165 Reading: Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management
Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management
In 1913, Frederick Taylor published Principles of Scientific Management,[1] ushering in a completely new way of understanding the modern organization. Frederick Taylor was trained as an engineer and played a prominent role in the idea of scientific management. Scientific management is a management-oriented and production-centered perspective of organizational communication.[2] Taylor believed that the reason most organizations failed was because they lacked successful systematic management. He wrote that “the best management is true science resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation.”[3] He further noted that “under scientific management, arbitrary power, arbitrary dictation ceases, and every single subject, large and small, becomes a question for scientific investigation, for reduction to law.”[4] Taylor believed that any job could be performed better if it were investigated scientifically. Taylor developed time and motion studies that helped improve organizational efficiency.
Working as a foreman for the Bethlehem Steel Works in the 1900s, Taylor observed how workers could do more with less time. He analyzed coal shoveling at the factory and noticed that several workers brought different sizes of shovels from home. Workers who brought small shovels could do more but it took them longer, and workers who brought big shovels could do less but it was faster. He observed that the best size shovel was one weighing about twenty pounds. As a result, he directed the organization to provide all the workers with the same size shovel. He also provided pay incentives for workers who could shovel more coal. By making these changes, the organization dramatically increased its production.
Taylor believed that several steps must be taken in order to create a more productive organization. First, one must examine the job or task. Second, one needs to determine the best way to complete the job or task. Third, one must choose the most appropriate person for the task while at the same time providing proper compensation. Last, one must be able to train the person to do the task efficiently. Taylor believed that by using these scientific steps organizations gain efficiencies.
Taylor’s idea of scientific management originated during a time when most worker training was based on apprenticeship models. In an apprenticeship, a person would be taught by a more skilled and experienced person, who would demonstrate the task so the inexperienced person could model the behavior. Taylor believed that this was a very ineffective way of training because he felt that workers would differ in terms of the tasks they performed, and the quality or efficiency of task completion would depend on the kind of training they received. Taylor argued that there should be only one way to explain the job and one way to execute the task. He didn’t think the training of appre