THINKING SKILLS AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Finally, a conclusion shall synthesize the main points of the paper and demonstrate the continued use and viability of systematic management in post-modern management practices.
Taylorism is a method of management which was formulated by Fredrick Winslow Taylor in 1911, as in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, which aimed to enhance labor productivity and manufacturing efficiency (Zahir, Themistocleous, & Love, 2003). Taylor's background as an industrial engineer in the USA later earned him the title of the "Father of Scientific Management" (Schroeder, 2003). He analyzed worker's behaviors across industries he was involved in and determined that "One Best Way" could achieve a higher rate of production that was standardized and so cut costs to the company. He also develop a time and motion study wherein he broke down each job in a manufacturing process into its component elements and measured the duration of each component to a hundredth of a minute. This reduced the number of movements or actions that a worker needed to make in order to perform each component of the overall job. Each component could then be standardized across all workers performing that job, reducing "wasted" action and increasing productivity and subsequently company profits.
It was also found that the reduction in the number of actions needed to perform a total job would dramatically reduce worker fatigue (Schroeder, 2003). Taylor is noted for his study into the use of shovels, he observed that workers used the same type of shovel for a range of materials. Through systematic evaluation Taylor determined that 211/2 lb was an ideal load for a shovel, and then located or designed a variety of shovels for each type of material that could scoop that amount. Ultimately, Taylor sought to portray industrial management as an academic discipline, so that evidence-based research could be used to make informed decisions about the most effective and efficient way of maintaining a cooperative and innovate workforce that could achieve maximum productivity at minimal costs.
In summary, Taylor's theory of scientific management consisted of four distinct principles:
1. Instead of the "rule-of-thumb" of traditional work methods, tasks should be grounded in the scientific study of each task and its component parts.
2. Use systematic and standard methods to recruit, select, train, evaluate and develop each employee instead of workers continuing to train them in a passive and non-standardized manner.
3. Collaborate with workers so that systematic and standardized methods of completing a task are followed.
4. Delegate work amongst managers and workers in an equal manner to ensure that managers implement scientific management principles when planning work, and to ensure that workers actually follow-through on task procedures.
In this way, Taylor approached management of work tasks as a scientific problem.

After Taylor, the rapid progress of technological development paved the way for advances in statistical analyses of scientific problems. This progress led to the improvement of Taylor's systematic principles to provide more stringent quality control during the 1920s and 1930s (Miner, 2002). Quality ...Download file to see next pagesRead More