essay

Organizational behavior and leadership (2291)

Taylor's Scientific Management Principles in Current Organizational Management Practices

Daniel Martínez Cardoso – s141180

Department of Management and Organization

Hanken School of Economics

Autumn 2014

1Daniel Martínez Cardoso – s141180

1. Introduction.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the extent to which Taylor's Scientific

Management Principles are present in current organizational management practices.

Therefore, I will first expose the main ideas behind Taylor’s work and his theory of

Scientific Management. Following that, I will explain each of the Scientific

Management Principles and present arguments that discuss their prevalence in current

organizations, illustrating the matters with some examples. Finally, I will conclude by

showing my findings based on the previous analysis.

2. Scientific Management and its Principles.

The late nineteenth century was characterised by the increasing size and

complexity of industrial organizations, facts which made it more difficult to organise

human effort efficiently and effectively (Rollinson, 2005: 9). As a response to

contemporary trends, a systematic management movement was formed, which consisted

of attempts by managers with engineering backgrounds to apply the principles of their

discipline to the organization of production, with the objective of solving the problems

of the industry with rational methods of managing (Barley & Kunda, 1992: 369).

In this context, the Scientific Management theory was born, based on the work

performed by Frederick Winslow Taylor during the latter part of the 19th century and

further developed in the early 20th century (McKinnon, 2003: 1). Scientific

Management “supplied the systematic management movement with coherent

ideological foundation” (Barley & Kunda, 1992: 369) and it has become the most

widely used set of general principles for organising production (Rollinson, 2005: 10). In

addition, job analysis and design have its roots in Scientific Management and are now a

common human resources practice in most of the world’s largest corporations (Bell &

Martin, 2012: 107).

Scientific Management can be defined as “an organizational ideology and a set of

techniques conceived to deal with such problems as soldiering by workers, resource

waste, and disorder, as well as management’s arbitrariness, greed, and lack of control”


(Guillen, 1994: 75). It consists of a series of tools, methods and organizational

arrangements to increase the efficiency and speed of machine shop production, which

involves, among others, a timing work system to establish a scientific measure of “what

constitutes a fair day’s work” (Taylor, 1911:49), bookkeeping and accounting tools, and

techniques to measure work input, as well as a managerial bonus plan devised by Gantt,

a rule for the calculation of machine speeds by Barth and the “science” of motion study

and all its branches developed by Frank and Lilian Gilbreth (Merkle, 1980: 2). It

pretends to organise or reorganise work methods to give managers greater control over

the labour process, that is, the exchange of effort for rewards (Rollinson, 2005: 9-10).

Taylor’s theory rests on the assumptions that “high pay is the main and perhaps

the only thing that people seek to obtain for work” (Rollinson, 2005: 10), “people are

primarily rational” (Barley & Kunda, 1992: 372) and a “belief in the utility and morality

of scientific reasoning” (ibid). Following Rollinson (2005:10), Taylor was convinced

that since both parties (workers and managers) obtained what they wanted (higher pay

and maximum effort from workers), Scientific Management would lead to cooperation,

“prosperity and a greater surplus for the organization” (Bell & Martin, 2012: 109).

However, as Wagner-Tsukamoto (2007: 106) stated, opportunistic managers used the

system to abuse and mistreat workers, and, after its last peak of fame in the 1920s,

Scientific Management popularity decreased due to its consideration as the “science of

exploitation” (Bakan, 2004: 76). After that time, an era of criticism and competition for

the movement, characterised for willingness to collaborate with the labour (Hawthorne

Studies, Human Relations Movement, etc) began (Barley & Kunda, 1992: 372).

I will now deal with the four Principles of Scientific Management and discuss the

relevance of each in current management practices.

1. “The development of laws and scientific principles for work tasks to replace

old-fashioned or traditional methods” (Boone and Bowden, 1987: 126).

With this Principle, Taylor wanted to “use scientific techniques to determine the

most efficient way of doing work” (Morgan, 2006: 23), replacing the “role of thumb”

method (Taylor, 1911: 36), that means, the one that is not accurate or reliable for every

situation, and to simplify jobs by describing each worker’s task in detail, specifying


how it should be done and the amount of time necessary to do it (ibid: 38-39). In

essence, he arrogated that managers could find the “one best method” to perform a task

that would guarantee maximum efficiency (Freedman, 1992: 27). Yet this point of view

is nowadays rejected, because there is no “managerial best practice”, it all depends on

the circumstances of the country, industry, and culture in which organizations operate

(there are three eclectic models of management, and every new managerial practice

seems to be a mixture of them) (Guillen, 1994: 75) and the organization’s world appears

to be “unpredictable, uncertain and even uncontrollable” (Freedman, 1992: 26).

However, adapted to new technologies and modern practices, Taylor’s

specialization of tasks, standardization and scientific improvement of processes are still

alive in modern organizations, as it will be now exposed.

