Taylorism:
A Pragmatic Analysis of Scientific Management
Theory
To Managers in Contemporary Business
Organizations
Introduction
The world today is wrapped-up with
consciousness of materialism and relativism. Undoubtedly, one’s political,
social and cultural structures become disputable and weak due to the prominence
and influence of these isms. Hence, globalization became an old Suez
Canal which opens the gate to all trades and commerce not only of material
goods and new technology but knowledge. Due to this phenomenon, people seem
unaware of the gradual evolution of civilizations. As what Charles Darwin
proved, human beings evolved in its own course following certain patterns and
processes. Aren’t this post-modern situations are signs of Darwinian evolution?
He even articulated that man has an innate psychological frame which tends to
control his behavior, an instinct that dictates him to survive. This is what
Darwin called: the survival of the fettist.
This construct proves to be unrestricted. It
applied to various aspects of human life. The case of point points to the
abolition of Jews during the time of Hitler which leads to a radical assault of
Jewish race in Germany. The inspiration came in Hitler’s political portfolio, he
believed that Arian race is superior to the other races, hence, the eradication
of other races will bring superiority to the Arians. This condemnation
simplified our understanding of the “survival of the fettist” and how Hitler
concretized such Darwinian construct, eventually managed to make the Jews
suffered.
This paper would like to present an issue not
new to everybody. As our civilization moves from simplistic-primeval to
sophisticated-modern society, we are led to realize that in evolution of society
certain people were destined to rule and lead the world towards progress.
Notable individuals like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Mao Zedong, Winston
Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Vladimir Lenin, Nelson Mandela, and others were
persons endowed with great ability to lead and manage to bring change to our
society. They became “managers” of their respective nations. The spatio-temporal
climate did not deter their determination to incessantly contribute better
alternatives to their own nations.
In this manner, the analogies I used previously
were all related to what I wanted to discuss in this paper. The issue about
management is not all new to our understanding. Going back to our first
ancestors, although, they did not coin the term or even uttered such, they
already demonstrated such managerial abilities and values familiar to us today.
Such the time of Adam and Eve, when they were brought out from the paradise,
they both manage to care for their children: Cain and Esau. When our ancestors
inhabited the caves, they managed to look for food despite the danger they will
encounter with wolves and beasts.
This idea is so much related to management. This
concept is not only restricted to any matters regarding business, finance,
economics, or commerce. This term is universal that can be borrowed by other
disciplines and endeavors.
Management Defined
Since our understanding of
management is not restricted in one subject matter or discipline, its definition
becomes vast based upon on one’s perspective or discipline he is involved with.
Due to the overwhelming definitions of such term, let us take a look at the
etymological meaning of management:
In the old French language (“menagement”), it
refers to an “act of conducting or directing”. However, the Latin origin is much
clear and particular, from two separate words: manu means “hand”, and
agere, means “to lead”. Hence, manu agere literally means to “lead by
the hand.”
This interesting definition both from French and
old Latin language gives us a concrete, simple but profound in meaning of
management. If we look at the Latin meaning of the term “leading by the hand” it
suggests a romantic behavior. “Leading by the hand” connotes giving direction
which is stronger than passing suggestion, yet still gentle in approach. Leading
by the hand also suggests that a person doing the leading is the one who go
first and persons he lead are but are lead in no other direction that his.
Moreover, management, in this context, implies
something important in management. When one is leading a flock of sheep or
people, telling them the direction where to go and what to take, this means an
ability to “guide”. Guidance, ergo, becomes constant in management. However, in
order that a leader can guide his or her group there must be a “program” to
follow. Again, significant in guiding the flock or a group is a “defined
program”, a tool for guiding people into a right direction.
Furthermore, in order that a management aside
from established guide and program, for it to be effective, there must be a
concrete and established system or approach in place. Like for example, if a
business runs by a manager with several employees under his jurisdiction failed
to establish or define an approach or system in place, probably, a manager may
not be effective in that sense, because the fact that no desired or concrete
approach and system laid down as a framework to lead the employees would
eventually brought a disaster to such a business.
