Scientific management
Taylor believed that the industrial management of his day was amateurish, that management could be formulated as an academic discipline, and that the best results would come from the partnership between a trained and qualified management and a cooperative and innovative workforce. Each side needed the other, and there was no need for
trade unions.
Taylor's approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism. Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:
1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
Managers and workers
Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system:
It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.
Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. According to Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks.
'I can say, without the slightest hesitation,' Taylor told a congressional committee, 'that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron. The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. The strike at
Watertown Arsenal led to the congressional investigation in 1912. Taylor believed the laborer was worthy of his hire, and pay was linked to productivity. His workers were able to earn substantially more than those in similar industries and this earned him enemies among the owners of factories where scientific management was not in use.
Fayolism is one of the first comprehensive statements of a general theory of management, developed by the
French management theorist
Henri Fayol (1841–1925): one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management,
Fayol has proposed that there are five primary functions of management: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) commanding, (4) coordinating, and (5) controlling (Fayol, 1949, 1987). Controlling is described in the sense that a manager must receive feedback on a process in order to make necessary adjustments.
Fayol's work has stood the test of time and has been shown to be relevant and appropriate to contemporary management. Many of today’s management texts including Daft (2005) have reduced the five functions to four:
(1) Planning,
(2) Organizing,
(3) Leading, and
(4) Controlling.
Draft’s text is organized around Fayol's four functions.
The 6 types of Operations
For Fayol any Organization can be subdivided into six types of Operations. Each Operation being fulfilled by its corresponding Essential Function:
1. Technical Operations (production, manufacturing, transformation)
2. Commercial Operations (purchases, sales, exchanges)
3. Financial Operations (seek for capital and finance management)
4. Security Operations (protection of goods and people)
5. Accounting Operations (balance, P&L, cost control, statistics, etc)
6. Administrative' Operations (Management)
Fayol redefine the function of administration (Administration Industrielle et Generale).
The old definition went as follows: The activities involved in businesses can all be classified under one of the following six headings:
TECHNICAL, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, SECURITY, ACCOUNTING, ADMINISTRATIVE organization, command, coordination and control. Compared with the new definition: The activities involved in businesses can all be classified under one of the following five headings: TECHNICAL, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, SECURITY, ACCOUNTING These activities must be planned, organized, directed, coordinated and controlled, in a word: administered. The removal of the distinction between management and administration and the re-definition of administration, it appears that Fayol had finally synthesized these two concepts. Therefore the previous difficulties with this distinction no longer exist
The 5 Elements of Administration
Popularized by Fayol with the acronym of POCCC:
1. Planning' (to foresee/anticipate and make plans)
2. Organization (to provide the Function with all is needed for its smooth running: Supplies, Tools, Funding, Employees)
3. Commandment (to lead the people employed by the organization)
4. Coordination (to harmonize all actions of an Organization in order to facilitate its smooth running and success)
5. Control (to verify if everything happens in accordance with defined plans, orders given, and accepted principles)
The word Control clearly provoked some misunderstanding by English-readers because its 1st meaning in French is "to check" and its 2nd meaning is "to have a grip over". And it is the other way round in English. So for the French-reader Fayol clearly meant "Check everything!"
The 14 Principles of Administration
1. Division of work: Reduces the span of attention or effort for any one person or group. Develops practice or routine and familiarity.
2. Authority: "The right to give orders. Should not be considered without reference to responsibility."
3. Discipline: "Outward marks of respect in accordance with formal or informal agreements between a firm and its employees."
4. Unity of command: "One man one superior!"
5. Unity of direction: "One head and One plan for a group of activities with the same objective."
6. Subordination of Individual Interests to the Common Interest: "The interests of one individual or group should not prevail over the general or common good."
7. Remuneration of personnel: "Pay should be fair to both the worker as well as the organization."
8. Centralization: "Is always present to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the size of the company and the quality of its managers."
9. Scalar chain: "The line of authority from top to bottom of the organization."
10. Order: "A place for everything and everything in its right place; ie. The right man in the right place."
11. Equity: "A combination of kindness and justice towards employees."
12. Stability of personnel tenure: "Employees need to be given time to settle in to their jobs, even though this may be a lengthy period in the case of some managers."
13. Initiative: "Within the limits of authority and discipline, all levels of staff should be encouraged to show initiative."
14. Esprit de corps (Union is strength): "Harmony is a great strength to an organization; teamwork should be encouraged."
Fayol suggested that it is important to have unity of command: a concept that suggests there should be only one supervisor for each person in an organization. Like Socrates, Fayol suggested that management is a universal human activity that applies equally well to the family as it does to the corporation.
Hawthorne effect
The
Hawthorne effect is a form of
reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied, not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.
The term was coined in 1955 by Henry A. Lands berger
when analyzing older experiments from 1924-1932 at the
Hawthorne Works (a
Western Electric manufacturing facility outside Chicago). Hawthorne Works had commissioned a study to see if its workers would become more productive in higher or lower levels of light. The workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made and slumped when the study was concluded. It was suggested that the productivity gain was due to the motivational effect of the interest being shown in them. Although illumination research of workplace lighting formed the basis of the Hawthorne effect, other changes such as maintaining clean work stations, clearing floors of obstacles, and even relocating workstations resulted in increased productivity for short periods. Thus the term is used to identify any type of short-lived increase in productivity.
