F.W.Taylor: A Scientist

Scientific Management, also known as Taylorism is propounded by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the first decade of the 20^th century. It is a theory of management that analyses and synthesises workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labour productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management.

However, Taylor was not the originator of the Scientific Management Theory and before him Charles Babbage, Henry R Towne, Fredrick Halsey and Henry Metcalf developed and used some scientific management methods and techniques. Though, the term Scientific Management was first coined by Louis Brandies in 1910. But, it was Taylor who used the term to give a complete and systematic explanation of scientific methods and techniques for promoting the organisational efficiency and economy. Hence, he came to be known as the Father of Scientific Management.

Taylor’s contribution to growth of Scientific Management is contained in his books like:

• A piece Rate System- 1895
• Shop Management- 1903
• Art of Cutting Metals- 1906
• Principles of Scientific Management- 1911

About Frederick W. Taylor:

Frederick W. Taylor

Taylor was born on 20^th March, 1856 in German town of Philadelphia, USA. Taylor's father, Franklin Taylor was a Princeton educated lawyer and his mother, Emily Annette Winslow Taylor was an ardent abolitionist. Early, Taylor was educated by his mother, after that he studied for two years in France and Germany and traveled Europe for 18 months. Taylor wanted to be a lawyer like his father so that, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire in 1872, with the plan of eventually going to Harvard. In 1874, Taylor passed the Harvard entrance examinations with honors. However, due allegedly to rapidly deteriorating eyesight, Taylor chose quite a different path. But Taylor never demoralized, soon he became an apprentice pattern-maker and machinist in Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia. Later on, he left his apprenticeship for six months and represented a group of New England Machine Tool Manufacturers at Philadelphia's centennial exposition and finished his four year apprenticeship here. In 1878, he became a machine shop worker at Midvale Steel Works. At Midvale, he was quickly promoted to time clerk then machinist, then gang boss over the lathe hands, then machine shop foreman, then research director, and finally chief engineer of the works.

Taylor was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Pennsylvania on 19th October, 1906. He eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. In 1915, Taylor caught pneumonia and died one day after his 59th birthday on 21^st March, 1915.

Development of Scientific Management:

During apprenticeship in Enterprise Hydraulic Works, Taylor gained shop-floor experience. During working in Midvale, Taylor recognised that workmen were not working their machines or themselves, nearly as hard as they could (which at the time was called Soldiering) and that this resulted in high labour costs for the company. When he became a foreman, he expected more output from the workmen. Instant of determining how much work should properly be expected, he began to study and analyse the productivity of both the men and the machines. His focus on the human component of production Taylor labeled scientific management.

In between 1890 to 1893, Taylor worked as a General Manager and a consulting engineer to management for the Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia, a company that operated large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin. He spent time as a Plant Manager in Maine. In 1893, Taylor opened an independent consulting practice in Philadelphia. His business card read "Consulting Engineer- Systematising Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty". Through these consulting experiences, Taylor perfected his management system.

Taylor joined Bethlehem Steel in order to solve an expensive machine-shop capacity problem in 1898. As a result, he with the assistant of Maunsel White, developed high speed steel which paving the way for greatly increased mass production. After leaving Bethlehem Steel in 1901, Taylor focused the rest of his career on publicly promoting his management and machining methods through lecturing, writing, and consulting.

In 1910, owing to the Eastern Rate Case, Frederick Winslow Taylor and his Scientific Management methodologies become famous worldwide. In 1911, Taylor introduced his The Principles of Scientific Management paper to the American mechanical engineering society, eight years after his Shop Management paper.

Three Assumptions of Taylor’s Scientific Management:

The three assumptions of scientific management are as follows:

1. The organisational functioning can be improved with the application of scientific method.
2. A good worker is one who does not initiate action, but accepts the orders of management.
3. Every worker is an economic man, means he is motivated by monetary factors.

Principles of the Scientific Management:

Taylor elaborated four principles of the Scientific Management, they are:

1.  Develop a science for each element of a man’s work, which replaces the old rule of thumb method. By this one best way of doing a task can be decided and the standard output can be determined.
2.  Scientifically selection and then train, teach and develop workmen.
3.  Management should fully cooperate with workers, so as to ensure that the work is done in accordance with the scientific principles developed for this purpose.
4. There must be equal division of work and responsibility between management and workers. The management should take over all work for which they are better suited.

Taylor summaries the philosophy of the above principles as:

• Science, not Rule of Thumb.
• Harmony, not Discord.
• Cooperation, not Individualism.
• Maximum output, not Restricted output
• The development of each man to his greatest and prosperity.

Methods of Scientific Management:

The methods of scientific management are as follows:

Functional Foremanship:

Functional Foremanship

Taylor advocated the concept of functional foremanship rather than single foremanship. Under functional foremanship the worker is supervised and guided by eight functional foremen. Of eight functional foremen four are responsible for planning and others four are responsible for execution and serve on shop floor (lower level). They are:

Functional foremen for planning:

• Order-of-work and route clerk
•  Instruction card clerk
• Time and cost clerk
• Shop disciplinarian

Functional foremen for execution:

• Gang boss
• Speed boss
• Inspector
• Repair boss

Thus, it will facilitate specialization as well as separation of planning from execution.

Motion Study: It is the method of standardization of work techniques. Motion study is designed to determine a preferable work with consideration to tools and equipments, raw materials, hand and body motion, and so on. In short, it is meant for finding out the One Best Way to do a work.

Time Study: It is used to determine the standard time for completion of work. It facilitates planning of a large daily task and follows the motion study. The use of the Stop Watch is very necessary in this method.

