Scientific Management and Human Relations Management - Essay Example

Scientific Management and Human Relations Management The last few decades have seen the decline of traditional industries and the growth of the service sector across the globe. The conventional approaches of job and employee management continue to be relevant in the changed business scenario. Scientific management regarded employees as units of production and focused on process while human relations management focused on employees as social beings with complex desires. The two approaches are carried out in conjunction by corporate entities the world over. Scientific Management was introduced by Frederick W. Taylor to replace the old order of dictatorial management. He sought to ensure that the “Man at the head of the business under Scientific Management is governed by rules and laws which have been developed through hundreds of experiments”. Frederick Taylor propounded that the purpose of business was to secure “maximum prosperity” (3) for the employer and the workforce. “Maximum prosperity” was defined as “not only large dividends for the company or owner but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence so that the prosperity may be permanent.” Employees were to be developed to a state of maximum efficiency to do “the highest grade of work for which his natural abilities fit him.” The objectives of this style of management were to a) develop a science for each element of work, b) scientific selection and training workmen in line with inherent ability, c) cooperation between worker and management to ensure that work is done as per scientifically laid rules and d) equal division of work and responsibility between management and workmen. He felt that though his tenets seemed obvious, organizations were seeing the management and workforce in a state of ‘war’. This was particularly true with the industrial revolution attracting labour to industrialised areas where the working conditions were to the disadvantage of many. Underpaid and overworked by dictatorial owners whose sole intention was to make profits at any cost, the conditions were leading the workforce to belligerence. Another behavioural outcome of Taylorism was that of bureaucracy. Individual jobs were defined in detail and this led to workers opting to carry out no more than the task assigned. The scientific management approach to maximise profits with reduced costs encouraged high degrees of specialization as the route to improved productivity. The theory did not consider human attitude as a factor that affected productivity. Individual motivation was secondary to scientifically laid down processes which would lead to higher output. According to Jean-Louis Peaucelle, while Taylorism focused on producing more at reduced cost, post-Taylorism aimed at reduced delivery times, quality, diversity and flexibility with cost reduction. This gave rise to the evolution of practices like just-in-time management, business process re-engineering, simultaneous engineering and asynchronous teamwork across networks. Post-Taylorism introduced new process based concepts but did little to change the relation of the individual with the job. Taylorism focused on higher production at lower cost while post-Taylorism era demanded seamless internal working in order to satisfy customer expectations. Alongside the growth of the views of Scientific Management, pioneering work was conducted by Elton Mayo in a series of experiments at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electrical. The observations disclosed a link between productivity and employee motivation on the job. In his book, Human Relations in Management, George Henderson elaborates on the experiment that was carried out in an effort to find a relation between physical conditions of work and productivity. Two groups of employees were formed, the control group and the experimental group. Physical variables of heat, light and humidity were altered and the productivity measured. The production improved regardless of the changed conditions. A probe of attitudes of the workers revealed that a) they were relieved of the regular supervision and b) enjoyed the attention of the experimenters. “The results called attention to the significance of small-group processes in the workplace which exist informally outside the formal structure of an organisation.” (24) Thus, organisations started to give credence to employee needs for recognition of performance and the quality of interaction between managers and subordinates. The evolution of technology has led to companies across the world moving to reduce their human dependence by investing in the promise of automated systems. Businesses are focusing on the critical aspect of strategic management in an innovation-oriented economy. Global players have created a focus on maintaining sustainable competitive advantage stemming from uniqueness that competition is hard put to imitate. This has forced companies to look internally to simplify processes and increase effectiveness. As a part of this process, there has been a sweeping demand for technologically and technically savvy workers with strong communication skills. Human relations take on greater importance with the knowledge workforce being increasingly recognised as the competitive edge that is difficult to replicate. The knowledge workforce on its side prefers to be associated with a company that has ‘brand value’ and is recognised for its innovative approach to business. Traditional business managed human resources with pluralistic policies, convention, laid down practices and an unwillingness to set new precedents. As markets stagnated, the search for larger markets led to the spread of business to other parts of the world. The business spread geographically and set up operations in different countries to cater to local demand. This led to the development of internal technical support groups apart from customer support groups. However, advances in technology and telecommunications changed the need for this. Besides, globalisation and competitive pressure, made it less viable to provide local office support and large centralised cells were set up to work on a 24 hour shift and cater to demands from any part of the world. Countries like India and China had huge clusters of skilled labour that were technically sound and had a good work ethic and had labour laws that suited business needs. The higher earnings expected by local talent in developed countries made it attractive for organisations to employ cheaper labour from foreign shores to control overheads. The business scenario has changed over the years with multinational conglomerates choosing to move parts of the labour-intensive business processes to countries where labour laws are more business friendly. Skilled labour backed by sound education profiles has shifted to countries that provide job and monetary satisfaction, regardless of the stage of development. This has led to a mingling of cultures in the workplace. Developed countries that had hitherto seen huge migration efforts to their shores found that globalisation impacted local