Work Redesign and Taylorism/Fordism.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Essay Theme: Work Redesign and Taylorism/Fordism

Taylorism and Fordism do have limitations many of which can be overcome by work

Or (job) redesign. What are the main limitations of scientific/Fordism and how will

Work redesign help in overcoming these limitations? Comment also on why Taylor’s

Scientific management principles are still in evidence both here and in Europe and in

The USA in this new century.

Taylorism:

F W Taylor was considered the father and leading advocate of what he called ‘Scientific Management’ and what is often referred to as today as Taylorism. Taylor saw that workers could be arranged in the workplace to improve efficiency and production. Under Taylor’s management system factories were managed through scientific methods, the main aspect being the division of labour.

The division of labour was the best way to maximise efficiency in the workplace, it was a technique, which split the various tasks of a job into smaller components, thus meaning one worker would carry out one job and another worker would perform another.

Taylor also had to work out how he could change from old fashioned ways of work “Rule of thumb” to implement his new ideas of scientific without ‘upsetting’ the workplace, he knew that he would have to overcome the culture of the workplace which he described as the “Really big problem” which would consist of the complete revolution in the habits and the ‘how things are done around here’ attitudes of all those engaged in the workplace including managers.

Also with the division of labour Taylor needed to find out a way of separating the workers according to there education background which was one of his main points

The separation of the planning of work from its execution.

This simply meant that someone with little or no education was not qualified to plan how work should be done and the solution was to separate planning from execution.

To apply this solution Taylor separated the educated workers from the uneducated and put them in planning departments and gave them four main responsibilities

Develop scientific methods for doing work
Establish goals for productivity
Establish systems of reward for meeting the goals
Train the personnel in how to use the methods in order to reach the goals

Fordism:

The work of F W Taylor especially the division of labour was realised clearly by Henry Ford who established and maintained a mass market for automobiles between 1908 and 1929, then the last of the Ford model T cars rolled of the production line.

Meyer (1981) says ‘Fordism as a model of production worked out by Ford between 1908 and 1913 had four basic elements.’

Standardised product design
The extensive use of new machine tool technology
Flow line production
The implementation of Taylorism in relation to work processes

Fordism was somewhat a carrying on of Taylor’s ideas ...

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Fordism:

Meyer (1981) says ‘Fordism as a model of production worked out by Ford between 1908 and 1913 had four basic elements.’

Standardised product design
The extensive use of new machine tool technology
Flow line production
The implementation of Taylorism in relation to work processes

Fordism was somewhat a carrying on of Taylor’s ideas but using the ideas and putting them into practise.

The production line was a way of working where the work was brought to the worker. Using the motor vehicle production line as an example, the worker would have there own designated working area and the car would travel around the factory to each of there different areas and they would carry out there task on the car, again maximising efficiency and production with very little effort.

This way of doing things made Henry Ford the world leader in mass production and his products can still be seen in most countries today.

Limitations:

It soon became clear to Ford that the control of the production process was not equal to the control of the workforce. Worker rejection of the new processes became highly evident in rates of labour turnover, absenteeism and sheer lack of effort.

Even though splitting the work into its smallest components was good for production it was not good for staff moral. For example a single worker doing one job all day every day would soon become bored and look for other ways to keep there mind occupied and the most common way of reacting to boredom at work was simply to leave the job or high levels of absenteeism.

Sabotage, the deliberate disruption of workflows within an organisation or the undermining of the conditions whereby dominant management purposes are readily achieved (Watson 1995).

This was seen as another side effect of workers boredom and a way that workers solved their problems of ‘getting through the day’.

Taylor and Walton (1971) identify three types of physical sabotage each with a different degree of immediate disruptive intent.

Attempts to reduce tension and frustration, the shipbuilders who, about to be sacked upon completion of the ship got drunk and smashed the royal suite, for example.
Attempts to facilitate or ease the work process, ‘tapping’ nuts into aircraft assembly, for example.
Attempts to assert control, ‘the collective bargaining by riot’ indulged in by the luddites, for example.

Although most acts of sabotage were associated with lower status workers, managers and higher status were subject to many other forms of sabotage;

Letting machines break down
Allowing quality to fall
Withholding critical information
Revealing information to competitors
Denigrating the product
Speaking negatively about the organisation to the employees
Falsifying data
Engaging in the physical destruction of data

How can this be overcome?

