Реферат: Two approches to the scientific management

Project done by Tsingovatova ElenaTWO APPROCHES TO THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENTHistorical Review of the Principals of Management

The traditional model characterisedas  administration under «the formalcontrol of political leadership, based on a strictly hierarchical model ofbureaucracy, staffed by permanent, neutral and anonymous officials, motivatedonly by the public interest, serving any governing party equally and  not contributing to policy but merelyadministering those policies decided by the politicians» (PublicManagement and Administration and Introduction by Owen E Huges, p.23).

By the 1920s this model was fullyformed and continued with extremely little change for at least fifty years.«Young» practitioners were  soassured of their theories and they believed that the improvement of governmentand its administration would promote a better life for all.

After the critique of the theory ofthe separation between administration and politics considered as the myth totolerate that politicians  andadministrators could be separated, the argument took place between scholars ofpublic administration.

Nevertheless  the political control and the theoreticalbasis of the bureaucracy were thoroughly established and unchanged, there werepublic sector adaptations of management theory. The row of imports from theprivate sector took place and the most important  is the scientific management. That wasexplained by pretending that Public Management is able to be non-political andhence the operational methods used in the public sector would be  the same as those used in the private sector.

But the larger waste is still humanresources, like human efforts, which go on every day through such of our actsas are blundering, ill-directed or inefficient, and which referred to as a lackof «national efficiency».

Scientific Management School

The basic assumption  of this school is the philosophy thatworkers, at the operational  level, areeconomically motivated and that they will put forth their best efforts if theyare rewarded financially. The emphasis is on maximum output with minimumstrain, eliminating waste and efficiency. The work of Frederick WinslowTaylor  dominates the thinking of this«school».

Biography of F.Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915)  was a mechanical engineer whose writings onefficiency and scientific management were widely read. Taylor devised thesystem he called scientific management,a form of industrial engineering that established the organisation ofwork.  The main goal of his theory was toincrease productivity. And at the same time he did not favour unions orindustrial democracy. That's why his theory is regarded as authoritarian styleof administration.

Efficiency was the most important theme of Taylor's works. As a steelworks manager in Philadelphia, he was interested in knowing how to get morework out of workers, who are «naturally lazy and engage in systematicsoldiering.» This attitude, he found, was contributed to by poormanagement. He observed «when a naturally energetic man works for a fewdays beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable. „Whyshould I work hard when the lazy fellow gets the same pay that I do and doesonly half as much work?“.  Heproposed using scientific research methods to discover the one best way to do ajob.

Taylor's efforts were resented by unions and managers alike: managersbecause their intuition and discretion were challenged, unions because theirroles were questioned. Taylor was fired from his original job in Philadelphia.He then went to Bethlehem Steel, where he again was fired after three years.The unions, indignant by this time, were instrumental in getting his methodsinvestigated by a special congressional committee; they succeeded in forbiddingthe use of „stop watches“ and „bonuses“ in army arsenalsuntil World War II. However, his concepts spread to Europe and Great Britainand received impetus in the Soviet Union after the Revolution. Many maintainthat this movement represents techniques only and „hinders“ thedevelopment of a philosophy.

Conception of Frederic Taylor

Tayrol's attitude toward work wasthat man and machine are similar. He stated that „it is no single element,but rather this whole combination, that constitutes scientific management, whichmay be summarised as: Science, not rule of thumb; Harmony, not discord;Co-operation, not individualism; Maximum output, in place of restricted output;The Development of each man to his greatest efficiency and prosperity.“

Taylor believed that the bestmanagement is the true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, andprinciples of scientific management which are applicable to all kinds of humanactivities, from our simple individual acts to the work of our greatcorporations, which call for the most elaborate co-operation. He also believedthat  whenever these principles correctlyapplied, results must follow which are truly.

Taylor expounded several basicprinciples:

1)To gather all traditionalknowledge and classify, tabulate, and reduce it to rules, laws, and formulas soas to help workers in their daily work.

2)To develop a science of eachelement of man's work to replace the rule-of-thumb method.

3)To scientifically select and thentrain, teach, and develop the worker.

4) To co-operate with workers toensure is done according to developed science principles.

5) To effect an almost equaldivision of work and responsibility between workers and managers are to begiven work for which they are best fitted, as are employees.

He felt that faster work could be assured only through:

1)enforcedstandardisation of methods
2)enforced adaptation of best instruments and working conditions
3)enforced co-operation

Scientific management as a processinvolves:

1) time-and-motion studies to decidea standard for working;

2) a wage-incentive system that wasa modification of the piecework method already in existence;

3)changing the functionalorganisation.

Although he hasn't inventedtime-and-motion studies but did carry them out more  thoroughly than predecessors.

Among the experiments he performed to prove his theory were:

1. Work study:
One experiment detailed movements of workers in a shop and suggested short cutsor more efficient ways of performing certain operations. Within three years theoutput of the shop had doubled.