employment and forced people to find jobs away from their country of residence. Globalisation forced companies to be open to sourcing talent from any part of the globe in place of the earlier practice of local talent sourcing. The workforce is a mix of diverse cultures. Businesses developed quality measures for each aspect of the job that was taken over by a business process partner in foreign countries. Business Process Outsourcing has led to the use of the principles of Scientific Management to break jobs into their component parts and assign them appropriately. Performance parameters were drawn up to manage these jobs. Stringent internal quality control was made possible with use of scientifically taking a job and analysing it. Consider the job of a call centre operator, performance can be tracked to check speed of call handling, management of call at source , correct introduction and sign off and accurate data sharing. According to the tenets of scientific management, the longer an employee continues to do this job, the greater the efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The emotions of the person in relation with the job are not considered in this approach. However, the reality of pressing competition and dearth of available talent at a suitable value makes it necessary for the business to give credence to employee feelings of motivation. Businesses have incorporated the theory of increasing employee motivation with better communication, job design and recreation for increased productivity and cost benefit. The human relations approach has led to the incidence of team meetings and review meetings monitor performance and identify areas of concern. Communication between levels of employees to sort out inter-departmental differences is encouraged to empower the workforce. Decision making on routine issues is decentralised to enable de-fusing problems on the spot and an increased feeling of dependence. These measures are effective in increasing the feeling of involvement of team members and perspective sharing about the job. Fun events, workplace decoration events are conducted to provide a change from routine. Human relations theories come into play to manage the varied motivations of the culturally diverse workforce. Communication between supervisors and subordinates becomes an important aspect of managing the workforce. The human relations approach to induce inclusion and workplace harmony increase mutual appreciation and builds positive feelings among employees. Communication style is given importance since cultures that are highly expressive are likely to affect the motivation of colleagues from cultures that are prone to a feeling of shame in the face of impolite reactions. Cultural differences require a human relations approach that allows cohesion while accepting unique identities. This approach improve employee motivation and increased cultural pluralism. An important human relations theory businesses consider is Maslow’s theory of hierarchy. Joan Gallagos explains the Need theory put forth by Abraham Maslow as a hierarchy that, according to Maslow, moved from basic or psychological needs to safety and security needs to belongingness and on to ego-status needs to culminate in self-actualisation. “Maslow contended that we progress through this five-level need system in a hierarchical fashion”. (20) Human relations is the base for designing sophisticated retention measures to attract and retain talent. Clients who are outsourcing to other countries routinely check measures of quality, cost and employee retention as parameters to determine the management capability of the outsource partner. The business partner in turn increasingly demands returns on every dollar invested in human talent. The talented workforce on its part has become more demanding in the choice of work and pay. Training on current technology, soft skills and cultural diversity have gained importance as has skill utilisation. Human relations theories have also shown the way to make businesses share overall direction make employees feel important to the workplace. Opportunities are created to that cater to the individual sense of achievement, value addition to the job, idea generation and recognition for work done. Job security is assured for high value, consistently performing talent. F.W. Taylor’s theory of Scientific Management continues to hold good for units of work involving repetitive action. The supervisory role has changed beyond responsibility for output and extends to managing inter-departmental communication, reporting to different levels of the organisation, searching for newer and better ways to improve productivity and safety. Creative and managerial abilities are being developed to convert them into future managers. Earlier, one grew up the ranks into managerial positions, however, with the changing business scene, it has became necessary for organisations to consider employee preferences to stay away from growing the traditional way and grow along specially created paths that allow for technical specialisation. The aspect of providing jobs that satisfy the needs of the employees and providing recognition have became important to organisations. Another phenomenon that has grown is the incidence of entrepreneurial drive among managers and staff. The changing business scenario has increased the need for managers in organisations to look beyond the traditional scope of their job of planning and resource utilization. Client management, inter-department coordination, budgeting and cost control come under the purview of the manager’s responsibility since these have to be controlled at the point of frontline contact. Organisations are increasingly being forced to divest the decision-making to lower grades in the organisation and rely on stronger audit and clear policies to guide decentralised decision making. In certain businesses, policies that cater to individual needs have become common. The manager is expected to run the unit as an entrepreneur and take responsibility for revenue generation and client. Some organisations allow employees to choose between full-time employment contracts and contractual understandings that provide flexibility to learn new skills or work on diverse projects. Sabbaticals are being introduced to enable employees to cater to higher-level needs. There has been an upsurge in the demand for managers who could manage projects, client expectations and teams and take projects to completion. The project and employee management capabilities are the measures that the client would use for deciding on further business or finding another outsource partner. There has been a parallel increase in entrepreneurial effort as small set-ups that are able and willing to provide specialised offshore services for lower workloads and take on some part of the responsibility of projects outsourced to large agencies. Project managers, solution providers, testers and the like have branched out to start their own ventures. Gareth R. Jones and Jennifer M. George differentiate between managers and entrepreneurs as “Managers are the people responsible for