General Management Theories

The Content of Scientific management theory

Frederick Winslow Taylor created the scientific management movement and was the first people to study the work process scientifically. The study was about how work was performed and looked at how affected worker's productivity. Taylor philosophy was based on that making people work as hard as they could was not efficient and rather the methods of work should be optimized to book more efficiency in operations. In 1909 Taylor published “The Principles of Scientific management. “in This published work he proposed the idea of optimizing and simplifying jobs and therefore productivity will increase. Taylor also saw the relations between workers and managers and that both need to communicate and cooperate with one another.

This was back then very revolutionary concept during the early 1900s. A factory manager at that time had very little contact with the workers and without supervision would let them produce the necessary product. At that time there was little standardization and workers main motivation was often continued employment to pay for their families. Therefore there was no incentive to work as quickly or as efficiently as possible in the factories. Taylor believed that all workers were motivated by money, so taylor promoted that people should be paid for excellent work and be granted extra pay. Taylor called this concept Fair day's pay. If a worker at factory does not achieve a lot in a day. He doesn't deserve to be paid as much as another who was highly productive. This was a concept by Taylor to increase productivity by offering extra money.

Taylor's "time and motion" studies he conducted showed that certain people were more efficiently than others. These are the people managers should seek to hire where possible. Selecting the right type of people for the jobs offered is a important factor that influences workplace efficiency. Taking what he learned from his studies Taylor developed four principles of...