F.
W. Taylor is called the father of scientific management. Discuss his contribution and its importance in the current scenario. By far the most influential person of the time, F. W. Taylor formalized the principles of scientific management.
At the time of Taylor's work, a typical manager would have very little contact with the activities of the factory. Generally, a foreman would be given the total responsibility for producing goods demanded by the salesman. Under these conditions, workmen used what tools they had or could get and adopted methods that suited their own style of work.F. W.
Taylor introduced and adopted ‘the fact-finding approach’ which was largely adopted as replacement of the ‘old rule of thumb’ approach. A feature of Taylor's work was stop-watch timing as the basis of observations. He broke the timings down into elements which he termed as 'time study'. The four objectives of management under scientific management were as follows: * The development of a science for each element of a man's work to replace the old rule-of-thumb methods. The scientific selection, training and development of workers instead of allowing them to choose their own tasks and train themselves as best they could. * Monitor worker performance, and provide instructions and supervision to ensure that they’re using the most efficient ways of working.
* Allocate the work between managers and workers so that the managers spend their time planning and training, allowing the workers to perform their tasks efficiently.Taylor's view of the motivations of workers was that man was rational and would make economic choices based on the degree of monetary reward led him to devise payment systems on the basis of productivity. Not surprisingly, there was strong criticism of this theory that treats human beings like machines and assumes that workers are satisfied by money alone. In today’s society the average intelligence of employees has sharply risen; people have been made aware of their value as human beings and any process by which this status is challenged is considered self-depreciating.People are no longer content to receive only fiscal reward for their task, on the other hand, it has been recognized that productivity and success is not just obtained by controlling all factors in the work place, but by contributing to the social well-being and development of the individual employee. However, scientific management is still a relevant concept for understanding contemporary work organizations.
Scientific management has proved it has a place in a post-industrial economy and within work organizations, albeit in a hybrid form with the human relations model.This is because scientific management allows a company to control its workforce through a series of measures that guarantees them the desired levels of productivity and efficiency. In spite of this guarantee, the model, as Taylor prescribed it, also manages to alienate the workforce and cause dissatisfaction due to the authoritarian structure of the role of management. The human relations model adds a new dimension to scientific management as it allows management to work on the same principles as Taylor approved, such as time and motion studies, while also serving to fulfill employees’ social needs at the same time.
