Describe and evaluate the work of any one researcher who you consider to have made a particularly significant contribution to our understanding of organisations. Frederick Taylor

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Lindsay Grindall                People & Organisations

Describe and evaluate the work of any one researcher who you consider to have made a particularly significant contribution to our understanding of organisations.

        

Frederick Taylor's work was taking place in a time period when the United States of America was undergoing mass industrialisation after the Civil War. National industries grew out of local trades; what were once small factories rapidly became large organisations with new technologies for production and mass workforces. Many large corporations such as Ford, Esso and United States Steel were developed in this time; however they all faced the same problem; there was only a limited pool of skilled workers to recruit from. Many labourers were based in the agricultural regions of America or were immigrants from Europe. Directing the efforts of workers with little understanding of the English language, few required skills and no experience of working in the disciplined region of a factory, left the organisation with key problems.  Scientific management solved these problems and was one of the first practices to be used in many different types of organisations.  

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 into an upper class, liberal Philadelphia family. His upbringing was constrained as both parents were Quakers and believed in high thinking and plain living. Taylor grew up to be a resourceful person. There is evidence to support this from an early age; at twelve, he invented a harness to keep himself from sleeping on his back, hoping to avoid the nightmares he was having. Once grown up at the age of twenty five Taylor earned himself an engineering degree at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey whilst still having the commitment of a full-time job. Despite this degree Taylor surprisingly moved his career to the Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia where he became a machinist and pattern maker. He later moved on to Midvale Steel Company in 1878 where he filled the position of shop clerk. In 1887 Taylor was promoted to the position of shop superintendent there. It was here that Taylor noticed a difference in employee work methods. He closely watched how work was done and would measure the quantity produced. He discovered that most methods were inefficient and led to low productivity. This instigated Frederick Taylor to develop a science for each element of work to find the quickest way a job could be done which led on to the publication of his book The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, this was designed to increase industrial output by rationalizing the production process. Taylor and Scientific Management created a new type of ‘revolution’. The promise of massive increases in productivity led to the following of Taylor’s models of management all over the world.

Modern managers use many of the practices, principles, and techniques  from earlier concepts and experiences. The Industrial Revolution brought about the emergence of large-scale business and its need for  managers. During the late 19th century many researchers emerged with different views of how to manage the newly developed mass workforce. Henry Ford’s ideal types of production systems included using fixed and dedicated machines in individuals work, rather than turning the employee into a machine. His ideas were based upon scientific management; Taylor gave Ford and other researchers at the time such as Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, a foundation to stem their ideas from in the development of mass-production techniques and as a result was one of the first researchers to make an impact on problems of growing corporations. But how did Taylor do this?

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Over the course of the nineteenth century, unskilled workers and then machines had begun to replace skilled craftsmen. Yet because of their specialized knowledge, the more skilled workers continued to exert considerable control over the pace of work, the methods used, and the levels of output. Taylor, whilst working as a foreman in the Midvale Steel Company noticed that few employees ever worked at the pace they were capable of. This was deemed as systematic soldiering, which was attributed to: the myth that increased productivity would result in redundancies, task allocation was entirely decided by each worker resulting in a large ...

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