Scientific Management & Human Relations

Ricky W. Griffin (2008, pg.11) states that the concept of Scientific Management shows that it’s the kind of management that concerns about improving the performance of individual workers and it was the principles made by Frederick W. Taylor.

Based on the Principles of Scientific Management, the philosophy of “the one best way” practice is used instead of “by rule of thumb” which all the workers to have a systematic training. Frederick Taylor believed that by using “the one best way” practice will form a systematic working style that the line of duty for both the employer and employees will be distributed accordingly. In such way, each group will have their work done according to their best suited position; the manager performs the science and give orders to their workers while the workers will follow the instruction to execute the labour.

In contrast of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management principles, there’s Elton Mayo who involved himself in Hawthorne’s Studies of Human Relations Movement which argued that workers respond primarily to the social context of the workplace. This statement is referred from Ricky W. Griffin (2008, pg. 14-15).

Unlike the Principles of Scientific Management, Human Relations Movement proposed that workers respond primarily to the social context of the workplace, including social conditioning, group norms, and interpersonal dynamics. Judging through this assumption of the human relations movement was that the manager’s concern for workers would lead to increased satisfaction, in which would improve the workers’ performance.

Therefore, according to the information above, we could tell that there are differences through ideas, principles and views. The differences of these two concepts are discussed as follows;

The Scientific Management most likely focused more on a specified task which considered the individual worker to be the basic unit of organization. Whereas Human Relations Movement stressed a concern for...