Ford’s impact on the automobile industry was a visible manifestation of the “visible hand” (Chandler, 1977) of management. Although the continuous assembly line was a vital part of mass production, improvements in technology enabled small car components to be made accurately and “the interchangeability of parts and the simplicity of attaching them together” (Womack et al, 1990, p.26) allowed for a more efficient car-making process to emerge. The single purpose machine tools churned out standardised parts that didn’t need to be adapted for every car by skilled workers, giving rise to the interchangeable worker. The pace of the conveyor belt of the assembly line set the pace of work the factory, permitting managers to focus on other ways to improve the firm rather than focusing on productivity and efficiency. As labour costs were a significant proportion of Ford’s costs, reducing the need for a specifically trained workforce led to a massive fall in the value of luxury cars, bringing a large part of the population in the US and UK into effective demand.
Taylor’s theories are also based on the assumption that there is one best method in which an action can be undertaken, and all that is necessary is research into situation to find such a method, hence the name, scientific management. Not only has this strategy worked for the automobile industry, current examples can be seen in large chain restaurants and coffee shops such as Starbucks, as well as in the service sector. Buchanan and Huczynski (2001) identified telephone service jobs as a classic example of a job that required one specific procedure, in the form of customised call scripts, which can be followed. Fast food restaurant and call centre jobs have a high level of monotony, leading to passive workers who have little or no room to climb up the career ladder and tailor their own jobs. Focusing primarily on cutting costs by finding the most efficient method of production led to the downfall of scientific management and the rise of the people-orientated approach.
The demise of scientific management
Not being able to find the best way of producing a product or providing a service renders Taylor’s strategies impracticable. Ford tried to repeat the success of the Model T in the UK after the boom in car sales in the US; however, he did not foresee the strength on the trade unions in the UK. The labour market in the UK was inflexible and unable to adapt to the dehumanising nature of Ford’s factories. Although forcing workers to follow work ethic in a mindless and unquestioning manner improved the speed, precision and efficiency of production, the Model T failed to attract a large market in the UK. After sacking union workers and not listening to UK managers, Ford introduced the Model A which was better adapted to suit potential customers. This was one of the first proofs that Taylor’s concepts were only effective on a narrow range of non-complex industries, in which the best method of production could definitely be found after research.
Tolliday (1992) noted that Ford’s successes were primarily based on Ford’s conception of fitting everything together, thus facilitating the advancements in technology and gifted mechanics to produce the Model T for a large market. I think that his success was partly down to luck as there was a constant supply of new workers in Detroit to make up for the 70% of workers that quit in the first week of Ford’s moving new assembly line manufacturing system.
Additionally, in Buchanan and Huczynski’s (2001) analysis of Taylor, they mention how he understates the complexity of what management is and what exactly managers do, and his basic assumptions that pay is a driving factor for work has been proven wrong by the Hawthorne experiment. The results demonstrated that labour has become a crucial part of the firm as, even though the experiment failed men, women joined an institution to become part of a team and forming a social aspect with co-workers outside of working hours. The need for recognition and belonging was a motivating factor in getting more women into the workforce.
I think that without fully understanding the market and what managers do, commenting on how different models contribute towards organisational behaviour and their relative successes is futile. Defining management as an exact science or profession is difficult (Mintzberg, 1975, p.53) as decisions are not always taken rationally but are based on judgement and intuition. Whether this decision is good or bad can only be told in retrospect.
Conclusions
Increasing consumer choice and individuality of products as well as the growing complexity of markets and goods makes it harder to implement Taylorist principles. The further you move from standardisation and mass production using specialised machinery, Taylor’s theories begin to seem too extreme and thus would fail no matter how you tried to execute them. Given the political, social and cultural changes since Taylor first created the notion of scientific management, his theories seem of limited relevance compared to their significance at the time.
Bibliography and references
Chandler, A.D (1977) The visible hand: the managerial revolution in American Business. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.
Huczynski, A. and Buchanan, D.A. (2001, 4th ed.) Organizational behaviour: an introductory text, (FT Prentice Hall).
Mintzberg, H. (Jul-Aug 1975) "The manager's job: folklore and fact", Harvard Business Review, 53 (4), pp. 49-61.
Taylor, F. (1990) ‘Scientific management’ in Pugh, D.S., Organization theory: selected readings (3rd ed.) London: Penguin Books.
Tolliday, S. (1992) "Management and labour in Britain 1896-1939" in Tolliday, S. and Zeitlin, J., Between Fordism and flexibility: the automobile industry and its workers - past, present and future.
Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990) The machine that changed the world, New York: Rawson Associates.