This attempt to identify the essential meaning
of management lead economists, psychologists, businessmen, and other scholars
to study more this concept and identify better alternatives and solutions to the
problem.
In this matter, since, management is mostly used
in the business world, scholars who are more inclined to this discipline tried
to simplify the vast explanation of the term. Moreover, the problem does not
solely lies on the problem about its meaning but on its applicability. How, a
certain business be run with a best management with a proficient managers.
Management and managers are too
different constructs; while the former is a theoretical while the latter is
practical. This means that management is a principle which a person chosen
freely execute guidelines, programs or system. One is called a manager simply
because he manages certain structure with a set of program and system. This set
of system or program is the byproduct of theories studies and experimented in
order to form better managerial principles.
Theory of Scientific Management: Revisited
Since time immemorial, people are gathered together in market places to
exchange trade and supplies of goods. In the ancient Greece, people were
gathered in an Areopagus, or Agora not only to bring their trade
and supplies of goods for exchange but also to bring their intellectual
ingenuity in exchange for conversion and belief. St. Paul the Apostle, was one
of those traders who traded his wisdom and knowledge about God in exchange for
conversion while Socrates became a paragon of Greeks intellectuals who sold his
ideas to interested Greeks like Plato and Aristotle.
Like St. Paul, the Apostle,
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, their marketing strategies and managerial virtues
believed to be a magnate who produces great followers, Socrates has Plato and
Plato has Aristotle, St. Paul has Galaticians, Corinthians, and some other Greek
converts. This simply signifies their skill in management and strategies to
attract people in their footsteps.
In the contemporary setting,
business becomes the ‘apple of an eye’; merely because it helps you build an
empire-state building. Due to the materialistic and consumerist attitude of the
post-modern time, those who saved plenty of resources immediately ventured into
business. However, what becomes the constant struggle and problems of a business
owner is simply on the issue of management. A mismanage business is doomed to
destruction.
Following such thought, a mismanage
business absolutely means lack of management skills and abilities, no set of
system and approach are determined and applied. The loss of millions of dollars
is a mistake of the one who leads.
One of the great scholars in the
field of business, engineering, and economics was Frederick Winslow Taylor
(156-1915), an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve the industrial
efficiency. His scientific management crowned him to be its father. One of the
intellectual leaders of Efficiency Movement and being highly influential in the
Progressive Era, Taylor tailored a new theory in response to the business
sectors’ dilemma in dealing with managerial problems.
According to Taylor’s theory of
scientific management, since the prevailing industries of his time were
factories, which produces volumes of different products for mass production,
Taylor, suggested under his management system that factories should be managed
through scientific methods rather than by using the empirical “rule of thumb”
prevalent in the late nineteenth century. This theory formulated by Taylor
brought an impact not only in the industry/business sector but to other fields
of interests. Furthermore, Taylor (1917 p.5), taught that there was one and only
one method of work that maximized efficiency, “and this one best method and best
implementation can only be discovered or developed through scientific study and
analysis…this involves the gradual substitution of science for ‘rule of thumb’
through the mechanical arts.”
In Stepehn Waring’s analysis:
At the beginning of the
twentieth century, members of America's progressive business community were
pursuing a parallel strategy. Inside firms, they began rationalizing their
organizations by adopting bureaucratic governance. On the outside, they began
developing and disseminating scientific knowledge about management by
establishing professional societies, journals, and schools. As time passed, they
guided their strategies using Frederick W. Taylor' scientific management.
Although managers repudiated parts of Taylor's prescriptions, his fundamental
premises met their philosophical and technical needs and by mid-century had come
to dominate managerial theory and practice. Even in the second half of the
century, moreover, many in the management community have continued to believe
that successful management and Taylor's scientific management were one and the
same. One recent management writer has gone so far as to claim that Taylors
ideas were as influential as those of Marx and Freud but were more "objectively
valid ( Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory, 1991, p 9).
