...Question: How influential is Scientific Management in 21st Century? Please note: The referencing system used in this essay is NOT the Harvard System and therefore INCORRECT practice. Please ignore this style of referencing, the essay is shown as a model of good practice only re structure and analysis. How influential is scientific management in the 21st century? 1. Scientific management was originally developed in the 1800s by an economist, Adam Smith. He was interested in a factory that operated and produced pins, and through the breaking down of tasks e.g. division of labour he increased output from 20 pins per employee per day to 4,800 pins. However the greatest break through in scientific management came in the 1900s during the peak of the industrial revolution, and due to the emergence of the factory system more attention was being given to methods or factors that could contribute towards increasing output levels. It was here that Frederick Taylor began his studies into this field and his ideas were later furthered by individuals such as Gilbreth and Gantt. Despite each individual having a significant input into the study of scientific management Taylor was widely regarded as the ‘Father of Scientific Management’ and hence the term ‘Taylorism’ being introduced. 2. Technically Scientific Management is the “management thought concerned primarily with the physical efficiency of an individual worker”[1]. However George Ritzer defined Scientific Management as a...
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...Each year globally many millions of dollars are spent on training. It would seem reasonable to establish just how effective this training has been if only to help justify the budget. Evaluation techniques are not new, indeed the most influential early work on evaluation was performed in the USA during the 1940s by Tyler. Probably the most important aspect of Ralph W Tyler’s work was the realisation of the importance of objectives in designing an effective school curriculum. This early methodology can be defined as the scientific/experimental approach. The model emphasised the importance of knowing the educational standards of the individuals in the control group before the new education initiative took place and then determining the change that had taken place by measuring the difference in attainment after the educational intervention was completed. In other words the aim was to determine the effectiveness of the training by scientific means on the level of performance of the individual. Although there have been some critics of this methodology it has proved to be valuable in that organisations have been able to quantify the relationship between their corporate objectives (often expressed as key performance indicators (KPIs) today) and the training aims and objectives. The main criticism of the scientific/experimental approach is that the methodology is unable to take into account the unexpected or unintentional learning that can take place within a dynamic and changing...
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...Scientific and Human relations managements Abstracts A general perspective on social and political view of relation that exist between the customers supplier and workers in a global organisation of 24/7 i.e. the human relation and the scientific management, also referred to as the contractual nature of the relationships between the employee and the employer. Introduction Scientific and human relation management has become a persistent and influential approach management of employments in the world wide range at large of market economic and the principles of applying the concepts of market. However I am going to be talking about the concepts of scientific and the human relation management ,how it has help mangers to manage and supervise their work and making sure that all their work is broken down into pieces and been carry out within the short period of time. Scientific management According to f.w Taylor (1856-1917) the father of scientific management Taylor consider that all work process could be analysed into discrete task and by scientific method it possible to look for way to perform every work and each work could be broken down into smaller pieces he also believes that any work task a machine or computer can do faster, human being can as well do it and the same way there is a perfect machine that’s the same way there is a Human being which can handle the work of machine and the component broken into pieces would be timed and parts rearranged into the most efficient...
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...Approaches of the public administration in: (a) The contemporary era Introduction The approaches to the study of Public administration in the contemporary era can be categorized from different angles such as normative approach and empirical approach. The main focus of these approaches is how public administration should be, and also to describe and to analyze the actual administrative situations. There different forms of public administration which are divide as follows; Philosophical approach Legal approach Historical approach Scientific approach Case Method Approach Institutional and Structural Approach Behavioral Approach Philosophical Approach The Philosophical approach takes within its purview all aspects of administrative activities. The main goal of this approach is to find out and enunciate the principles or ‘ideals’ underlying these activities. This is perhaps the oldest approach to public administration as of all other social sciences. Legal Approach This is a systematic approach which is formulated and it traces its ancestry to the European tradition of rooting Public administration in law. Public administration was considered to be a part of law, concentrating on legally prescribed structure and organization of Public authorities. Legal approach came into place at a time when the functions of the state were narrowly limited and simple in nature. The administrative law is an important branch of Public law which is conceived in quite broad terms to enable it...
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...Frederick Taylor and his Contribution to Industrial Management By Isom Coleman III In partial fulfillment of the requirements for Masters of Science Degree in Workforce Education Leadership Program Fall 2014 How did current management theories develop? People have been managing work for hundreds of years, and we can trace formal management ideas to the 1700s. But the most significant developments in management theory emerged in the 20th century. We owe much of our understanding of managerial practices to the many theorists of this period, who tried to understand how best to conduct business. Historical Perspective One of the earliest of these theorists was Frederick Winslow Taylor. Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. Taylor summed up his efficiency techniques in his book The Principles of Scientific Management. He started the Scientific Management movement, and he and his associates were the first people 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...
