"Is Taylorism an Outmoded Form of Technical Control?"

Any employee (or former employee, as notorious staff turnover dictates such a person may be easier to find) of McDonald’s will testify to the high level of Taylorism coupled with the job. There exists a very detailed set method for carrying out every duty to the extent that, inadvertently, I may not be satirising the mind-numbing boredom of the job by suggesting that an employee must dispense exactly eighty-four french-fries in a regular portion. Whilst it could be argued that McDonald’s employs such Taylorist techniques merely to ensure product consistency throughout the world, it is a happy coincidence for the company, that a side effect of this is the massive revenue saving attributable to the Taylorist manner in which the job structure is planned. Another such example, comparable to that of McDonalds, can be found even further back in history. Adam Smith (1723–90), the founder of modern economics, studied industrial division of labour during the period and detailed the eighteen distinct operations involved in the manufacture of a single pin. Slightly more recent, is the case of Broken Hill Proprietary Steelworks, an Australian mining and processing company. Due to their location being in remote and desolate areas of The Outback, in largely uninhabited areas, there was no entrenched pattern of management to adhere to and the company was free to investigate an array of management strategies in order to enhance production levels. As well as performance based wages, the company also is known to have attempted to build up a catalogue of standard times taken to perform complex jobs and use it optimise the work carried out.

Even today, when a workforce does accept this form of management in a trade off for adequate pay, it still presents problems of its own. Firstly, as we have touched upon, Tayloristically designed jobs are inclined to provoke job dissatisfaction as a direct result of job simplification. Typically, rates of absenteeism and staff turnover can dramatically increase. Whilst it is clear that high recruitment expenses and absenteeism cost management dearly, less easy is it to quantify the losses associated with boredom among workers and a working environment, which can tend towards hostile, discouraging employee commitment. . I would contend that these are the side effects of implementing an outdated form of technical control. To add weight to this argument, research conducted by Turner and Lawrence offers evidence indicating that such problems are inevitably a result of Taylorist job design. This is further supported by Herzberg, who argued that improved intrinsic job factors (such as recognition or achievement) enhance motivation and satisfaction, whereas improved extrinsic factors (e.g. pay, company practises) merely reduce dissatisfaction.

Secondly, the costs of controlling and coordinating a rapidly spirals under a Taylorist administration. An increase in planning production, inspection and supervisors is reflected in increased indirect labour costs and this can begin to negate the benefits derived from reduced job training and increased production. Although in itself this is not evidence of Taylorism being outdated as such, it does strengthen the basis on which to reject Taylorism as a form of management.

Furthermore, increased managerial power together with the close and frightening scrutiny faced by employees, augments the existing frustration and dissatisfaction attributable to having ‘a boring job’. A them-and-us attitude can easily propagate among workers, speeding the waning of commitment levels further and often resulting in quality control problems. We can see that Taylorism can introduce an inconvenient paradox; according to Littler and Salaman (1984), “the tighter the control of labour power, the more control is needed.”

We have had an insight into why Taylorism had such a large influence on job design in the twentieth century in spite of its apparent shortcomings. However, was Taylor correct in assuming that a sub-task may be performed optimally? Is the concept of ‘optimal’ valid when taken in context with an arbitrary task? By posing this, it is the validity of Taylor’s methods in question and not just their current day applicability. That which is prescribed as optimal by management may not be at all optimal for a given individual. In my opinion, Taylor makes the rash assumption that such an optimal solution exists and fails to take into account or, critically, harness individual requirements, skills and abilities.

Until this point we have considered Taylorism as a means of technical control and have not taken into consideration the fact that Taylor sought also to influence cultural aspects of workers’ lives. During an experiment at a ball-bearing factory, Taylor stationed workers far enough apart to prevent them from talking whilst at work. They were however permitted more regular breaks allowing them the social interaction they otherwise lacked at work. This demonstrates how Taylor investigated more than just technical control over his workers. Ford furthered this inculcation of new social habits with his ‘Five Dollar Day’, a prerequisite for which was abstinence of alcohol outside of working hours.

