, managers need to hire appropriate employees to fit in the job following the standard method training provided. At last, managers eliminate any possible interruption occurred in the job, and motivate labors by a higher wages. And this essay is based on the main article which is “The Relevance of Scientific Management and Equity Theory in Everyday Managerial Communication Situations” written by Bell and Martin.

  The functional nature of scientific management is mainly improving the workforce efficiency, in turn, enhancing economic efficiency. Scientific management is a revolutionary theory since it developed one best way to work, in other words, employees could focus on a specific part of the job instead of the entire task, moreover, the recruitment of appropriate workers and standard training ensures that employees are able to be more familiar with the job, therefore, a high proficiency leads to better productivity which leads to a higher profitability within the business (deWinter, Kocurek and Nichols, 2014).

  David (2014) states that in the early time, businesses normally had a limited ability to growth and innovate due to most of them are family business or sole proprietorship. Mangers had to enforce employees to do the task so there is little efficiency and low motivation. When the scientific management was published, it significantly improved the production of industries, for instance, bricklaying industry had a huge enhancement since the salary incentive and standard method for completing each task provided, take a example, bricklayers knew how their wages are depend on their performance, moreover, bricklayers spent less time to complete the task if they were familiar with the job. Therefore, they were more productive than before. Currently, scientific management are still wide used, for example, many supermarkets like Woolworth and Wal-Mart have a really clear classification of the job, they break down tasks into different components, for instance, the cashier, the man who are response for delivering goods to the counter and the employees promoting the product. All these tasks have a standard that employees need to meet like workers need to complete their tasks in a specified time requirement. In turn, employees are motivated by the strict standard further gain a higher productivity (O’Connell, 2008).

  Scientific management affects businesses in a enormous way, the main impact of scientific management is improving the productivity efficiency due to following reasons. Firstly, Samon&Deft (2015) demonstrate that the theory proved that it is important to compensate workers based on their performance. If any employee’s performance was not reached the standard, they will not get a appropriate salary. Secondly, scientific management is first management theory which studied different jobs and tasks carefully and scientifically, in turn, business could divide the whole production process into various and individual components. Lastly, the theory states that it is necessary for business to choose the appropriate person to do the job and provide the standard training. All these three aspects boost production efficiency further lead to a competitive advantage for the business. Another impact of the theory is great influence on management education, for example, Taylor stated that workers are only motivated by money, but modern researchers argue that labors can be motivated by other psychological factors like emotions and self esteem which known as the humanistic perspective. And more relative researches about motivation and production strategy were based on the Taylor’s work (Bell and Martin, 2012). Therefore, scientific management not only helps business to improve production efficiency, but also provides a foundation for management studies.