Firstly, big companies are often divided into several departments to focus on

specialization, since the change in structure “allows them to divide the tasks of the

whole organization into manageable sub-tasks and allocates them to organisational units

that are responsible for their completion” (Rollinson, 2005: 461). However, when the

organization’s structure does not include specialized jobs concerned with analysing the

environment, the companies usually fail to adapt to changing circumstances (ibid: 463).

So, scientific management works better with small companies which do not usually

need to react to change (Caldari, 2007: 74). This lack of flexibility, the main defect

attributed to the Fordism model (which adopted Taylorism’s Principles with just a

different philosophy during 1960-1970) was the key word for the development of

Post-Fordism (Caldari, 2007: 72).

Although it may seem that Post-Fordism, which emerged from the crisis of

Fordism (Amin, 2008: 18), surged to challenge Fordism tenets, core principles of

scientific management neglected under Fordism were implemented through the search

of flexibility, applying rationalist ideas like standardization and efficiency (Crowley et

al, 2010: 423). Thus, this movement is “perhaps more aptly termed Neo-Taylorist than

Post-Fordist management” (Crowley et al, 2010: 422), which shows Taylorism still

influences it a lot.


Secondly, every “standard operating procedure” has its basis in Scientific

Management (Kanigel, 1996: 45). Many employees are trained to become machines in

certain parts of their jobs to improve efficiency and profitability (Bell, 2012: 106) and

standardization of tasks plays a big role in it. Two examples of this can be seen, as Bell

and Martin (ibid: 107) indicated, when workers cook a hamburger at McDonald’s or

when a technical support representative answers a call under pressure from a 90/10

protocol (which is a set of procedures that demands 90 percent of all calls to be

answered within 10 seconds and 90 percent of all problems to be resolved within 10

minutes). Another one is Customer Service Representatives jobs, which for some are an

“expression of an advanced form of Taylorism” (Holman et al, 2005: 116, citing Bain et

al., 2002; Knights & McCabe, 1998; Taylor & Bain, 1999), because jobs are unskilled,

repetitive and monotonous, and calls are of a short duration and required to be

completed within a specified time (ibid).

Finally, about scientific improvement of processes in current organizations, we

can see Post- Taylorism (another trend which was originated after the Scientific

Management crisis and resembles its predecessor in many ways) companies not only

look for cost, but also for efficiency, short delivery times and increased output

(Peaucelle, 2000: 452). For that purpose, new organizational techniques, such as Just-In

Time, Process Reengineering and Call Centres, have been created (ibid). The second

one, for instance, involves rethinking and radical redesigning of processes to improve

performance dramatically (Rollinson, 2005: 54).

2. “Scientifically select workpeople and progressively train, teach and develop

them to achieve their maximum level of efficiency and prosperity in the jobs that are

required” (Taylor, 1911: 36).

Taylor assumed everyone is “first-class at something” (Rollinson, 2005:10),

which means there should always be a person who best suits a job and just has to be

found. Because extracting the maximum effort of a worker resulted in boring and

repetitive tasks, careful selection of operators (people who did not have aspirations for

performing more “mentally-challenging” works) was required (Rollinson, 2005: 10).


Since World War I, personnel selection’s influence has grown enormously, and it

has become a science in its own right (Locke, 1982: 17). In addition, most

contemporary managers fully accept the notion that training new employees is their

responsibility (Locke, 1982: 17). Taylor's emphasis on scientific selection was an

impetus to the development of the fields of industrial psychology and personnel

management (ibid), being one of the sources of theories like Contemporary Human

Resource Management (CHRM) (Price, 2011: 8-9), one of the most dominant

approaches to people management throughout the world (ibid: 3). CHRM´s

responsibilities involve, among others, job design, staff selection, training and

motivation and job performance criteria, all of which were Taylor’s contributions (Bell

and Martin, 2012: 107).

Thus, following Taylor’s ideas, organizations in our days make huge efforts to

“hire the right people to a position” and to train them to develop their skills (Mckinnon,

2010: 1). One example could be human resources policies in consulting firms, which

focus on hiring unexperienced workers with great potential and, then, train and develop

their skills so that they can make very valuable workers for a low cost (Babío et al,

2007: 50).

3. “Bringing the scientifically designed job and the scientifically designed

workers together” (Rollinson, 2005: 9).

This Principle translates into ensuring that all work is done in accordance to the

principles of the developed science. Even though the basic job of a manager is to

guarantee that an organization achieves its goals, a key aspect to take into account is

making sure that employees are performing their tasks so that they contribute to the

accomplishment of organization’s goals (Certo, 2003: 3-4), and this involves

monitoring performance and making the necessary corrections (ibid: 11).

Seeing that we cannot assure everything is done as it should be just by

establishing an efficient way to do it, supervision seems basic and crucial to modern

organizations, as it is performance appraisal, which also has its roots in Scientific

Management (Bell & Martin, 2012: 107).