With all of these apparent disadvantages, one would wonder how Taylor’s ‘philosophy’ became so widely accepted and influential. To answer this it is important to understand the social climate of Taylor’s time. The Industrial Revolution was a period of great change and many socially defining factors around at the time bear little or no relevance in today’s modern industrialised marketplace. Primarily, this is because up until this period, a large gulf existed between the educated aristocrat and the ignorant layman. Because of this Taylor argued that uneducated working class folk could not successfully fulfil management positions because of their lack of qualifications and this supported the need for them to work under a dictatorial administration. The key point here is a wealth of economic and sociological changes have taken place since Taylor penned his influential book and hence I would argue that rigidly implementing such practices is evidently less advantageous in today’s modern economic context. Furthermore, the balance of power between employer and employee was far more one-sided than it is today. In a time before trade unions were established and before any sort of human relations movement, Taylor’s methods came up against non-existent or at best futile resistance. For companies at the time, this ‘scientific management’ offered ostensibly increased productivity and profits and so surely subscribed, in innumerable volume, to these beliefs merely to stay on a level footing with their competitors. Nowadays however, the batch production industries no longer dominate and trade unions have more influence. Taylorism, with notable exceptions in some sectors, has been superseded in the workplace by other more modern management techniques such as welfarism, industrial psychology and human resource management. The 1980’s are widely considered to be a watershed with regard management strategy and as a result of a shift in the dominant managerial tactic, great change was observed in the way in which ‘British and North American management dealt with workers and their unions.’

If we look further a field however, we find a very different form of management, which promotes values flexibility, quality control and minimum wastage. This seems to me to be the opposite of Taylorism if such a concept exists. Employees’ ingenuity, initiative and cooperation are enlisted and utilised instead of the Taylorist view of workers as being ‘greedy robots’.

The exceptions, those sorts of industries which could never embrace scientific management, are confined to those sectors, which by definition do not lend themselves to a Taylorist administration. Contrasting from the mass production industries, which were ubiquitous in Taylor’s day, organisations in which innovation must prevail in order to gain competitive advantage leave employees unhindered by the shackles of scientific management. An example of such might be a web-based company, the sort of which must adopt new ideas and principles to stay ahead of the game. In my own experience, this far more relaxed approach to work management extends into other computer related businesses. As a programmer I have had the benefit of a free reign (with respect to dress, personal presentation and time keeping) in the workplace with the proviso that any project is finished by its given deadline. Although completely contrary to what we consider in this article, this working arrangement was considered a requirement by management of the company, who understand the need for ‘breathing space’ i.e. time to just go and clear one’s thoughts before containing tackling complicated computer programs. Having seen the way the company operates, I understand why such an approach is advantageous in similar companies.

Notwithstanding this entire discourse and all of the problems associated with Taylorism, as Taksa argues, one cannot categorically state that Taylor’s principles are outmoded on the grounds that ‘its basic tenets are discernable in the acceptance of a unitary organisational culture in Western capitalist nations’ and this is indisputably true - take UPS for example. UPS is a prosperous, modern company, which epitomises Taylorism in many respects. UPS management dictate to their staff such pernickety details as at what speed and how to walk and how to lift packages, thus exemplifying Taylor’s ‘one best way to do a job’ philosophy.

In conclusion, we ask ourselves again, ‘is Taylorism an outmoded form of technical control?’ In my opinion, whilst Taylor’s form of scientific management is certainly antiquated, evidence for it in use today is still in abundance, especially in certain types jobs, such jobs such as those in factories, which require menial tasks to be done consistently seem to be well suited.

Extreme implementations of Taylorist methods are less popular today because they are less applicable and because workers have more power, often through the collective voice of unions. In today’s context, compensatory measures have been introduced in an attempt to offset the negative effects of Taylorism such as less employee commitment and satisfaction and less room for innovation. It surely comes down to the fact that management has realised that the employer-employee relationship cannot afford to be anything than a ‘give and take’ one. The underlying validity in Taylor’s basic principles is employed today in a subtler format.

        

In spite of this, as Braverman, 1994 argues, “the popular notion that Taylorism has been ‘superseded’ by later schools of ‘human relations’, that it ‘failed’…represents a woeful misreading of the actual dynamics of the development of management.” I would subscribe to the view echoed by Littler and Salaman, 1984, which states that “the direct and indirect influence of Taylorism on factory jobs has been extensive, so that in Britain job design and technology design have become imbued with neo-Taylorism.”

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References

John Bratton & Jeffrey Gold

Human Resource Management Theory & Practice (1999)

Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York

http://www.albany.edu/psy/

Frederick W. Taylor

The Principals of Scientific Management (1911)

Lucy Taksa

Scientific Management: Technique or cultural ideology? (1991)

D.H Whittaker

        Managing Innovation: A Study Of British and Japanese Factories (1990)

www.managementfirst.com

Taylorism and Hours of Work by Chris Nyl

www.newcastle.edu.au/department/hi/teach/superscripts/2000/allen.htm

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