Compare and contrast the theories of FW Taylor and Skinner

In this essay I aim to contrast and then compare the theories of both Taylor and Skinner. The way I have decided to structure this essay is to describe each theory separately, starting off with a brief history of their backgrounds followed by an account of their theories and how they are applied in the work place. I shall then make my comparisons between the two theories and finally conclude by mentioning some of the criticism aimed at these theories.

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 into a well-to-do but not wealthy family in Philadelphia. His family had wanted him to go into law, but through serious impairment of vision, due to too much study by kerosene light, he was advised against any career involving too much close study. In 1874 he became an apprentice pattern- maker, and in 1878 he moved to Midvale Steel company to become a journeyman machinist and journeyman pattern-maker. Within eight years at this company he had worked himself up to being a chief engineer of the works. Since his eyesight had improve he began studying at night and earned himself a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

During his early years at Midvale Taylor was appointed gang boss and sought to increase the output of machinists that he had previously worked along side of. This caused a long and bitter feud between Taylor and the work men, a battle which he eventually won three years later. He concluded from this conflict that management did not know what a fair day's work was. Taylor's crude interpretation of a fair day's work was: ' All the work a worker can do without injury to his health, at a pace that can be sustained throughout a working lifetime.' ( From Labor & Monopoly capital, Braverman). This was a contrasting view to current management techniques which tried to secure output by putting pressure on the workers. Taylor suggested that if management understood what a fair day's work was, this could then be demonstrated by output.

Taylor's objective was to reach the optimum level of production from a day's labour power. He considered his greatest obstacle in obtaining this objective was to be on the part of the men who consistently worked in a slow pace, loafing, or 'soldiering', as it was called. Taylor broke down the causes of this soldiering into two parts. The first being the natural instinct for men to take it easy, which he called natural soldiering . The second was said to be more intricate and was caused by second thought, and reasoning caused by their relations with other men, which he termed systematic soldiering . A description of what Taylor termed systematic soldiering is as follows;

The greater part of systematic soldiering is done by the

men with great deliberate object of keeping their employers

ignorant of how fast work can be done.

So universal is soldiering for this purpose, that hardly a

competent workman can be found in a large establishment,

whether he works by the day or on piece work, contract work

or under any of the ordinary systems of compensating labor,

who does not devote a considerable part of his time to

studying just how slowly he can work and still convince

his employer that he is going at a good pace.

The causes for this are, briefly, that practically all

employers determine upon a maximum sum which they

feel it is right for each of their classes of employees to

earn per day, whether their men work by the day or piece.

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The workmen had a genuine reason for adopting this type of behaviour, since the pay of labour was a socially determined figure among employer's of similar types of labour power, being virtually independent of output. Therefore if workers produced twice as much as they did the day before, this did not mean they would receive double their pay, but might be given a small incremental advantage over their fellows doing similar types of labour. Although this advantage was likely to soon disappear as the increased levels of production became generalised. The same method applied to piece-work rates. The price of work was lowered as a workers output increased. Consequently it was not in the worker's interest to work any harder than he really needed to, since any incentive for increased productivity was gradually absorbed by the re-setting of production levels, and revision of pay rates. Taylor sympathised and understood the worker's reasons for adopting this method of soldiering and believed that they were only acting in their own best interests by behaving in this manor.

This prompted him to conduct experiments to determine what was, a fair day's work for every job in the shop. After several years of research he developed a technique that was effective in both productivity and worker relations. Which became known as the scientific management technique.

This technique of managing involved two major components. Firstly to discover by experiments the best way to execute, and also the time it took for every procedure and every integral part of an operation to be carried out. Secondly to introduce a division of labour between the management and work-force, by making it the manager's total responsibility to plan production by ensuring that the workers received all their requirements such as materials, tools,instructions and any other requirement they needed to complete the job in an efficient way. Taylor's approach to scientific management was formulated in response to the needs of organisations who were in the midst of industrialisation. His ideas were not only accepted in the United States and Britain but within a short time had spread to become common practice in all industrial countries.