supervising the use of human and other resources” (42) while entrepreneurs are described as “the people who notice opportunities and take responsibility for mobilising the resources.” (42) The revised business scenario has blurred the dividing lines between these types of people. Where does this lead us? Hand made crafts and hand woven cloth were products of hours of intense creative work. Each piece of output bore the individual mark of the worker. These have been replaced by machine made standardised goods in a ‘one-size-suits-all’ format. Human beings are being trained to behave like machines as Gareth Morgan says, “Employees are frequently trained to interact with customers according to a detailed code of instructions and are monitored in their performance. Even the most casual smile, greeting, comment, or suggestion by a sales assistant is often programmed by company policy and rehearsed to produce authentic results.” (13) He goes on to add that the image of an organisation is one that is run “in a state of orderly relations between clearly defined parts that have some determinate order.” The structure of the organisation clearly lays down reporting relations and responsibility. This structure is useful in a crisis where the clearly laid down order of command disallows ambiguity and garbled communication. The postulates of Scientific Management then are necessary to delineate the task of the supervisor and that of the doer. However, this mechanised relation comes under stress when the business environment undergoes unforeseen changes. Innovations are introduced in the market that do away with the main line of business and force it to adapt or die. Scientific Management and its rigid lines of responsibility give rise to mechanical act and thought. Mechanised thinking disallows the business to think of alternate strategies for survival and refuses to accept the changed scenario. “The difficulty of achieving effective responses to changing circumstances is often further aggravated by the high degree of specialization in different functional areas within the organisation. Interdepartmental communication and coordination are often poor, and people often have a myopic view of what is occurring, there being no overall grasp of the situation facing the enterprise as a whole.” Unquestioning attitudes like “it’s not my job” or “that’s not my responsibility” are inherent to the mechanistic approach. Institutional flexibility is ignored as employees unthinkingly act on the basis of decisions driven by a short term approach with certain failure once they are implemented. The job of managers is complex and dynamic. Responsible for task assignment and motivation of subordinates, client satisfaction and top management appreciation, the manager must weigh the needs of the moment and act accordingly. Does Scientific Management aid the manager? The scientific management approach is useful to objectively view each component of the job in the hand of the manager at a time. For instance, a manager who is responsible for a client communication, management reporting and subordinate performance assessment can utilise a scientific approach to break down each job into its constituent parts and decide what to focus on. Prioritisation based on a scientific awareness of the tasks involved allows the manager to delegate, thereby increasing the skill level of subordinates. Human relation management theories guide the manager to carry the team along in ably delivering as per customer specifications. Definition of the service level demanded and the organisation view of the business allows the subordinate to understand the larger picture of the work being done. Two-way communication opens the manager’s mind to possibilities and error traps that would otherwise go unnoticed. The subordinates are motivated to go beyond the ken of carrying out a task assigned and invited to share perspectives and discuss alternatives. This important communication keeps the unit flexible to changing demands and leads to the formation of better processes while improving the thinking skills of the team members and the manager. The manager is sensitive to the different motivators at work for the individuals in the team and to an extent, chalks out assignments in keeping with the needs of the team members. When this is not possible, the manager communicates the larger goals of the unit and the rationale of task assignment. The manager becomes sensitive to the different ways in which team members process a communication and mould the manner of information sharing accordingly. In conclusion, the theories of scientific management and human relations are necessary for effectively carrying out tasks regardless of the changed business conditions. Whether the business is large or small, catering to a local or global audience, the theories are important and organisations have initiated activities that use human relations theories as the base for design. Satisfaction surveys are regularly conducted to gauge the feelings of the employees. Catering to individual aspirations, recognition needs and the desire to see oneself as a part of larger organisation goals have gained importance. Wendy Holloway in the book Work Psychology and Organisational Behaviour describes the actions of AT&T after receiving employee feedback through an employee survey. The company was going through a change in business conditions and the employees were wary of the new developments. A human relations therapy for maintaining high commitment and motivation was designed by the Public Relations cell and consisted of a series of communication efforts and recognition events. The theory of scientific management is now referred to as the systems approach and is followed by organisations to enable individuals and units to maintain delivery schedules based on a holistic view of the job. The key guidelines of human relations management are used continually, and are particularly valuable when the company is going through upheavals, because they provide a theoretical framework to design tools to keep employee trust and commitment high. References Gallos, Joan V. and Schein, Edgar H. Organisation Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader. John Wiley and Sons, 2006 Jones, Gareth R. and George, Jennifer M. Essentials of Contemporary Management. McGraw Hill Professional, 2003. George, Jennifer M. and Jones, Gareth R. Understanding And Managing Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall, 1995-2008. Henderson, George. Human relations issues in management. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996 Holloway, Wendy. Work Psychology and Organisational Behaviour: Managing the Individual at Work. SAGE, 1991. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organizations. SAGE, 2006. Taylor, F.W. The Principles of Scientific Management. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. Peaucelle, Jean-Louis. From Taylorism to post-Taylorism: Simultaneously pursuing several management objectives. Journal of Organisational Change Management. 2000. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/09534810010377426 Read More