(SHORT
NOTES FROM TEAM MANAGEMENT:
Historical
Management Theories at http://www.mindtools.com)
People have been managing work for hundreds
of years. The formal management ideas can
be traced to the 1700s. Most significant
developments in management theory emerged in the 20th century.
One of the earliest of these theorists
was Frederick Winslow Taylor. He started
the Scientific Management movement. He
and his associates were the first to study the work process scientifically. They studied how work was performed, and they
looked at how this affected worker productivity. Taylor's philosophy focused on the belief that
making people work as hard as they could was not as efficient as optimizing the
way the work was done.
In 1909, 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. 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", where, 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.
With a background in mechanical
engineering, Taylor was very interested in efficiency. 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. These "time
and motion" studies led Taylor to conclude that certain people could work
more efficiently than others. Taking
what he learned from these workplace experiments, Taylor developed four
principles of scientific management. These principles are also known simply as
"Taylorism":
1.
Use the scientific method to study work
and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks.
2.
Match workers to their jobs based on
capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.
3.
Monitor worker performance, and provide
instructions and supervision
4.
Allocate the work between managers and
workers.
·
managers spend their time planning and
training
·
allowing workers to perform their tasks
efficiently
Taylorism promotes the idea that there
is "one right way" to do something. Taylorism breaks tasks down into tiny steps,
and focuses on how each person can do his or her specific series of steps best.
Taylorism separates manual from mental
work.
Scientific management in its pure form
focuses too much on the mechanics, and fails to value the people side of work,
whereby motivation and workplace satisfaction are key elements in an efficient
and productive organization.
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