Impact of Taylor and Ford on Organizations Today - Essay Example

?Impact of Taylor and Ford on Organizations Today Scientific management is a well known approach towards management, and it can be traced back to thework of Fredrick Taylor and Henry Ford. Taylor believed that similar to the way that there is best machine to each job, so there is the best method that people should use to undertake their jobs. Fordism which picked up the name from its pioneer, Ford, involved mass consumption which is combined with mass production to produce widespread material advancement and sustained economic growth (Daft and Marcic, 2010). The paper elaborates the impacts of the scientific approach to management in today’s organizations and to the employee with respect to Taylor’s and Ford’s influence. The scientific approach had been quite significant during the industrialization era. However, in today’s organizations it is facing a decreasing impact owing to the knowledge of experienced managers that all situations and people should not be handled the same way. The emergence of numerous variables and environmental uncertainties has led many organizations to use the contingency approach. Scientific management aims to determine one best way for a job to be accomplished. Fredrick Taylor is a significant contributor to the development of this theory. His work at Midvale and Bethlehem Steel Industries stimulated the interest in him to improving efficiency. Taylor defined four principles of management which he sought would create mental revolution among the managers and workers (Cobley, 2009). His principles involved the development of a true science of management, scientific selection of workers, scientific education and development of workers and intimate friendly relationship between the workers and employers. Heames (2010) explains how using these principles enabled Taylor to define one best way for doing each job and achieve improvements in productivity, which was consistent in the range of 200 percent. He affirmed the role of workers to perform as they were instructed while the manager’s roles were to plan and control. The mass production model which bears the name of its pioneer, Ford, dates back to the first moving assembly lines creation that were put into action at Ford’s Model T plant. The labour productivity increased tenfold permitting stunning price cuts. This ensured mass manufacturing at a price low enough that a common man could afford to buy (Daft, 2010:97). Fordism production involved an intensified division of labour and increased coordination and mechanization of large-scale manufacturing to achieve a steady production flow. They also used less skilled labour to perform tasks that were least specified by the management. The control over the pace and intensity of work owing to the potential for heightened capitalist were inclusive to Fordism (Wagner, 2009). According to Frey (2008), separation of thinking and working is one of the impacts that resulted in the essence of Taylorism where managers had to decide what the workers should do. The worker would have got used to their action when they had thought of it and tried to improve on it (Down, 2012). The relationship between the worker and the manager known as social-technical relation has different demands in that the planning department wanted efficiency in the production process but the workers wanted to have commensurate payment. Although it improved efficiency and profitability to organizations while making the management’s systematic workers felt differently in terms of satisfaction and motivation (Frey, 2008:185). Workers and employer relation’s importance was recognized by Ford. He introduced an eight-hour workday and offered higher wages. This impacted on employee motivation, and thus job satisfaction. This, in turn, made workers to improve on their skills, quality of life and enhance job satisfaction (Pacharapha, 2012). In Fordism the management was considerably hierarchical, and the power of the company was only vested in the top management. Application of scientific principles on machines to increase efficiency made Taylor wish to do the same to the work process. This approach neglected the human element, and in effect the work process was converted from worker-machine relationship to two machines relationship (Cobley, 2009:53). As per Pacharapha (2012), theorists of scientific management assumed that employees desired to work with minimum effort while receiving more money. The theorists did not consider how the workers felt and what was likely to motivate them, leaving a high degree of job dissatisfaction among the workers. General Motors happened to be the first company that was forced into recognition of United Auto Workers (UAW) union after a sit-down strike closed its plants in Flint, Michigan 1937. Workers received more wages and benefits after a series of further battles. On the other Hand, consider the proof of New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., in Fremont. Paul Adler had to say that it had succeeded in employment of Taylor’s time-and-motion study on the factory, and, as a result, creating first-class quality productivity and, at the same time, increasing worker satisfaction and motivation. Taylorist procedures promoted learning in the organisation