Taylor's Establishment of a Theoretical and Systematic Approach to Workplace Management - Literature review Example

Frederick W. Taylor: hero or villain? How should management historians record and present Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) and his contributions to the theory of management? While there is no denying that Taylor is among the 20th century management thinkers who have had major impact on the theory and practice of management (Bedeian & Wren, 2001), quiet ambivalent are the gurus and practitioners of the discipline in their reception of Taylor and Taylor’s thoughts. The specific contributions of Taylor consisted of his establishment of both a theoretical and systematic approach to workplace management. As articulated in his Shop Management (1903) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), central to Taylor’s approach is the ability of the manager to measure worker output in temporal or quantitative units. In effect, he created for the industrial managers of his time – who were unaware of how much work could be accomplished by workers in a week, day or hour – a standard output of work and tools to measure the laborers output (Hermann, 2007). He made them know whether their plants or factories were running on maximum efficiency. His focus was on how work could be broken down into smaller movements and measured to assure that each worker did not waste energy or time (Bindex 2001, pp. 278). For him, to find the most efficient way to accomplish a task constitutes a scientific process that relies on objective measurement. Subsequently, when the best – or the most efficient – way to accomplish the task is established, worker are trained to perform the task within the parameters of the established science (Bindex 2001, pp. 274). While it is true that Taylor’s contribution was clearly industrial reforms focusing primarily on steel factories, his principles of scientific management were taken up even by social reformers and applied them to institutions such as the military, government, schools, universities, and homes in their bid to make work more efficient (Kanegil, 1997). William Leffingwell applied scientific management to the office, with typists and clerks (Head 2003, pp. 60). Applied to medicine, scientific management has meant saving time and motion through better suturing techniques and operating room organization. It is said to be responsible for the evolution of leisure from genuinely spare or free time to organized recreation (Kanegil, 1997). Taylor’s thoughts are also said to form the bases of Ronald Reagan administration’s approach to management of the vast federal bureaucracy of America (Guy, Newman & Mastracci 2010, pp. 35). Taylorism – or the application of scientific methods to ensure that maximum efficiency is obtained in industries or even in daily life (see Kanegil, 1997) – is found to be at the core of Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s call for an industrialized and standardized medical care system in France (Sturrock 1990, pp. 18-19). And, Taylor’s thoughts inspired the rigid daily timetables by the inmates in Alcatraz in the 1930’s (Kanigel, 1997). Expectedly, thus, many theorists obviously regard Taylor and his ideas very highly. He was considered by Peter Drucker as the “most powerful as well as the most lasting contribution America has made to Western though since the Federalist Papers” (2007, pp. 242). In fact, Drucker numbered him among Darwin, Freud (and Marx) as seminal makers of the modern world. Besides Drucker, Taylor’s ideas were espoused by Henry Gantt (1861-1919) (see Hermann 2007, pp. 8-9; Bindex 2001, pp. 275). Gantt sought to form a group of engineers from whom he wanted to establish an “aristocracy of the capable”. Gantt’s experimentation was short lived; nevertheless, it spawned the emergence of a much broader movement of technocrats (Wren 2005, pp. 161). Although Taylorism and Fordism as ideologies are often juxtaposed or compared, Taylor is said to have influenced Henry Ford (1863-1947) whose assembly line was an extension of Taylor’s scientific management (Stone 2004, pp. 45). Actually preempting the succeeding schools of thought that promoted human motivation through the use of financial incentives, the hope of promotion or advancement, shorter period of work, better surrounding and working conditions, Taylor similarly inspired Hugo Munsterbuerg to spearhead the discipline of industrial psychology (Bindex 2001, pp. 275). After Yukinori Hoshino, a banker from Osaka, Japan, sought and received permission to translate Taylor’s books and publish them in 1913, Taylor’s concept of management subsequently influenced and shaped Japanese style management. His emphasis on mutual interests, cooperation and harmony proved to be appealing to Japanese industrialists and educators (Kanegil, 1997). However, not everyone was impressed by Taylor and his thoughts. Doubting voices include John Dos Passos, who deplored scientific management as nothing but speeding up reaching under, adjusting washers, screwing down bolts, shoving in pins until every ounce of the workers’ life was sucked into the production and the worker went home at night wasted (Simon 2003, pp. 35-36). The workers, as individuals, are said to be lost in the process. Or, they are denied their individuality. Taylor thought that the more stupid the workers could make the task, the more efficient they would be. For, workers simply had to turn their minds off