This phenomenon indicates a new wave
in treating and analyzing ways of how to make a business management effective
and profit-oriented. This theory serves as a framework for managers of any
organizations on how to handle managerial task and employees in particular.
An important barrier to use of scientific management was the limited education of the lower level of supervision and of the work force. A large part of the factory population was composed of recent immigrants who lacked literacy in English. In Taylor's view, supervisors and workers with such low levels of education were not qualified to plan how work should be done. Taylor's solution was to separate planning from execution. Taylor (1917 p. 7) reiterate, "In almost all the mechanic arts the science which underlies each act of each workman is so great and amounts to so much that the workman who is best suited to actually doing the work is capable of fully understanding this science.
In applying this solution, Taylor made planning departments, staffed them with engineers and gave them the responsibility of researching and developing scientific methods, establishing goals for more productivity, systems of rewards for meeting the goals in order to meet the productivity target.
What basically the assumption raised by Taylor in this theory is that managers should understand that they are the one more responsible over the industry or business; his followers are merely subordinates who follow his instructions. The managers are authorized to form regulations or policies alone and the employees below his rank are but to follow such promulgations.
Building bureaucracy transferred the reins of power from subordinates to superiors. Mechanizing and specializing jobs restricted the discretion of those on the bottom of the organization and expanded the power of those on top. Both changes also reduced the costs of wages and training, since using semiskilled workers minimized the costs of turnover even without lowering its rate. Homogenization in skill was accompanied by stratification in status and income, a system that rewarded workers for their seniority and subservience, not to mention their sex, race, and ethnicity. Homogenized and standardized jobs helped to simplify the functions of management to the point that some managers came to believe they were scientists applying general principles to specific cases.
This issue arises in the implementation of the theory advocated by F.W. Taylor. Taylor’s attitude towards the workers was laden with negative bias. His adopted methods were directed solely towards the uneducated. “When he tells you to pick a pig and walk, you pick it up and walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do not right through the day and what’s more, no back talk (1917 p.15).”
However, even if this attitude seems to flourish in the thoughts of Taylor, this result stands with a valid basis and reasoning. For Taylor, this became the consciousness of the workers towards there superiors, simply because they see their selves as inferior, and nothing but like a mechanical worker that moves according to the desire of the one moving them. But this should not be wronged because what Taylor exposed in his theory was all based on facts, experiment and observation the reason it becomes scientific.
For Taylor, this reality should be eliminated and re-defined. It should be noted that Taylor has devoted much of his book in observing the workers during the time of work. His terms like “soldiering”, “loafing”, and “systematic soldiering” were being described much in his books. He described that the workers were not performing their work in their optimum level. Taylor validated this observation by putting into account the efficiencies within the management control system such as poorly designed incentives schemes and hourly pay rates not linked to productivity.
This analysis would lead us to realize the indifference of relationship between the workers and management. Due to some ineffective management and sustaining schemes of incentives for workers to be more productive, the working condition and the status of generating more income are less available.
Hence, Taylor proposed that managers should become scientific, study the organization of work, and invent apolitical methods for overcoming industrial waste and conflict. He thought they especially needed to overcome disputes between foremen and workers about work organization and compensation. The disputes, he claimed, could be escaped only if business and labor underwent "a complete revolution in mental attitude" and realized their shared interest in maximizing income through maximizing output.
Pragmatic Analysis:
Identifying the role of Taylorism
One of the ways in which we can use the theory formulated by F. W. Taylor
is to look at it in the perspective of pragmatism. The usefulness and utility of
something is what defines the modern way of life. If one is useful and
beneficial, he is considered to be an asset, likewise, this pragmatic attitude
sometimes misinterpreted as utilitarian.