leading to steady improvement (Down, 2012). Carlton-Ford (2010:214) explains that waging systems that were non-incentive encouraged low productivity. If an employee receives a constant wage regardless of what they produce they will take care not to work excessively for fear that the improved pace will come to be the new standard. Also when workers are paid by the amount of work they do, they fear that their per-unit pay quantity will be decreased by the management. According to Taylor, workers waste considerable effort when they rely on the rule of thumb methods as compared to optimal work methods proposed by the scientific study (Daft, 2008:205). Taylorism is still applicable in today’s small and medium enterprises at their growth stage as well as new-born organisations. According to Wagner (2009), just like the way Taylor used time studies to dissolve a job into components, managers in businesses continuously try to be strict by limiting the time and keeping a record of the details when a process or an activity is performed to increase the productivity. To improve on their approach managers today develop systems that offer incentives to those employees who perform above laid-down standards. Insurance and property agents use bonus structure among other principles that are based on this system (Edmondson, 2012). The rising of different technologies has imposed many kinds of demands which have to be adopted by organizations through various approaches, and this breeds the contingency approach to management (Daft, 2010:113). The contingency approach views management from quite a different angle than the scientific school of management. The scientific school whose principal contributors were Taylor and Ford proposed the application of similar methods in every organisational situation which are termed as one-best-way management principles. However, most experienced managers are aware that not all situations and people should be handled in the same manner (Daft, 2010). Therefore, a contingency management’s task is to look for the most favourable alternative to handling issues. Many economists, technologists and business consultants predict that information technology would increase dynamism in various labour aspects; for example, resulting to self-managed work teams and decentralized decision making processes (Wagner, 2009:237-290). Reengineering is an example of a business process computerization that has made work easier for lower and middle-level employees. It encompasses digital monitoring that ensures that the set rules are obeyed. Bargaining power of employees is weakened by this regime which undermines employee security in the process (Frey, 2008:413). Increased growth of knowledge in fields related to health care, technology, science as well as engineering has made today’s work place much more different than the manufacturing era of Ford and Taylor (Heames, 2010). Edmondson (2012) says that most experienced leaders and managers understand that organizations that do not learn are left behind by their competitors who are more innovative and adaptive. So in such dynamic environments, successful organizations need to be managed, not as intricate controlled machines, but rather like complex adaptive systems (97). According to Edmondson (2012), change in response to both external and internal stimulants is the way that complex adaptive systems self regulate. Diversity in Ford and Taylor’s approach and the contingency approach regard productivity, organization, employees and ways of achieving set goals. Today’s society prefers the contingency approach which is commonly applied than the scientific approach; this is because of increasing variety of variables and uncertainties in an organisational environment that influence decision making patterns. Taylor’s perspective of making workers to perform more like machines did not give room for talented workers to do what could best, however, current managers understand this aspect. References Carlton-Ford, S. & Ender, M.G. (2010) The routledge handbook of war and society: iraq and Afghanistan, Taylor & Francis. Cobley, E. (2009) Modernism and the culture of efficiency: ideology and fiction, University of Toronto Press. Daft, R.L. & Marcic, D. (2010) Understanding management: available titles coursemate, Cengage Learning. Daft, R.L. (2008) The new era of management, Cengage Learning EMEA. Down, S. (2012) ‘A historiographical account of workplace and organizational ethnography’ Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 1, no. 1. Edmondson, A.C. & Edgar, H.S. (2012) Teaming: how organizations learn, innovate, and compete in the knowledge economy john, Wiley & Sons. Frey, R.S. (2008) Successful proposal strategies for small businesses: using knowledge management to win government, private sector, and international contacts, Artech House Heames, J.T. & Breland, J.W. (2010) ‘Management pioneer contributors’ Journal of management History, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 57-74. Pacharapha, T. & Ractham, V.V. (2012) ‘Knowledge acquisition: the roles of perceived value of knowledge content and source’ Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 16, no. 5. Wagner, J.A. & Hollenbeck, J.R. (2009) Organizational behavior: securing competitive advantage, Taylor & Francis. Read More