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...Taylorism and century twenty-one: Is Taylorism still applicable today? Management has become an essential part of an organization over the years due to the effects it has on the organization. Scientific Management also known as Taylorism, was a theory developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor. It was developed at a time when working conditions had reached an all-time low and industrial unrest was becoming a major issue(Witzel, 2005). Scientific Management was one of the first management ideas to become really influential. This management theory was developed in response of ‘worker soldiering”- workers will do the least amount of work in the longest time, workers would stall their jobs on purpose. The incentive to work more efficiently did not exist. Taylor believed in making scientific changes in management. This would improve economic efficiency and labor productivity. Taylor studied the work process scientifically. He studied how employees preformed their jobs and how this affected their productivity. Taylor proposed that by simplifying jobs by developing standard methods for performing certain jobs, productivity would increase dramatically. He also believed that employees and manager should be more involved with each other. This point of view was different from previous management methods. Taylor believed that money was a motivation for workers; to achieve higher efficiency he promoted the “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” or piece rate payment. This means the worker...
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...Describe and critique the Scientific Management approach pioneered by Frederick Taylor Introduction Frederick Winslow Taylor joined Midvale Steel Works in Pennsylvania, USA, and that’s when he noticed many employees were either working inefficiently, or at a slow rate on purpose as they were paid the same regardless the level of productivity. The employees were deliberately working at a slow rate so as to prevent their employers from how fast work can actually be done. Taylor regarded this as ‘soldiering’ and wanted to remove it (Pettinger 2012). He claims that by eliminating ‘soldiering’, and other bad practices, it will reduce the cost of production (Taylor, FW 1911). Scientific Management Frederick W. Taylor pioneered scientific management, which was scientific approach to managerial decisions, and he introduced it to organisations (Locke 1982; Pettinger 2012). It emphasised on increasing productivity from the workers, by designing methods to for maximum prosperity for both the organisation and the employees, and also maximum efficiency of the employees (Taylor, FW 1991). Taylor developed four main principles to increase efficiency; to replace rule-of-thumb methods; develop and train the best worker; promote cooperation among superiors and subordinates and lastly division of labour Taylor deemed the rule-of-thumb method that was practiced by the workers inefficient. He decided to study and understand how the employees work, and develop scientific methods to determine...
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...The Life and Influence of Frederick Taylor Frederick Winslow Taylor was born on March 20, 1865 in Philadelphia. He went to Harvard University to become a lawyer like his father. However, he quit the school because of deteriorating eyesight and had to give up on his dream of becoming a lawyer. In 1874, he became an apprentice patternmaker and machinist. In 1878, He got the license as an engineer and became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel. He began developing his management philosophies during his time at the Midvale Steel Works. It was during this period that he developed his theory of “Scientific Management.” He started as shop clerk and quickly progressed to machinist, foreman, maintenance foreman, and chief draftsman. Within six years, he advanced to research director, then chief engineer. Later, at Bethlehem Steel, he and Maunsel White developed high-speed steel. In 1890, he left Midvale Steel Works and worked at a couple companies. He joined Bethlehem Steel in order to solve an expensive machine shop capacity problem in 1898. He registered about fifty patents of machines inventions, tools and work processes. In 1895, he presented to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers an experimental study named “A note on belting” and no long after, he published, “A piece rate system”. Among Taylor’s other contributions to Bethlehem were, a real time analysis of daily output and costs, a modern cost accounting system, reduced yard worker’s ranks from 500 to 140, double...
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...INTRODUCTION Although significant progress has been made over several years in the evolution of management theories, the discipline has suffered from a deluge of theories that may be more confusing in practice than directional (Koontz, 1980). Though the earlier work from classical theorists like Taylor and Fayol contributed significantly to developments in management practice (some still applicable today), it has become clearer that confidence in the universal validity of management theories developed in countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) is questionable. Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol are historical figures, well known within the field of business for their challenging views on business and administration policies and principles. In this regard, the convergence of Fayol’s principle and Taylor’s theory has made contribution to the applicability of management philosophies across cultures and has lent some form of sanity to the body of knowledge by tackling the differences in relevance across regions as being attributable to cultural differences. MANAGEMENT DEFINED If you walked into a company, how could you tell who the managers are? Management expert Peter Drucker says that management “. . . is the responsibility for contribution.” In other words, it is the manager who is responsible for making sure that the company achieves its goals. A manager is someone who is responsible for accomplishing an organizational unit’s goals and who...
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...Scientific management is an approach that involves using scientific methods - based on proven fact rather than on tradition, rule of thumb, guesswork, precedent, personal opinion, or hearsay and is in opposition to traditional management. (Taylor 1911/1967 cited in Locke,1982, p14). Scientific management is very important when talking about business activities and performing managerial jobs efficiently. But there are still a number of criticisms concerning whether Taylor’s theory can exactly describe the job of managers and be used in today’s management. This essay will first discuss negative articles which aim to show that scientific management do not suit contemporary organisations. Following this, it will discuss some affirmative articles which argue the opposing position. Finally, it will give a conclusion as to whether Locke’s opinion is suitable for the developments of recent times. The scientific management decision making of Taylor has played a pivotal role in managerial practice in the 20th century (Wren 2011). But at the same time, increasing numbers of management authors doubt whether the availability of scientific management is still effective in today's organizations. They argue, for instance, that Taylor violated his own principles of scientific management in many instances. In the case of Bethlehem Steel Plant time studies were not systematically followed for paying the workers. Instead, Taylor used Gantt's task and bonus remuneration scheme (Taylor 1903, 1911...