It may have fibers of utilitarian
notions; pragmatism in philosophical eyes is something that advocates usefulness
of things tangible or intangible. This means, when an idea is useful and can be
better use to transform a value that is degenerating, that would be a pragmatic
solution. Rorty, a self-acclaimed American pragmatist believed that what
philosophers should do is not only to think and formulate ideas, principle or
theories, but help these ideas and theories applicable for the betterment of the
society.
In this level of analysis, we now
look at the scientific management at the level of its applicability and
usefulness in the workplace.
In the previous discussions, Taylor
suggested that managers should use scientific findings and methods in dealing
with the workmen or workforce. In this manner, the gap that abridged between the
workforce and the management will be minimized and productivity will be
increased.
One of the great impacts of the
theory was in the development and progress of Japan. William Tsutsui (1998) in
his book entitle: Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth
Century Japan, relates how the theory became useful in Japan economic and
social growth was:
Over what has been tagged the “era of
proselytization,” the “germination period of scientific Management,” and,
perhaps most aptly, the “age of efficiency,”
2 Taylorism was elaborated, debated, and in many cases championed
by Japanese businessmen, academics, and bureaucrats. Furthermore, although the
process of Taylorism's diffusion and integration in Japanese industry was
distinctive, by the time of the Great Depression, the impact of Scientific
Management in Japan was comparable in extent and in form to its influence in the
United States and Europe (p.15).
This description relayed by Tsutsui
gave us an idea how useful the theories became not only in the West but more so
cultivated and “germinized” in the East. For Tsutsui, the oyakata system
found its weakness when the scientific management became popular in Japan. The
indirect interrelation of the skilled-men and the workers below their level
brought wastage with the production and materials involved. The management
therefore was inefficient, not until the Taylorism came.
The attraction of the theory in the
economic realm of Japan brought considerable privileges. Hoshino Yukinori (cited
by Tsutsui,1998), an official of Kajima Trust Bank, secured the permission of
Taylor to published the theory in Japanese translation. The spread of this
instruction in Japanese universities and technical schools have one indication
of the deepening of interest in the American techniques.
The ingenuity of each generation has developed
quicker and better methods for doing every element of the work in every trade.
Thus the methods which are now in use may in a broad sense be said to be an
evolution representing the survival of the fittest and best of the ideas which
have been developed since the starting of each trade. However, while this is
true in a broad sense, only those who are intimately acquainted with each of
these trades are fully aware of the fact that in hardly any element of any trade
is there uniformity in the methods which are used. Instead of having only one
way which is generally accepted as a standard, there are in daily use, say,
fifty or a hundred different ways of doing each element of the work. And a
little thought will make it clear that this must inevitably be the case, since
our methods have been handed down from man to man by word of mouth, or have, in
most cases, been almost unconsciously learned through personal observations.
Conclusion
Though the civilization moves faster
than we imagine, this becomes a way of life, no more worries and fears. The
ever-changing climate of the world, though, observable, is quite been
disregarded due to the preoccupation of man’s needs and desire for material
possessions. Materialism, relativism, and consumerism become the subject which
unconsciously being disregarded by most of the people.
The fast-pacing influence of
globalization which lead to global culture is very explicit, however, people
undermined its effect, what people busied about is how to acquire much of the
highly-sophisticated gadgets.
In this modern business, scientific management
proves to be an effective remedy to satisfy the desires and needs of individuals
in exchange for power and maximum output. The suitability of scientific
management in today’s preoccupations is but useful.
References
Taylor, F. W.
(1917). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Retrieved June 3, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=7293838
Taylor, F. W.
(2003). Scientific Management (K. Thompson, Ed.). New York: Routledge. Retrieved
June 3, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108432249
Tsutsui, W. M.
(1998). Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century
Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Retrieved June 3, 2008, from
Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102946784
Waring, S. P.
(1991). Taylorism Transformed : Scientific Management Theory Since 1945 /.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved June 3, 2008,
from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102073350
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