Being able to solve the managerial problems of depressed employee morale and performance, alternative solutions to job redesign were developed and applied. Because the limiting factors impose different constraints, different types of job enrichment were needed; the three main types are job rotation, job enlargement and autonomous working groups (AWG’s).

Job rotation was introduced as a means of preserving the interests of a job that was being undertaken. At its simplest it involves bringing together monotonous and usually unskilled jobs. A rota or schedule would then be set up and each employee would spend a limited amount of time on each job before moving onto another. The main advantage of using this method is that there is little need for retooling or restructuring of the jobs or working environment. A slight disadvantage of this method could crop up amongst the employees at change over periods, the workstation could be left a mess or the job could be left uncompleted by the last worker.

Another method of redesign was job enlargement, this involves widening to bring in additional skills and allows the employee to give more of their own input to the job and therefore gives the employee a bigger sense of achievement as they feel they have had a bigger contribution to the final product and this sense of achievement can be used for motivational purposes.

Watson (1995) states that ‘Autonomous working groups’ was the grouping of individual jobs to focus work activities on a general ‘whole task’ with work group members being given discretion over how the task is completed. This involved giving employees responsibility for basic managerial activities such as on deciding upon the methods of working and the scheduling and planning of work.

In recent years one variant of autonomous work groups has become very popular, the idea of quality control circles. These are made up of small groups of workers usually led by a foreman or senior worker who would regularly meet up to study and solve all types of production problems, such groups were intended to stimulate motivation and involvement on the shop floor.

The original ideas of quality control circles was American, the basis being the notion of improved staff motivation through employee participation in the decision making process. This was such a popular method that in the 1950’s the Japanese soon began to use them in industry. The effect that quality control circles had on production was the high commitment of the work organisation because it became clear that workers were devoting a lot more of there time (even outside working hours) to the analysis of work related problems.

As part of a social movement to improve the quality of the working life the ideas of job design in industrial societies the ideas of job design were put together around the 1970’s and 80’s. Rose (1985) Littler and Salaman (1984) identified five main principles of good job design.

The principle of closure whereby the scope of the job is such that it includes all the tasks necessary to complete a product or process thus giving the individual a sense of achievement.
The incorporation of control and monitoring tasks whereby the individual or group assumes responsibility for its own quality and reliability.
Task variety whereby the worker understands a range of tasks so as to be able to vary the work experience.
Self regulation of work speed and the allowance of some choice over work methods and sequence
A job structure, which allows some social interaction and the possibility of cooperation between workers.

The most basic set of principles, which underlies the aspects of organisational design in the twentieth century, are those of Bureaucracy.

The main design principle of modern formal organisations-central to which is a hierarchical structure of authority in which specialized office holders fulfil specified responsibilities according to codified rules and procedures.

This process involved a more calculated way of thinking and led to the rapid development of scientific and technological thinking and with regard to work organisation it was felt that by careful calculating the most appropriate way of achieving tasks could be set and the efforts of large numbers of people could be co-ordinated and controlled and large and complex jobs done.

Taylor’s scientific management principles are still in evidence here and in the USA. The fast food restaurant is a prime example of principles of industrial manufacturing being applied to service work. Labour in such restaurants is ‘highly rationalised’ and the goal is the discovery of the best, the most efficient way of grilling a hamburger, frying chicken or serving, Ritzer (1993).

As Ritzer comments McDonalds, the best known fast food business did not invent these ideas but combined them with the principles of the assembly line, to contribute to the ‘creation of mcdonaldization’.

Beymon (1992) claims that industrial manufacturing principles of mechanisation, rationalisation and routinization are applied not only to fast food service work but also to banking, retailing and other services.

From my own experiences of working in a fast food restaurant I would say that Taylor’s principles are very much still in use but that there is not much evidence of any kind of job enrichment for the employee, you would work where you were told

And wouldn’t leave that station until you were told which didn’t make it a very good place to work.

Conclusions and Summary:

The practise of job design or redesign during the last half century has developed on the basis of theories of scientific management and/or human relations.

Although redesigning jobs could be seen as beneficial to the employee I believe from a managerial point of view it is only done to achieve higher labour productivity.

References:

Books

David Knights (1985) Job Redesign (Gower Publishing Aldershot)

Ivan T Robertson (1985) Motivation and Job design (Pitman publishing London)

Mike Southon (2002) The beermat entrepreneur (Pearson publishers London)

Tony J Watson (1995) Sociology work and industry (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd London)