The structure of Taylor's approach was based on a number of premises about the individual in the workplace. These were: '(1) the problem of inefficiency is a problem for management, not the worker; (2) workers have a false impression that if they work too rapidly, they will become unemployed; (3) workers have a natural tendency to work less than their capacities; (4) it is management's responsibility to find suitable individuals for a particular job and then train them in the most efficient methods for their work; and (5) employee performance should be tied directly to the pay scheme, or an early incentive or piece-rate wage system.' (From ; OBP 3rd Ed, by Szilagy and Wallace.) Taylor strongly believed that the incentive scheme would increase the motivation of the work force and as a consequence improve the efficiency of the employees.

A good example of how Taylor employed his scientific management technique was his account of the story about Schmidt, and the pig iron task: Schmidt, was one of a gang of seventy five men working at Bethleham Steel Company, who's job it was to load pig iron into a railway car.

Taylor and his associates had observed this gang, who were, on average loading about 12 and a half tons of pig iron per man, per day. They believed that a first class pig-iron handler ought to have been loading between 47-48 tons per day. Since it was their duty to make sure the job was done as efficiently as possible, they set out to find a way of increasing the men's work load, without causing any sort of dispute between the management and the work force.

Their first step towards dealing with this problem was to talk, and deal with one man at a time, and then to develop this individual to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity, Schmidt was the first man out of the gang to be chosen for this task. Their technique was to convince Schmidt that he was a high-price man, and would prefer to earn $1.85 a day rather than the $1.15 he was getting. In return for this increase in pay he had to agree to follow the instructions given to him by a certain man. The following day Schmidt followed orders, while the man stood over him with a watch. He worked when he was told to work, and rested when told to rest. By 5.30 that afternoon Schmidt had loaded his 47 and a half tons of pig iron into the car. He continued to work at this pace and perform the task that was set for him from that day onwards. Throughout this time he averaged a little more than $1.85 per day, receiving a 60% higher wage than other men who were not working on task work. Although it must be emphasised that only one in eight members of the gang, possessed the characteristics Taylor considered a necessary requirement for this job, which were that the men had to be the mentally sluggish type and physically able to handle 47 and a half tons of pig iron per day. Therefore Taylor had to recruit men from elsewhere to make up the rest of the gang.

This is a good illustration of the way Taylor expected management to take control of the structure and decisions of work behaviour. He applied this method to many other tasks in various professions, such as, machine shops, bricklaying, and various other sites. Therefore to summarise Taylor's Scientific management technique his aim appeared to be to de-skill the labour-force, by putting the managers in complete control of the production process. To dehumanise the shop floor workers by, the removal of all brain work from the shop floor to the planning department of the works. And finally to use this monopoly of knowledge to control each step of the labour process.

In comparison to Taylor's approach of scientific management, Skinner focused on the process of operant conditioning which is concerned with the Stimulus-Response (S-R) approach to learning in order to reach the desired goal.

Skinner was born in March 1904, in the U.S.A. for most of his childhood he lived in the small town of Susquehanna , where his father ran his own firm of layer's.

Skinner had been expected to follow in his fathers footsteps but instead he become interested in the world of psychological research. The work of Pavlov into Classical conditioning inspired him to conduct his own research into how animals operate on their own environment and how this operant behaviour is instrumental in bringing about certain consequences which then determine how probable that behaviour is to be repeated.

The key process in operant conditioning is the reinforcement or reward of desired behaviour. The line of reasoning behind operant conditioning in respect to motivation is as follows. Firstly there is an emphasis put on objective, measurable behaviour. This refers to the number of units produced, in respect to budget and time schedules, compared with the difficulty to measure and observe inner-persons states (e.g needs, motivations,drives.etc.). The aim of this process therefore is to concentrate on the behaviour itself which is measured and observed.

Secondly a method of contingencies of reinforcement is proposed. This focuses on the stimulus-response connection and refers to the response or actual employee's behaviour in respect to a reinforcement being given in return for reaching a desired goal. An example of how this concept is incorporated into a given work situation is as follows: A sales manager informs her sales representative, that if, by the end of the quarter he could reach a 110% of this sales quota (i.e stimulus) he will receive a 10% bonus (i.e.consequence). If the rep. reaches his goal he then receives his bonus, therefore the stimulus has caused a response it is also expected that this type of motivated behaviour will be maintained.