Relay assembly experiments
In one of the studies, experimenters chose two women as test subjects and asked them to choose four other workers to join the test group. Together the women worked in a separate room over the course of five years (1927-1932) assembling telephone relays.
Output was measured mechanically by counting how many finished relays each dropped down a chute. This measuring began in secret two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they had a supervisor who discussed changes with them and at times used their suggestions. Then the researchers spent five years measuring how different variables impacted the group's and individuals' productivity. Some of the variables were:
- changing the pay rules so that the group was paid for overall group production, not individual production
- Giving two 5-minute breaks (after a discussion with them on the best length of time), and then changing to two 10-minute breaks (not their preference).
- Productivity increased, but when they received six 5-minute rests, they disliked it and reduced output.
- providing food during the breaks
- Shortening the day by 30 minutes (output went up); shortening it more (output per hour went up, but overall output decreased); returning to the first condition (where output peaked).
Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. However it is said that this is the natural process of the human being to adapt to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought that they were being monitored individually.
Researchers hypothesized that choosing one's own coworkers, working as a group, being treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase. One interpretation, mainly due to
Elton Mayo,
was that "the six individuals became a team and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment." (There was a second relay assembly test room study whose results were not as significant as the first experiment.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in
psychology, proposed by
Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper
A Theory of Human Motivation.
Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate
curiosity.
Physiological needs
For the most part, physiological needs are obvious - they are the literal requirements for human survival. If these requirements are not met (with the exception of
clothing and
shelter), the human body simply cannot continue to function.
Physiological needs include:
The urge to have sex is so powerful that it can drain psychic energy away from other necessary goals. Therefore every culture has to invest great efforts in rechanneling and restraining it, and many complex social institutions exist only in order to regulate this urge. The saying that "love makes the world go round" is a polite reference to the fact that most of our deeds are impelled, either directly or indirectly, by sexual needs. —
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal ExperienceSafety needs
With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs take precedence and dominate behavior. These needs have to do with people's yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare. In the world of work, these safeties needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for
job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies, and the like.
For most of human history many individuals have found their safety needs unmet, but as of 2009 "First World" societies provide most with their satisfaction, although the poor - both those who are poor as a class and those who are temporarily poor (university students would be an example) - must often still address these needs.
Safety and Security needs include:
- Personal security
- Financial security
- Health and well-being
- Safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts
Social needs
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social and involves feelings of
belongingness. This aspect of Maslow's hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as:
Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group, such as clubs, office culture,
religious groups, professional organizations, sports teams,
gangs ("
Safety in numbers"), or small social connections (family members, intimate partners, mentors, close colleagues, confidants). They need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to
loneliness,
social anxiety, and
clinical depression. This need for belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure; an anorexic, for example, may ignore the need to eat and the security of health for a feeling of control and belonging.
Esteem
All humans have a need to be respected and to have self-esteem and self-respect. Also known as the
belonging need, esteem presents the normal human desire to be accepted and valued by others. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem or an
inferiority complex. People with low self-esteem need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory, which again depends on others. Note, however, that many people with low self-esteem will not be able to improve their view of themselves simply by receiving fame, respect, and glory externally, but must first accept themselves internally. Psychological imbalances such as depression
can also prevent one from obtaining self-esteem on both levels.
Most people have a need for a stable self-respect and self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The higher one is the need for self-respect, the need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence and freedom. The latter one ranks higher because it rests more on inner competence won through experience. Deprivation of these needs can lead to an inferiority complex, weakness and helplessness.
Maslow stresses the dangers associated with self-esteem based on fame and outer recognition instead of inner competence. He sees healthy self-respect as based on earned respect.
Self-actualization
“What a man can be, he must be” This forms the basis of the perceived need for self-actualization. This level of need pertains to what a person's full potential is and realizing that potential. Maslow describes this desire as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. This is a broad definition of the need for self-actualization, but when applied to individuals the need is specific. For example one individual may have the strong desire to become an ideal parent, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in another it may be expressed in painting, pictures, or inventions. As mentioned before, in order to reach a clear understanding of this level of need one must first not only achieve the previous needs, physiological, safety, love, and esteem, but master these needs. Below are Maslow’s descriptions of a self-actualized person’s different needs and personality traits.
Maslow was a professor of Dr. Wayne Dyer. Dyer suggests that Maslow taught him two ways of understanding self-actualization: 1) To be free of the good opinion of others. 2) To do things not simply for the outcome but because it's the reason you are here on earth.