and just perform their tasks. It is in this sense that the hallmark of Taylorism is the split that it makes between thinking and doing (by workers) – or the divorce that it effects between brain and brawn (Kanegil, 1997). And, this led William Gomberg upon studying Taylorist time-study practices to anticipate that with the simplification of jobs at one end and increasing demand for skills at the other a society in which only the geniuses and morons would soon come to be (see Bell 2000, pp. 241). “Losing the workers” in the process is foreseen more literally by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. In his Americanismo e Fordismo, Gramsci equates Taylor and what he calls the real purpose of American society. Accordingly, both intend to “(replace) in the worker the old psycho-physical nexus of qualified professional work which demanded active participation, intelligence, fantasy and initiative with automatic and mechanical attitudes” (Romero & Margolis, 2005 pp. 555). In fact, Gramsci’s conclusion that Taylorism results to elimination of a part of the working class from the world of work (and perhaps from the world) is shared by Charles Babbage. The latter wrote in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers in 1832 that, with machines that are more powerful and requiring less human skill for operation, workers with less skills are going to be required (Kanegil, 1997). Consequently, if the machines needed mere automatons, there will be less need for creative craftsman. The bitterness, then, by the organized labor organizations against Taylor becomes understandable (see Bindex 2001, pp. 274). Samuel Gomper, a leader of the American Federation of Labor, denounced him for reducing the laborer as a mere cog of the machine (see Cronnin, 2001). Another principal downside of Taylorism is the perception that it puts more premium on efficiency over ethics (See Schwartz, 2007). Taylor believed that efficient production enhances society. And, by repercussion, Taylorism is alleged to effectively subsume moral considerations under the rationalist drive toward efficiency. For, essentially, scientific management was built on lack of trust and respect for the worth, wit and intelligence of individuals (Kanegil, 1997). The preceding makes it clear that right at the outset the thoughts of Taylor had attracted both believers and skeptics. There were those who rejoiced over the emergence of a new system of thinking that efficaciously made the activities in the workplace scientific. The spread of this management system across the globe cemented its reputation as workable and dependable system in running and managing factories and even offices. Taylor was regarded by many as champion, and Taylorism as blueprint of the discipline itself of management. In similar vein, Taylor was met with skepticism by some thinkers and leaders particularly of labor sector. His thoughts were perceived to be anti-labor, and were less considerate of ethics than efficiency. Actually, the reception of Taylorism in contemporary times hardly essentially varied. That is, until to date, Taylor’s contribution to the discipline of management still divides the opinion of management gurus and practitioners. To some, Taylor remains highly regarded. Bedeian & Wren (2001) hold that Taylor remains the favorite bogeyman of the press, and his idea on the rule of knowledge as opposed to tradition and personal opinion is as valid as it was in his time (see pp. 102). His bifurcation of work into thinking and doing is said to be magnified by the coming of the computer (Kanegil, 1997), as some thinkers posit that Taylor’s sensibilities were actually extended by the age of Information Technology (Hermann, 2007, pp. 7). At the top were skilled programming, planning and analysis; at the bottom, in various guises, were low-skilled program execution. At one end, engineers, economists, and system analysts extract the last cent from a fast food outlet; at another end, legions of minimum wage workers peck at cash touch screens and peck at cash register (Kanigel, 1997). Similarly important is the keen observation by Charles Hecksher that in the modern workplace there has been an observable paradoxical reversal in the sense that management is now Taylorized. What he means is that for all the effort to draw out the blue-collar workers’ good will, it is the middle managers who are getting treated increasingly as cogs in the machine (Marcus 1998, pp. 86). To other modern thinkers, Taylorism is already facie. To the least, Taylor’s thoughts are intellectually out of fashion. Konosuke Matshushita, a Japanese industrialist, opined that America – unless it treats itself from the infection of Taylor’s ideas – would lose in the race for international market. The reason accordingly is America’s disregard for the flexibility and intelligence of its average workers (Cowen & Parker 1997, pp. 25). The former chairman and chief executive officer of Apple Computer, John Sculley, was of the same idea with Matshushita that Taylorism (and Fordism) imposed (their) heavy hand on American economy (Kanegil, 1997). Actually, the ambivalent reception of Taylor and his ideas across the ages constitutes a paradox of modern life. On one hand, people reap the benefits of the cult of workplace efficiency that Taylor championed. On the other hand, people protest over the psychic chains by which Taylor grips us (see Kanegil, 1997). 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