What is Scientific Management?
Scientific Management is one of the major ‘sub-groupings of the classical approach (Mullins, 2010).
The writers of the classical approach thought of organisations in terms of its purpose and formal structure. It is the theory of management. Its main focuses are on productivity, efficiency of individual workers and their output. Taylor and Urwick were major influences on the classical approach (Mullins, 2010).
The major contributor to the scientific approach was Taylor (1865-1917) (Mullins, 2010). He published a book called ‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ in 1909 (Taylor, 1947). Scientific management promoted the idea of finding a standardized method for performing each task in a workplace, the ‘one …show more content…
Urwick took part in the First World War attaining the rank of Major and ended up being awarded the Military Cross for his services. His experiences in the military would later mould his outlook on management. Urwick founded and was head of Urwick, Orr and Partners, Britain’s first firm of management consultants. After leaving the firm he spent his time lecturing and writing about management (S.Pugh & Hickson, 2007).
Urwick is arguably the one of the most outstanding figure in the history of British management partly due to the fact he has been one of very few to achieve international acclaim and recognition (Brech, Wilson, & Thomson, 2010).
Urwick is sometimes identified as a classical management believer who helped to promote the works of Henri Fayol in the English-speaking world (D.Parker & Ritson, 2011). Urwick approached the subject of management in a way similar to that of Fayol. In all of Urwick’s books and booklets, Fayol’s theoretical analysis and principles of application can be seen (S.Pugh & Hickson, …show more content…
Taylor found the work boring and repetitive as it required little or no skill(Mullins, 2010). This because Taylor promoted a standardized way to do each task. He called it the ‘one best way’ (Mullins, 2010). • The worker would use “systematic soldiering” (Mullins, 2010). Systematic soldering, is consciously under-working of the person. This means that workers would put pressure on their colleagues with a higher production rate to maintain the same productivity as everyone else to keep wages the same. They did not want to seem inferior to their productive colleagues. This would cause huge amounts of peer pressure in the work environment.
• Studies on scientific management by a House of Representative Committee in 1912 revealed:
That scientific management did provide some useful techniques and offered valuable organizational suggestions, but gave production managers a dangerously high level of uncontrolled power [and] a subsequent attitude survey among the workers revealed a broad level of resentment and hostility, by both union and non-union members, to scientific management methods. (Mullins,
Scientific Management is one of the major ‘sub-groupings of the classical approach (Mullins, 2010).
The writers of the classical approach thought of organisations in terms of its purpose and formal structure. It is the theory of management. Its main focuses are on productivity, efficiency of individual workers and their output. Taylor and Urwick were major influences on the classical approach (Mullins, 2010).
The major contributor to the scientific approach was Taylor (1865-1917) (Mullins, 2010). He published a book called ‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ in 1909 (Taylor, 1947). Scientific management promoted the idea of finding a standardized method for performing each task in a workplace, the ‘one …show more content…
Urwick took part in the First World War attaining the rank of Major and ended up being awarded the Military Cross for his services. His experiences in the military would later mould his outlook on management. Urwick founded and was head of Urwick, Orr and Partners, Britain’s first firm of management consultants. After leaving the firm he spent his time lecturing and writing about management (S.Pugh & Hickson, 2007).
Urwick is arguably the one of the most outstanding figure in the history of British management partly due to the fact he has been one of very few to achieve international acclaim and recognition (Brech, Wilson, & Thomson, 2010).
Urwick is sometimes identified as a classical management believer who helped to promote the works of Henri Fayol in the English-speaking world (D.Parker & Ritson, 2011). Urwick approached the subject of management in a way similar to that of Fayol. In all of Urwick’s books and booklets, Fayol’s theoretical analysis and principles of application can be seen (S.Pugh & Hickson, …show more content…
Taylor found the work boring and repetitive as it required little or no skill(Mullins, 2010). This because Taylor promoted a standardized way to do each task. He called it the ‘one best way’ (Mullins, 2010). • The worker would use “systematic soldiering” (Mullins, 2010). Systematic soldering, is consciously under-working of the person. This means that workers would put pressure on their colleagues with a higher production rate to maintain the same productivity as everyone else to keep wages the same. They did not want to seem inferior to their productive colleagues. This would cause huge amounts of peer pressure in the work environment.
• Studies on scientific management by a House of Representative Committee in 1912 revealed:
That scientific management did provide some useful techniques and offered valuable organizational suggestions, but gave production managers a dangerously high level of uncontrolled power [and] a subsequent attitude survey among the workers revealed a broad level of resentment and hostility, by both union and non-union members, to scientific management methods. (Mullins,