4. “Divide up the actual work of the organisation between management and

workers” (Rollinson, 2005: 9).

Here, Taylor wanted to separate the “thinking” (planning and controlling tasks,

performed by the managers, the superior part of the organisation) from the “doing” (the

more menial physical tasks, carried out by workers) (Rollinson, 2005: 10). By that way,

soldiering, “the practice of working as a much slower pace than the one of which a

person is capable of” (ibid), will be tackled, since workers would carry out their tasks

efficiently because the responsibility of “thinking” would have been removed (ibid).

However, following this thoughts, organizations were viewed as a machine in

which processes were considered important, whereas workers were treated as passive

elements of them (Burrell & Morgan, 1979: 127.). This resulted in dehumanizing

employees (Morgan, 2006: 28), which led to discouragement of workers, a decline in

job satisfaction and numerous strikes (Rollinson, 2005: 10). Consequently, efficiency

decreased and workers were “denigrated” and “deskilled” (Nyland, 1996: 985).

Nevertheless, this separation somehow happens in modern organizations, since

usually, in large businesses, the head (directors) attends to general strategic matters such

as setting the direction of the organization (“thinking”) while all the remaining work is

attended to by the other departments (“working”) (Caldari, 2007: 67). Furthermore,

scientific managers of today must behave a bit like Taylor, studying their own

organizations and designing processes to make their workers effective perform in our

times of rapid change (Freedman, 1992: 37, citing Senge, 1990).

Beyond the four principles, there are other trends related to the matter and

important to mention. These are Total-Quality Management (TQM), Knowledge

Management (KM), Lean Production (LP) and Management By Objectives (MBO). The

first and the second can be described, respectively, as “a comprehensive, organisation-

wide effort that is an integrated and interfunctional mean of improving the quality of

products and services and of sustaining competitive advantage” (Holmann et al, 2005:

2), and a “the use of practices, particularly IT-based technologies and community and

network-based practices to centralise, collectivise and create knowledge so that it can be

exploited to increase organisational performance and to develop new opportunities”


(ibid). The third and the last can be defined as “an integrated system of production with

a single production flow that is pulled by the customer and emphasis on small batch

manufacture, just-in-time, team-based work and participation, to eliminate non-value-

adding activities and variabilities” (ibid) and “a process whereby the superior and

subordinate managers of an organization jointly identify its common goals, define each

individual’s major area of responsibility in terms of result expected, and use these

measurements as guides for operating the unit and assessing the contribution each of its

members” (Kondrasuk, 1981, citing Odiorne, 1979).

TQM is notably influenced by Taylorism, since its work is sometimes designed

and deliberaly organized to put pressure on employees to produce every second

(Rollinson, 2005: 32), reduces worker’s autonomy (ibid) and incorporates many

Scientific Management ideas related to process management and structural

reorganization (Guillen, 1975: 75). KM, employed as a strategy of consultancy

companies like Accenture or Deloitte (Willson, 2002: 1), has its roots in Taylor’s

Scientific Management (ibid), although it encompasses a wide range of different

approaches and it is a much broader-based movement than Taylor’s theory (Holmann et

al, 2005: 134). LP includes the “practice of the organizational principles of Fordism

under conditions in which management prerogatives are largely unlimited”, and

represents “an extension of the sphere of influence of scientific management.” (Guillen,

1994: 75, citing Dohse et al., 1985). Finally, MBO “did not go beyond the principles of

Scientific Management, because managers who applied it were unwilling to reverse

Taylorism, surrender power and synthesize planning and performing” (Waring, 1992:

235). Yet this author went beyond that and portrayed MBO as a “reborn and

transformed Taylorism” (ibid: 236).

3. Conclusion.

To sum up, and as it can be inferred from my earlier remarks, the principles of

Taylor’s Scientific Management are present in current management organizational

practices to a great extent. These principles are so deeply rooted in our understanding of

work organization that they are very hard to identify and separate from modern

managerial practices (Rousseau, 2012: 398).


Even though Scientific Management can be considered useless because of its

inflexibility to react to changes generated by technology, competition, and international

trade agreements (Hodgetts, 1995: 222), most of his insights are still valid today

(Locke, 1982: 23), as they “remain relevant to everyday business operations” (Bell &

Martin, 2012: 107, citing Payne et al, 2006).

However, as “management models are adopted in practice only when institutional

circumstances conspire with them” (Guillen, 1994: 75), managers should try not to

embrace Taylor’s principles fully, but to understand them and learn from their insights,

due to their big influence in the modern workplace.

4. List of References.

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políticas de recursos humanos como creadoras de capital intelectual: el caso de la

consultoría en Europa. In El comportamiento de la empresa ante entornos

dinámicos: XIX Congreso anual y XV Congreso Hispano Francés de AEDEM.

Asociación Española de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa (AEDEM).

Bakan, J. (2004). The corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power. New

York: Free Press.

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