Thirdly the shorter the time interval or reinforcement schedule between the employee's reward,the greater the effect the reinforcer will have on the employee's future behaviour. This means that an employee should be praised or rewarded for doing a good job soon after the work is completed otherwise the effect of the reinforcement is lost.

Finally the size and value of the reinforcement is important. Subsequently the greater the size and value the reinforcement means to the individual the greater the effect it has on that persons future behaviour. This suggests that rewards should be linked to individual performance.

These above fundamental principles are associated with the reinforcement theory and serve as a foundation to the motivational approach of behaviour.

Skinner proposed four types of reinforcement contingencies available to managers to help modify their employees' behaviour: (1) positive reinforcement; (2) punishment; (3) negative reinforcement; (4) extinction. A brief description of the effects of these four types of reinforcements theories follows:

(1) Positive Reinforcement ; is given to strengthen behaviour in the hope that it will increase the likelihood that the desired behaviour will be repeated. For example, an engineer is given a task to design a new piece of equipment (stimulus). The engineer puts a lot of effect into completing this project on time ( response). If this good work is appreciated by his manager, who as well as giving praise may well consider recommending this employee gets a pay rise then (positive reinforcement ) has occurred.

(2) Punishment , the use of punishment is proposed to weaken the likelihood of undesired behaviour being repeated by the individual. For example, if an employee

is continually late back from his lunch break then the supervisor should reprimand him for this type of behaviour (punishment). Hopefully the worker will improve his time keeping in response this. Although Skinner does emphasise that punishment is not guaranteed to lead to long-term change in that persons behaviour.

(3) Negative Reinforcement , this should have the same effect as Positive Reinforcement on behaviour, namely that it serves to strengthen it. Negative reinforcement could be used in the above example where an employee is continually late back from lunch so that instead of the supervisor having to reprimand him, his co-workers could be used to demonstrate good time keeping practice.

(4) Extinction , is the withholding of positive reinforcement for a previously acceptable response or behaviour. If reinforcement is not forth-coming over a period of time, then the behaviour will eventually disappear or be eliminated. For example if a company introduces a new scheme where by all it's salespersons receive a bonus for every order made by a new customer. This should result in increased effort by the salesperson to elicit new sales business. If after a period of time the company decides to discontinue the bonus scheme because they find it too costly to run. The sales force are likely to reduce their level of effort back to the way it was before the bonus scheme was introduced. The company has therefore caused an extinction of behaviour by removing the reinforcement.

The objectives of the above types of reinforcement contingencies is to modify an individuals behaviour so that the organisation will benefit by it. Reinforcement will either act as a strengthener to increased desired behaviour, or will weaken the strength of undesired behaviour. Consequently these contingencies of reinforcement can be used to modify the individuals current behaviour to satisfy the needs of the organisation they work for.

When making contrasts between Taylor's approach to Scientific Management and Skinner's approach to the Control of Behaviour it becomes apparent that they tackle the issue of how to get the most out of an organisations work-force in totally different ways. Taylor strongly believed that if the work force were left to their own devices they were most likely to work against their own interests. His answer to this problem therefore, was to take away the control of the work force and put it in the hands of managerial groups. The tasks of managerial groups was to manipulate working conditions, personal attributes, supervision and monetary rewards in order to get maximum productivity out of the work force. Whereas Skinner took the view point that if an organisation was not running efficiently, the cause was not due to human failure, but instead it was most probably due to the characteristics of their surrounding environment. He also believed that peoples behaviour could be controlled by using a Stimulus-Reponse method, whereby managers use incentive programs to encourage their work force to meet a desired goal. Although he stressed, that if this incentive scheme was to be successful it had to be individually assessed.

Both Taylor's and Skinner's methods of management have been adopted by various organisations to improve the output of their work force. On the other hand both methods have been criticised for various reasons. Skinner's theories for instance, have been criticised because he generalised the results from his animal studies of controlling behaviour, to how humans ought to be organised. Whereas Taylor's model was criticised because it dehumanised the work force by taking away all their responsibility and skills. Despite these criticism both theory are still used by many organisations all over the world.