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...Scientific and behavioral management theory represents two views of management on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Scientific management theory focuses on looking at workers solely as a means to get work done, while behavioral management theory focuses on developing an organization and the behaviors and motivations of employees. Most managers find that a combination of the two theories serves them best in their business. However, both methods are not always applied to all businesses. The companies that use both methods usually apply one more than the other. The core ideas of scientific management were developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Frederick was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency (Copely, 1967). Frederick’s theory, also known as Taylorism, was established in the 1920’s. According to Taylor, workers were incapable of understanding what they were doing and believed that transferring control from worker to management would solve that problem. Although his workers were able to earn more than those under conventional management, the introduction of this theory was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. Scientific management theory, which is classified as the classical theory, involves creating different levels of workers to improve productivity. Employees’ tasks are overseen by supervisors whose tasks are overseen by managers. Specific procedures have been tested a large number of times and are formed...
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...of Record - Jul 15, 2010 What is This? Downloaded from org.sagepub.com at Sheffield Hallam University on January 18, 2014 Article Organization 18(1) 23–44 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1350508410372151 http://org.sagepub.com Ways of constructing research questions: gap-spotting or problematization? Jörgen Sandberg Mats Alvesson UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia Department of Business Administration, University of Lund, Sweden Abstract This article examines ways of constructing research questions from existing literature, which are likely to promote the development of interesting and influential theories. We review 52 articles in organization studies and develop a typology of how researchers construct their research questions from existing literature.The most common way across paradigmatic camps is to spot various ‘gaps’ in the literature and, based on that, to formulate specific research questions. The dominance of gap-spotting is surprising, given it is increasingly recognized...
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...slow move toward ecosystem based forest management in the twentieth century. There were multiple different forces that led to the plan’s implementation, most notably of which were new scientific discoveries being made, pre-existing environmental laws, and political pressure from interest groups. While the Northwest Forest Plan was inarguably a step in the right direction when it came to maintaining the health of both humans and the ecosystems they reside in, they are still ways upon which the plan can be updated and improved. The westward expansion of european settlers on the continent saw the boom of the timber industry. The forest service was founded on sustained-yield...
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...What Is Strategic Management, Really? Inductive Derivation of a Consensus Definition of the Field Rajiv Nag Department of Management WCOB468 Sam Walton College of Business University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR, 72701 Tel: (479) 575-6650 Fax: (479) 575-3241 Email: Rnag@walton.uark.edu Donald C. Hambrick The Pennsylvania State University Smeal College of Business 414 Business Building University Park, PA 16802 (814) 863-0917 Fax: (814) 863-7261 dch14@psu.edu Ming-Jer Chen University of Virginia The Darden School Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550 (434) 924-7260 Fax: (434) 243-7678 chenm@darden.virginia.edu October 18, 2006 (Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming) Acknowledgements: The authors are indebted to all those individuals who participated in the survey. The authors thank Hao-Chieh Lin for his help in the early stages of this research. We acknowledge financial support from the Batten Institute and the Darden Foundation, University of Virginia. A note of thanks to Tim Pollock, Wenpin Tsai, and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Keywords: Strategic Management, Academic Communities, Linguistics. 1 What Is Strategic Management, Really? Inductive Derivation of a Consensus Definition of the Field ABSTRACT It is commonly asserted that the field of strategic management is fragmented and lacks a coherent identity. This skepticism, however, is paradoxically at odds with the great success that strategic...
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...The advent of mass production, in the period during and following the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, brought novel approaches and ideas as to how organisations were best managed. The Classical School of Management is thought to have originated around the turn of the century and dominated management thinking into the 1920s. It focused on the efficiency of the particular work process, and has been divided into three schools of thought. These include Bureaucratic management that focuses on rules and procedures, Scientific management which concentrates on the ‘best’ way in which a job can be done and Administrative management which has emphasised the need for the flow of information within the organisation. Classical theorists considered workers and their needs as being secondary to the needs of the organisation and hence it has become an outdated form of management. Despite being outdated classical management theory remains of interest as it introduced management as a subject for analysis and provided ideas for the future development of management theory. Bureaucratic Management Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist who first used the word bureaucracy to describe a particular form of management structure. He proposed a structure that was to provide maximal efficiency and stability. The six key elements of this were: 1. A hierarchical structure that has a clear chain of command with the higher positions having control over the lower positions...
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