frederick winslow taylor and the management science

7/31/2019 Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Management Science

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Frederick Winslow Taylor and the ManagementScience

By Theodoros PitikarisLuleå tekniska universitet

[email protected]

In 1911 Frederick Winslow Taylor had introduced the principals of ScientificManagement. In this paper the contribution Frederick Winslow to theScientific Management is presented. Furthermore the framework thatconstitutes the “Taylorism” (the methodology of Frederick Winslow Taylor)is proved.

Keyword: Management, Taylor, Taylorism, Management

Within Scientific Management we stand over the fundamental Taylor’sprinciples:

• clear delineation of authority• responsibility• separation of planning from operations• incentive schemes for workers• management by exception• task specialization

These ideas had been extended by Frank and Lillian Gilbert in order toinclude the law on human motivation (by Lillian Gilbert), followed by Ganttwho had mentioned the importance of time in scheduling and he introducedthe Gantt Graphs and Charles Bedaux.

After year of knowledge accumulation; nowadays we are able to clarify thecontribution of Taylor’s theory in modern organisational behaviour. Forinstance, we know that even in new ways of Entrepreneurship, like callcentres, there are specific constrains and directions, in forms of

organizational norms (i.e manual/how-to) which are used by employees(Accel-Team2004).

More strictly the affirmation practices are applied to Banking sector, within,a tight framework is enforced, by management team, to banks’employees. As a paradigm we can referee the loan market, where a loan isdifficult to be granted if certain criteria are not in power.

There are a variety of reasons that make “tailors”, still applicable in themodern management science:

1. Firstly, his assumptions about the motivation, management andorganisation are still in use: The domination of English-Saxony way of think via, the politico-economic reality what we used tocharacterise as pax Americana model (The USA’s Imperium) has



branches in worldwide level . We achieve homogeny that is so important,especially in Industry of services (Francis 1986).

Another important issue about Scientific Management is that we may deploybenchmarking tools in order to measure the labour capital efficiency, andspot advantages and weakness within a group (i.e F.W.Harris).

Furthermore, Organisation management is most of times, heavilyinfluenced by Operational Research as major tool to enforce the firm’sposition within the market that it operates, but also to increase the marginalIncome.

Finally thanks to computer technology we are able to create simulationmodels of management and production process, in order to enlighten in amore precise way the forecasts over market ecosystem developments.

Of course the form of Scientific Management, nowadays is far more

developed that what Taylor had introduced in 1911, but is undoubtedthat in the core of Management Science, is still alive the idea of increased production output via specialization. Still these ideas has nowbeen enriched with new understanding over the Diversity of leadership and Management, the benefits from the association todemocratically organised of labour unions, and the contribution ,towards the firm profitability, of the fair wages (Jacob 1998) and socialmarketing.

References

• Accel-Team(2004), Scientific Management,Aceel-Team corporation,Available from http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/index.html, LastAccessed 15/12/2004

• Francis, A. (1986). New technology at work . New York: ClarendonPress.

• Jacob, M. (1988). The cultural meaning of the scientificrevolution. New York: Clarendon Press

• Pitikaris. T, Papadourakis G.M, Nikitakis. M. “Information Literacy”,second International Conference “Industry Horizons”, Santorini 2004.

frederick winslow taylor and the management science

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