Scientific management school pdf

Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. In its everyday employment, management or managing is now listed as one of the most important human activities. Ever since people began forming groups to achieve the ends that they otherwise could not as individuals, managing began to be seen as essential to ensure the coordination of individual efforts. It is difficult to define management as it is a highly contested concept and there exists no universally-accepted definition of it.

But common to all its definitions is the contention that management involves both, the determination and the accomplishment of organizational goals. It is widely regarded as a technique by means of which the purpose and objectives of a particular human group are determined, clarified and effected. Management has been professed in two different ways- as an art and as a science.

Pioneers of Scientific Management, like Frederick W. Taylor, Henry Gantt, Henry Fayol, Frank and Lillian Gilberts, rejected the contention of management being an art and believed that the management process could be translated into a set of methodologies and techniques which could be learned and communicated.

In this regard, management has developed certain principles, laws and generalizations which are universal in nature and can be applied under similar circumstances of the organizational environment. The real beginning of science of management did not occur until the last decades of the 19th century. Brandies who is believed to have used it in the USA in , the philosophy as such owes its origin to F.

Scientific Management can be explained as the thoughtful and systematic approach to the job of management as contrasted with hit or miss rule of thumb. It stresses rationality, predictability, specialisation and technical competence. The Scientific Management school is primarily attributed to the ideas of Frederick W.

Significant Figureheads in the domain of Scientific Management. Gantt, and Harrington Emerson. In the formulation and development of the scientific approach to management, the name of Charles Babbage of England cannot be ignored. Babbage, the mathematician and philosopher, observed British industry from almost half a century earlier than Taylor and initiated the scientific study of management in industry.

There remains no doubt that Babbage was one of the early pioneers of management thought, but his impact on the industry as a whole remained meagre.

Born in of well-to-do parents, Frederick Winslow Taylor gave up going to college and started out as apprentice and machinist in , joined the Midvale Steel Works in Philadelphia as a machinist in , and rose to the position of chief engineer after earning a degree in engineering through evening study.

He himself invented a cutting tool, a method of heat-treating tool steel, a steel hammer, hydraulic power loading machine and turning mills. Retired from working in , Taylor devoted his time for research improving upon the techniques of scientific management till his death in Gantt is best known for his development of graphic methods of depicting plans and making possible better managerial control. He emphasized the importance of time as well as cost in planning and controlling work.

Frank and Lillian Gilberth, as husband and wife duo, contributed extensively towards the concept of scientific management and were primarily responsible for analysis of time and motion study of workers, thus improving upon time and motion elements by eliminating unnecessary motions.

They were also responsible for other management tools such as the process chart, flow diagrams, and merit rating system for employees. Harrington Emerson emphasized the great productivity of correct organization and propounded twelve principles of efficiency. Gantt, Emerson and Frank and Lillian Gilberth were also among the immediate disciples of Taylor, to mention only a few. Increase in the rate of production by use of standardized tools, equipment and methods. Improvement in the quality of the output by research, quality control and inspection devices.

Reduction in the costs of production by rational planning, regulation and cost control techniques. Elimination of wastes in the use of resources and methods of manufacturing. Placement of the right person on the right job through scientific selection and training. Relating wage payments to the efficiency of the workers. Employees must obey, but this is two-sided: employees will only obey orders if management play their part by providing good leadership.

Each worker should have only one boss with no other conflicting lines of command. People engaged in the same kind of activities must have the same objectives in a single plan. This is essential to ensure unity and coordination in the enterprise.

Unity of command does not exist without unity of direction but does not necessarily flows from it. Management must see that the goals of the firms are always paramount. Payment is an important motivator although by analyzing a number of possibilities, Fayol points out that there is no such thing as a perfect system. This is a matter of degree depending on the condition of the business and the quality of its personnel.

A hierarchy is necessary for unity of direction. But lateral communication is also fundamental, as long as superiors know that such communication is taking place. Scalar chain refers to the number of levels in the hierarchy from the ultimate authority to the lowest level in the organization. It should not be over-stretched and consist of too-many levels.

Both material order and social order are necessary. The former minimizes lost time and useless handling of materials. The latter is achieved through organization and selection. Treating employees well is important to achieve equity. Employees work better if job security and career progress are assured to them. An insecure tenure and a high rate of employee turnover will affect the organization adversely.

Allowing all personnel to show their initiative in some way is a source of strength for the organization. Management must foster the morale of its employees. Max Weber outlined the key characteristics of a bureaucracy: 1. However, they are all inventions organizations did not always have these features. Today we also think of bureaucracies as inefficient, slow and generally bad. In Weber's time, they were seen as marvelously efficient machines that reliably accomplished their goals.