McGregor and Maslow's hierarchy
McGregor's work was based on
Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He grouped Maslow's hierarchy into "lower order" (Theory X) needs and "higher order" (Theory Y) needs. He suggested that management could use either set of needs to motivate employees. As management theorists became familiar with Maslow's work, they soon realized the possibility of connecting higher level needs to worker motivation. If organizational goals and individual needs could be integrated so that people would acquire self-esteem and, ultimately, self-actualization through work, then motivation would be self-sustaining. Today, his Theory Y principle influences the design of personnel policies, affects the way companies conduct performance reviews, and shapes the idea of pay for performance. According to the
Douglas McGregor: Theory X and Theory Y article, "He is the reason we use the term 'human resources' instead of personnel department" says Brzezinski. "The idea that people are assets was unheard of before McGregor
Theory X and theory Y
Theory X
In this theory, which has been proven counter-effective in most modern practice, management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can and that they inherently dislike work. As a result of this, management believes that workers need to be closely supervised and comprehensive systems of controls developed. A hierarchical structure is needed with narrow
span of control at each and every level. According to this theory, employees will show little ambition without an enticing incentive program and will avoid responsibility whenever they can. According to Michael J. Papa, if the organizational goals are to be met, theory X managers rely heavily on threat and coercion to gain their employee's compliance. Beliefs of this theory lead to mistrust, highly restrictive supervision, and a punitive atmosphere. The Theory X manager tends to believe that everything must end in blaming someone. He or she thinks all prospective employees are only out for themselves. Usually these managers feel the sole purpose of the
employee's interest in the job is money. They will blame the person first in most situations, without questioning whether it may be the system, policy, or lack of training that deserves the blame. A Theory X manager believes that his or her employees do not really want to work, that they would rather avoid responsibility and that it is the manager's job to structure the work and energize the employee. One major flaw of this management style is it is much more likely to cause
Diseconomies of Scale in large businesses. This theory is a negative view of employees.
Theory Y
In this theory, management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work duties. According to Papa, to them work is as natural as play. They possess the ability for creative problem solving, but their talents are underused in most organizations. Given the proper conditions, theory Y managers believe that employees will learn to seek out and accept responsibility and to exercise self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives to which they are committed. A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work. They believe that the satisfaction of doing a good job is a strong motivation. Many people interpret Theory Y as a positive set of beliefs about workers. A close reading of The Human Side of Enterprise reveals that McGregor simply argues for managers to be open to a more positive view of workers and the possibilities that this creates. He thinks that Theory Y managers are more likely than Theory X managers to develop the climate of trust with employees that are required for human resource development. It's here through human resource development that is a crucial aspect of any organization. This would include managers communicating openly with subordinates, minimizing the difference between superior-subordinate relationships, creating a comfortable environment in which subordinates can develop and use their abilities. This climate would include the sharing of decision making so that subordinates have say in decisions that influence them. This theory is a positive view to the employees.
Theory X and Theory Y combined
For McGregor, Theory X and Y are not different ends of the same continuum. Rather they are two different continua in themselves. Thus, if a manager needs to apply Theory Y principles, that does not preclude him from being a part of Theory X & Y.
Herzberg’s two-factor theory
The factors that motivate people can change over their lifetime, but "respect for me as a person" is one of the top motivating factors at any stage of life.
He distinguished between:
§ Motivators; (e.g. challenging work, recognition, responsibility) which give positive satisfaction, and The name Hygiene factors is used because, like hygiene, the presence will not make you healthier, but absence can cause health deterioration.
The theory is sometimes called the "Motivator-Hygiene Theory" and/or "The Dual Structure Theory."
Hertzberg’s theory has found application in such occupational fields as information systems and in studies of user satisfaction
The systems approach
The systems thinking approach incorporates several tenets:
- Interdependence of objects and their attributes - independent elements can never constitute a system
- Holism - emergent properties not possible to detect by analysis should be possible to define by a holistic approach
- Goal seeking - systemic interaction must result in some goal or final state
- Inputs and Outputs - in a closed system inputs are determined once and constant; in an open system additional inputs are admitted from the environment
- Transformation of inputs into outputs - this is the process by which the goals are obtained
- Entropy - the amount of disorder or randomness present in any system
- Regulation - a method of feedback is necessary for the system to operate predictably
- Hierarchy - complex wholes are made up of smaller subsystems
- Differentiation - specialized units perform specialized functions
- Equifinality - alternative ways of attaining the same objectives (convergence)
- Multifinality - attaining alternative objectives from the same inputs (divergence) Some examples:
Rather than trying to improve the braking system on a car by looking in great detail at the material composition of the brake pads (reductionist), the boundary of the braking system may be extended to include the interactions between the:
§ brake disks or drums
§ brake pedal sensors
§ hydraulics
§ driver reaction time
§ tires
§ road conditions
§ weather conditions
§ time of day
§ Using the tenet of "Multifinality", a supermarket could be considered to be:
§ a "profit making system" from the perspective of management and owners
§ a "distribution system" from the perspective of the suppliers
§ an "employment system" from the perspective of employees
§ a "materials supply system" from the perspective of customers
§ an "entertainment system" from the perspective of loiterers
§ a "social system" from the perspective of local residents
§ a "dating system" from the perspective of single customers
As a result of such thinking, new insights may be gained into how the supermarket works, why it has problems, how it can be improved or how changes made to one component of the system may impact the other components.
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