Why Scientific Management so Prevalent
If Scientific Management is as outdated and inhuman as many organizational theorists believe, why is it so prevalent in contemporary organizations?
Raymond Leung
1
Introduction
Scientific management was first developed by an American, Frederick Winslow Taylor in the1880s ~1910s and has evolved a lot since then. It is a theory or school of thoughts about process improvement and management. It aims at maximizing efficiency, productivity, output with least cost and minimizing wastes. It was criticized as inhuman by many organizational theorists. However, it is widely applied in manufacturing industry and service industry in both developing and developed countries nowadays. This article is to investigate the reasons why scientific management, which was developed one hundred years ago, is still so prevalent in contemporary organizations.
Development of Scientific Management
Scientific management began in the1880s ~ 1910s. While an American engineer, Frederick Taylor (1856 ~ 1947) was working in manufacturing industry, he observed that there was a natural difference in productivity and output between workers. Although some workers were smarter and more talented than the others, they were often unmotivated and chosen to work at the slowest pace. Taylor believed that there was a best way to do a task which could be achieved by carefully studying an individual’s work (the time and motion studies). By the method of process standardization, the best practice of performing a task can then be applied to other workers. Taylor’s objective was improving efficiency, increasing productivity and output and lowering cost1, 2. His idea and theory were published in “Shop Management” (1903) and “The principle of Scientific Management” (1911). His theory was called Taylorism and he was considered to be the father of scientific management3. At the similar period, another American, Henry Ford (1863 ~ 1947) and his team applied the principles of scientific management at his
Raymond Leung
1
Introduction
Scientific management was first developed by an American, Frederick Winslow Taylor in the1880s ~1910s and has evolved a lot since then. It is a theory or school of thoughts about process improvement and management. It aims at maximizing efficiency, productivity, output with least cost and minimizing wastes. It was criticized as inhuman by many organizational theorists. However, it is widely applied in manufacturing industry and service industry in both developing and developed countries nowadays. This article is to investigate the reasons why scientific management, which was developed one hundred years ago, is still so prevalent in contemporary organizations.
Development of Scientific Management
Scientific management began in the1880s ~ 1910s. While an American engineer, Frederick Taylor (1856 ~ 1947) was working in manufacturing industry, he observed that there was a natural difference in productivity and output between workers. Although some workers were smarter and more talented than the others, they were often unmotivated and chosen to work at the slowest pace. Taylor believed that there was a best way to do a task which could be achieved by carefully studying an individual’s work (the time and motion studies). By the method of process standardization, the best practice of performing a task can then be applied to other workers. Taylor’s objective was improving efficiency, increasing productivity and output and lowering cost1, 2. His idea and theory were published in “Shop Management” (1903) and “The principle of Scientific Management” (1911). His theory was called Taylorism and he was considered to be the father of scientific management3. At the similar period, another American, Henry Ford (1863 ~ 1947) and his team applied the principles of scientific management at his