And in fact, bureaucracies did become enormously successful, easily outcompeting other organization forms such as family businesses and adhocracies. They also did much to introduce concepts of fairness and equality of opportunity into society, having a profound effect on the social structure of nations. However, bureaucracies are better for some tasks than others. In particular, bureaucracies are not well-suited to industries in which technology changes rapidly or is not yet well-understood.

Bureaucracies excel at businesses involving routine tasks that can be well-specified in writing and don't change quickly. Since he was German, he was very familiar with Moltke's development of the General Staff see course packet material on 19th Century Bureaucracies. Furthermore, Germany had been an early leader in developing a civil service.

At the same time, German industry was beginning to adopt the organizational methods developed in the United States. Surveying this scene, Weber attempted to isolate the elements common to all of these new organizations. Weber concluded that all these new large-scale organizations were similar.

Each was a bureaucracy. Weber's purpose, however, was to define the essential features of new organizations and to indicate why these organizations worked so much better than traditional ones. Let us examine the features that Weber found in bureaucracies.

Above all, Weber emphasized that bureaucratic organizations were an attempt to subdue human affairs to the rule of reason-to make it possible to conduct the business of the organization "according to calculable rules.

He wrote: "The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any former organization. The fully developed bureaucratic mechanism compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with non-mechanical modes of production. We have already met them: 1 functional specialization 2 clear lines of hierarchical authority, 3 expert training of managers, and 4 decision making based on rules and tactics developed to guarantee consistent and effective pursuit of organizational goals.

Weber noted additional features of rational bureaucracies that are simple extensions of the four just outlined, To ensure expert management, appointment and promotion are based on merit rather than favoritism, and those appointed treat their positions as full- time, primary careers.

To ensure order in decision making, business is conducted primarily through written rules records, and communications. Weber's idea of functional specialization applies both to persons within an organization and to relations between larger units or divisions of the organization.

Within a Swift packing plant, work was broken down into many special tasks, and employees were assigned to one or a few such tasks, including the tasks involved in coordinating the work of others. Such coordination is called administration or management. Furthermore, Swift was separated into a number of divisions, each specializing in one of the tasks in the elaborate process of bringing meat from the ranch to the consumer.

Weber argued that such specialization is essential to a rational bureaucracy and that the specific boundaries separating one functional division from another must be fixed by explicit rules, regulations, and procedures.

For Weber it was self-evident that coordinating the divisions of large organizations requires clear lines of authority organized in a hierarchy. That means there are clear "levels of graded authority. Furthermore, hierarchical authority is required in bureaucracies so that highly trained experts can he properly used as managers.

It does little good to train someone to operate a stockyard, for example, and then have that manager receive orders from someone whose training is in advertising. Rational bureaucracies can be operated, Weber argued, only by deploying managers at all levels who have been selected and trained for their specific jobs. Gantt melakukan penyempurnaan dengan memperkenalkan sitem bonus harian dan bonus ekstra untuk para pengawas pabrik. Setiap kemajuan karyawan dicatat pada kartu individual, untuk menilai kinerja karyawan tersebut.

Feed back dari karyawan sangat diperlukan sebagai tindak lanjut atas penilaian kinerja yang diberikan oleh perusahaan. Kemudian The Gilbreths yaitu Frank B. Gilbreth dan Lilian Gilbreth memunculkan konsep baru berupa gerakan dan kelelahan saling berkaitan sehingga setiap langkah yang dapat menghasilkan gerak dapat mengurangi kelelahan.

Hal tersebut dapat meningkatkan semangat karyawan dalam bekerja. Selain konsep tersebut, The Gilbreths mengemukakan konsep Three position plan of promotion yaitu karyawan memiliki 3 peran sebagai pelaku, pelajar dan pelatih yang selalu mencari kesempatan baru.

Karyawan dalam melakukan pekerjaannya berusaha mempersiapkan diri untuk mencapai posisi jabatan yang baru dan secara bersamaan, karyawan juga melatih calon penggantinya. Dalam konsep scientific management harus dipelajari kepribadian dan kebutuhan masing-masing karyawan.

Namun scientific management mempunyai berbagai keterbatasan dalam implementasi di lapangan antara lain karena peningkatan produktivitas tidak disertai dengan peningkatan pendapatan yang layak bagi karyawan, upah yang tinggi dan kondisi kerja yang baik sebenarnya tidak dipengaruhi oleh peningkatan laba perusahaan, masih jauhnya hubungan antara manajer dan karyawan, adanya pengabaian faktor frustasi dan ketegangan yang dialami karyawan ketika tidak dapat memenuhi kebutuhan sosialnya, dan pengabaian kebutuhan manusia untuk mendapatkan kepuasan hasil kerja.

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