Scientific Management Was a 'Good' Idea in the History of Management Thinking.

Scientific management is a method of management whereby works are divided and managed scientifically in order to produce the best results from worker. According to Taylor (2003), scientific management utilises simplification of work so that employees could be trained to do their job in a specialized sequence that ensures the best productivity.

Before scientific management was introduced, workers are expected to do all of the work by themselves; usually the trained workers choose their own method of doing the job and perform lengthy tasks. Without scientific management, workers will tend to be less productive as they believe that working hard would mean that lesser people are needed to work, hence, the number of jobs will decrease. Without any given incentives for their works, workers are also less motivated to do their work at optimal performance. (Taylor 2003)

Scientific management, in its essence, is actually managing workers and jobs in the most optimal way through science. Freeman (1996) thinks that the interaction between employer and employee is of the utmost importance in scientific management. Scientific methods of doing work should be researched carefully and provided to the workers by the management in order to fully utilise the power of scientific management. For scientific management, it is required that people who do the best in a particular job to be placed into that line of work instead of grouping them all up to do one job. There should also be equality in the amount of work between the management and the workers. One of the most popular examples of scientific management is the Piece-rate system. According to Taylor (2000), piece-work system divides large work in a company into a smaller, more simplified piece of job that even an unskilled worker can perform. This can be tied up with incentive and reward system where workers who do their job well and in timely manner will be rewarded more than those who do it normally. For instance, workers are...