2. Standardised tools for shops:
In another area he found that the coal shovels being used weighed from 16 to 38pounds. After experimenting, it was found that 21-22 pounds was the bestweight. Again, after three years 140 men were doing what had previously beendone by between 400 and 600 men.

3. Selection and training of workers:
Taylor insisted that each worker be assigned to do what he was best suited forand that those who exceeded the defined work be paid „bonuses.“ Production,as might be expected, rose to an all-time high.

Taylor, as a result of these experiments, advocated assignment ofsupervisors by „function“ — that is, one for training, one fordiscipline, etc. This functional approach is evident today in many organisations,including libraries.

Taylor took many of his concepts from the bureaucratic model developedby Max Weber, particularly in regard to rules and procedures for the conduct ofwork in organisations. Weber, the first to articulate a theory of authoritystructure in organisations, distinguished between power and authority, betweencompelling action and voluntary response. He identified three characteristicswhich aided authority:

1) charisma(personality)
2) tradition (custom)
3) bureaucracy (through rules and regulations)

The concept of bureaucracy developed about the same time as scientificmanagement, and thoughts on specialisation of work, levels of authority, andcontrol all emerged from Weber's writings. Weber was more concerned with the structureof the organisation in which people perform their work roles, rather than withthe individual. Most of his writings and research related to the importance ofspecialisation in labour, regulations and procedures, and the advantages of ahierarchical system in making informed decisions.

Luther Gulick and Lyndal Urvick's Principals of Administration

The culmination of the Principles ofAdministration Approach was the publication of Luther Gulick and LyndallUrwick's Papers on the Science of Administration. In that time, 1937, publicadministration scholars had come to believe in a static set of principles bywhich any organisation could be designed or its function improved. Theseprinciples, implied that organisations were very much like machines, and thatmanagers could follow a set of formulae to maximise their efficiency.

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick areknown in the world for the work „Notes on a Theory of Organization“issued in 1937. They developed the acronym POSDCORB to describe the administrativefunctions of managers.

POSDCORB stands for:

Planning      - Preparing methodical plans for managing programs;

Organising    — Creating the different sub-units of theorganisation;

Staffing         — Hiring competent employees to fillvacancies;

Directing       — Issuing directives with time andperformance criteria;

Co-ordinating- Interrelating employees' effort efficiently;

Reporting      — reports for superiors;

Budgeting      — Preparing and executing budgets.

Analysis of two stands

An often repeated criticism of thescientific management approach is that it overemphasised productivity andunderemphasised human nature. This criticism is well expressed by AmitaiEtzioni, who wrote that „although Taylor originally set out to study theinteraction between human characteristics and the characteristics of themachine, the relationship between these two elements which make up theindustrial work process, he ended up by focusing on a far more limited subject:the physical characteristics of the human body in routine jobs — e.g.,shovelling coal or picking up loads. Eventually Taylor came to view human andmachine resources not so much as mutually adapt able, but rather manfunctioning as an appendage to the industrial machine“. Similar criticismcould be levelled at other movements within the scientific management approach.The Scientific Management approach  directed to create scientific,specialized, technocratic environment which makes it clear how to be moreproductive and maximize rewards. But his theory can be seen as one-sided. Youcannot interpret the human being as a machine as it has it's own interest, it'sown needs, that the human being is a entity of the different moods andemotions. He hasn't  counted that themotivating factor for employees can be not only monetary, worker can bemotivated for example by the interest of working in the particular field (e.g.teachers do  not owe a lot of moneyfrom  their work but they are usuallymotivated by the interest working with people; e.g. some tourists guides alsodo not owe a lot of money but they are interested in meeting new people andtravelling), experience that he/she would gain through being on particularworking place (e.g. nurse doesn't get much money for her work, but  she wants to get more experience with time).It is also noted that 

design of work procedures is notpossible to establish in every field. 

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwicktried to establish principles ofmanagement to motivate worker they believed that economic efficiency rooted inhuman tendency toward rationality and order.

As with the Principles ofAdministration Approach, subsequent experience has shown public organisations,and the implementation process, to be far more complex than was imagined in1937.

The both of theories was searchingfor the „one best way of doing work“ for increasing of productivity,efficiency and effectiveness of completing any work. But implementation of each of them has limitedeffect on the productivity and depends on particular circumstances.

Not any of listed theories can beimplemented in modern society, specially in modern Public Administration, thereason for that is extremely complicated human relations. Public Administrationis a human science  therefore humanbehaviour plays the most important role in the subject of  PA.

Therefore, there is no use inimplementing of the considered theories of Science Management in practice. 

List ofBibliography used:

1. Lecturer Notes.

2. Owen E Huges Public Managementand Administration and Introduction, Great Britain: Macmillan PressLimited, 1994.

3. Public AdministrationBiographies www.usc.edu/.

4. THEORY AND ANALYSIS IN PUBLICADMINISTRATION

www.niu.edu/pub_ad/culhane/561.htm.

5. Scope and Theory Of PublicPolicy

www.gsu.edu/~padjem/PHDSYL.html.

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