Taylor’s methods became the adopted norm for businesses. These businesses saw the benefits in the form of higher productivity and lower unit costs and wastage. One of the main proponents of this theory was Henry Ford (Slattery 2003) who used the theory to develop the first production line to make his Ford cars. This was the beginning of the mass production era.
One of the flaws of this theory is that workers became bored with doing the same mundane tasks day in and day out. Workers also ended up feeling that they were being treated as nothing more than human machines; this was, to some extent, the truth. A drawback of this style of worker production meant that firms could afford to lay off workers as production increased. This led to industrial actions and higher unemployment rates.
Elton Mayo proposed the idea that workers were not only motivated by money and had social needs. Mayo was the first sociologist to look at motivational theory. He was more concerned with the people of working environments. He believed that these needs could be met at work (Slattery 2003). This is something that Taylor ignored. Mayo introduced the Human Relations school of thought. Mayo’s theory focused on managers taking an interest in their workers and treating them more as people. The theory also concentrates on the fact that workers enjoy interacting with each other. Mayo conducted experiments where he divided two groups of workers and changed the working conditions that they experienced. What he expected to see was a drop in production as working conditions got worse. What he actually saw was that productivity stayed the same or increased. Mayo concluded from his experiments that the factors that actually motivated workers were better communication (the workers were consulted over the experiments and had the option of giving feedback), greater management involvement (it was seen that workers responded to the increased attention they were getting from managers) and working in groups (something that had not taken place before with the workers Mayo was studying).
Mayo’s theory promoted the idea that workers should work as part of a team. The theory also went on to advocate the use of personnel departments that would oversee the needs and interests of the workers.
Abraham Maslow introduced the Neo-Human Relations School of thought. Maslow was a psychologist. He concerned himself with the individual needs of people in working environments. This theory focused on the psychological needs of workers. Maslow proposed that there were five layers of psychological needs that needed to be fulfilled. He organised these into psychological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem, and then self actualisation (Accel-Team 2008). Maslow went on to argue that each of the needs needed to be fulfilled before another need further up the scale could be achieved.
The main assumption that Maslow proposed was the fact that managers should offer different incentives to different workers to allow them to achieve their differing needs. Maslow stated that managers should recognise that different workers have different needs and different ways of achieving them. Maslow’s theory is in direct opposition to the theories of Taylor. Maslow realised that people cannot work only as ‘human machines’. A criticism of Maslow’s theory is that it is hard to put into practise in a big global company. It would be hard to individually assess the needs of every worker and implement every individual process.
Frederick Herzberg had many links with the theories of Maslow. The outlining points were that Herzberg believed that two main factors existed when motivating workers. He called these motivators and hygiene factors (Accel-Team 2008). Motivators are concerned with the job itself, for example, how interesting a task is and the opportunity it provides for progression in the company. Hygiene factors are factors that surround the job, for instance, a worker would not turn up for work if a good rate of pay and safe working conditions are not provided. This is in contrast to Taylor who saw pay as the sole motivator for workers.
Herzberg went on to state that companies should adopt a more democratic form of management. He believed that this could be achieved by allowing for job enlargement, meaning workers are given a greater variety of tasks to achieve. He also believed that workers should be empowered to have a greater responsibility over the tasks that they undertake.
The motivational theories of Taylor, Mayo, Maslow and Herzberg all have a valid way of viewing management of workers. Taylor’s theory allowed for mass production to take place in allowing for each task to be split into simple tasks. This, however, meant that workers became bored and disenfranchised with the work that they were doing. Mayo expanded on Taylor’s work to state that money was not the only motivator to workers. Maslow expanded further to describe these needs in a detailed hierarchy. Herzberg went on to simplify the work of Maslow and make it more specific to the manager’s world.
The work done by all of the theorists has been important to the way that motivating workers is viewed. Each has built on the work of the other. Some have been in contrast, Mayo on Taylor. Some have been in conjunction with the other, Herzberg on Maslow. All allow for the motivation of workers on differing levels and with differing aspects.
Bibliography
Slattery, M (2003) Key Ideas in Sociology, Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes
Accel-Team (2008) Human Relations Contributors,
Available http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_02_maslow.html
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