Introduction Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 with a silver spoon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was considered the founder of scientific management and was one of the pioneer batches of management consultants and he devoted his time to the development of his ideas. Scientific management is defined as the support of the selection of the right people for the right jobs, adequately training them, and placing them in the right spot and paying them well in a scientific method.
Cause of Production Inefficiency Taylor attributed lack of productivity to soldiering. It is the scenario which workers perform their job below the maximum possible output on purpose or in deliberately. It is paramount to note that Taylor did not fully blame the workers. He concluded that soldiering was a result of misunderstandings by workers and management’s inability to understand and implement precise and efficient work processes (S.Pugh & J.Hickson 1996). According to Taylor also from Marshall (2007) p57, another reason for the inefficiency in businesses is the method that solitary tasks are done. He proposed a time study to identify the most pristine conditions, machines, tools and etc. Hence, the next part talks about the causes that Taylor attributed to soldiering. Firstly, workers had this deceptive idea that any increase in their productive output, fewer of them would be needed and jobs would eliminate which would ultimately inevitably result in unemployment. Many workers believed that working faster would put them out of work and hence the majority would only work as hard as necessary. (Miller 2010) Second, Taylor also deduces that management must understand the processes and the amount of time each task should take. It is easier for workers to abuse the system if management is disconnected and unaware of the happenings in the organization (Miller 2010) Thirdly, most tasks are imparted to workers by other coworkers who have decent experience or are in the same department. The issue is that training is usually based on ‘tribal knowledge’, passed down from one worker to another, instead of fixed procedures. (Miller 2010) Subsequently, the original process becomes fragmented and distorted, leaving out the most crucial processes or adding redundant ones. Hence, this is known as inefficient, rule-of-thumb, effort wasting methods of work.(Pugh, Hickson 1996)

Introduction of Taylor’s 4 Principles
The first principle, The Development of a True Science of Work (Pugh, Hickson 1996), suggests that any task assigned to a worker should be analyzed with respect to every aspect and time involved scientifically, thereby reducing redundant steps that do not contribute to the final product.
Next, workers should be selected scientifically selected and trained by management, who should be responsible for sourcing the right people for each job and supervising their training. This ensures that the conducting of training is correct. (Miller 2010)
Then, there should be scientific training and development of the worker. After the right people and the processes are put in their place, it is very crucial for management to be involved to supervise the workers. Just because a department is designed to be productive does not prevent employees from falling back to their old ways. (Miller 2010) Lastly, there should be division of work. Say for example, management should handing the designing, allocating and overlooking of the workers and the workers should perform the given task as directed whilst maintaining an amicable co-operation with management and the general workforce. (Pugh, Hickson 1996)
Criticisms of Scientific Management Taylor had his critiques, namely from theorists such as Lewin, Braverman and Drucker that he de-humanized the workers, literally means he treated them like machines and robots, deskilled labour and relied on simplistic assumptions. Upton Sinclair was also critical of Taylor’s methods, believing that his method exploited workers too. (Giannantonio, Hurley-Hanson, 2011) In other words, he also agreed with the three leading theorists during the late 1800s and the early 1900s that Taylor’s method turned humans into not what they were supposed to be. According to Nelson (1992), critics also debunked his methods, citing that it caused excessive specialization, degradation of work. They are criticized based on the following main grounds.
Firstly, Taylor had simplistic assumptions that employees are only motivated by monetary gains. In actual fact, they are also motivated by their social needs and personal pride.(Katyani 2011) Taylor’s priority was efficiency and too mechanical an approach. He did not consider the emotional side of humans and treated them as if they were “robots” controlled by a switch that turns up productivity and vice versa. His theory in reality almost annihilated Watertown Arsenal and Congress had to intervene to restrict his methods. (Maiers, Alec 2011) Frank Arnold (2012) also felt that people had to go about their task like a machine too. (pg 35) It was in stark contrast to what Elton Mayo, the founder of the Human Relations movement felt. He felt that workers ought to be treated more like humans, being respected by their superiors. His research also shown that superiors who develop relations with their employees tend to influence the way they carry out instructions. (Clark 2004) Pugh and Hickson(1996) seem to concur with the idea that his methods led to “bitter controversy over the alleged inhumanity of his system, which was said to reduce workers to the level of efficiently functioning machines.” It gave no regard to the human factor and the main motivation was only monetary gain. Although it increased productivity, it regards people as “draft animals or machinery” (Maiers, Alec 2011)
A major criticism of Taylorism is the degradation of skilled labour. For instance, Friedmann alleged Taylor of manipulating a workers’ aptitude excessively and turning him “into an automaton and a moron” (Friedmann, 1967 P43). An intensive job is reduced to the least amount of expertise needed, then the employer is able to foot the least amount of wages and therefore it also reduces the effort to train the worker to perform that task. Consequently, the worker is dispensable and easily replaced by another. A task often was broken up to simple steps and has to be followed by the jot and tittle or else they faced wrath from the supervisors. Nelson(1992) also supported this claim, critics exaggerated the jeopardy of scientific management. They argued that skilled employees would forfeit their expertise and innovation, which Taylorism promotes efficiency, fatigue and rate cuts that average workers would lose their rice bowls. It puts off spontaneity and innovation of humans. In a way, you could say it feels like recruits in the army following orders given by their superiors with no questions asked and just going through the motion of it.
In conclusion, despite all the flak that Taylorism received, little did he know that after his demise in 1915, organizations began to implement his methods and they saw better productivity which in turn led about to greater profits for their organization. Fordism, was actually based on Taylor’s ideas, which also brought about greater production efficiency in the automobile industry in the 1900s. Famous dictators such as Lenin, Trotsky and Mussolini were advocates of Taylorism. (Goldberg 2006) 1100 Words