Differential Piece Rate Plan: Taylor said the payment should be inspired by motion and time studies, this pay plan was called as the differential piece rate plan. For example: workers are paid a low piece rate up to a standard, a large bonus at the standard and a higher piece rate above the standard. Taylor further suggested that a worker who is unable or unwilling to produce the standard should be removed.

Exception Principle: This principle is involved in set up a large daily task by the management with reward for achieving targets and penalty for not meeting it. Taylor further suggested that the manager should not be interested in items that are at standard performance but should be concerned mainly with exceptional items that vary from standard performance.

Criticism of the Scientific Management:

Scientific management provides innumerable merits but despite that it has been criticised by different sections of society.

1. It was criticised as a partial theory of organization due to its concentration on the shop floor activities and neglect of organizational processes beyond that level. It did not stress the integration and coordination of higher levels of the organization.
2. It is criticised as a mechanistic theory of organisation as it neglected the human side. In other words, it interpreted the organizational efficiency in mechanistic terms only. It treated workers as a machine and sought to make him as efficient as the machine itself. That is why it was opposed by the workers.
3. It was criticised as it ignores or underestimates the human motivation. It explained human motivation mainly in terms of economic factors and did not emphasise the social and psychological aspects of motivation. This came to be known as the Monistic Theory of Motivation.
4.  March and Simon described it as Physiological Organisation Theory because scientific management concern with only that range of worker’s behaviour which pertained to production.
5. Trade Union also criticised the scientific management because it curtails the involvement of trade union through applying the Mental Revolution. This principle resolves all the disputes between the employers and workers.
6.  Managers also opposed the theory because they would lose their judgment and discretion and their work and responsibilities increases.

As far as in my view, Taylorism is a true science as it rests on clearly fixed laws, rules and principles which have universally applicable in any organisation. It focuses on shop floor of the organisation and aims at studying the relationship between the physical nature of work and the physiological nature of workmen. Scientific Management emphasises on specialization, predictability, technical competence and rationality for improving the organisational efficiency and economy.  

Woodrow Wilson: A foresighter

As we know that, Woodrow Wilson is regard as the founder or father of study of public administration. Because during the evolution of public administration as a discipline Wilson played an important role in enlighten of public administration as a discipline. During the era of evolution of public administration in 1887-1926, the main theme was the advocacy for the separation of politics from administration. This advocacy was started with the publication of Woodrow Wilson’s essay "The Study of Administration" in 1887.

About Woodrow Wilson:

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856 in Virginia, USA. He began reading at the age of ten. As a teen, he taught himself the Graham shorthand system to compensate, and achieved academically with self-discipline, studying at home with his father, then in classes at a small Augusta, Georgia school. During Reconstruction, Wilson lived in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1870 to 1874, while his father was professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902. His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910.

He became two terms President of USA in 1913 and 1917 respectively. During his second term the famous “Versailles Treaty” was signed, and founded the League of Nation. For his sponsorship of the League of Nations, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize, the second of three sitting presidents so honored.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.

Work of Woodrow Wilson:

Congressional Government was the first work of Wilson in 1885, and advocated the parliamentary system in his work. He critically described the United States government, with frequent negative comparisons to Westminster. The book reflected the greater power of the legislature, relative to the executive, during the post-bellum period. Wilson later became a regular contributor to Political Science Quarterly, an academic journal.

The second publication was a textbook, entitled The State in 1890, by Wilson. The book was used widely in college courses throughout the country until the 1920s. In this text, he argued that government should not be deemed evil and advocated the use of government to allay social ills and advance society's welfare.

The essay of Woodrow Wilson is credited with the politics-administration dichotomy named The Study of Administration in 1887. This essay laid the foundation for a separate, independent and systematic study in public administration. Wilson came up with a theory that politics and administration are inherently different and should be approached as such.

Wilson’s View on Politics and Administration:

Woodrow Wilson is usually regarded as the originator of the “Doctrine of Politics- Administration Dichotomy”. In his essay Wilson divided government into two separate spheres of politics and administration. In his opinion, politics is dealt with questions of policy formulation; administration is dealt with carrying them out. He defined public administration as “detailed and systematic execution of public law”.

Wilson wrote in his essay in regards to public administration: “The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics.... Administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.”

Wilson believed that administration is a science. Thus, he said that “the science of administration is the latest fruit of the science of politics which was begun some 20 hundred years ago. It is a birth of our own country, almost of our own generation. We are having now, what we never had before, a science of administration”. He called for a separate study of public administration. His basic argument was that “it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than it is to frame one”. Hence, there should be a science of administration, which shall seek:

•       To straighten the paths of government
•       To make its business more businesslike
•      To strengthen and purify its organisation
•       To crown its duties with dutifulness

Criticism Woodrow Wilson:

The politics-Administration Dichotomy has faced many criticism, they are:

1. The standard definition of the dichotomy is too narrow. If politics includes all of what we know as policy making, then the dichotomy would bar administrators, presumably including city managers, from participation.

2. The dichotomy of policy and administration was a conceptual distinction underlying a theory of democratic accountability. It was not intended to guide behaviour, it was intended as a behavioural prescription directed against contemporary practices of machine politics.

3. The dichotomy is a strict definition and there is not conceptually possible to have a one way dichotomy that keeps elected official out of administration but allows administrators to be active in policy.

4. Wilson’s statement of “Government should be run like a business” opened up many loopholes for the capitalist society to exploit the government for things they didn’t actually have. This statement ends in a very dangerous uncharted territory for people now.

As far as I think, the foundations of public administration are the deep and permanent principles of politics. Therefore, the Study of public administration was derived from the study of politics and was to be distinguished from it, but never divorced from its “maxims” and “truths”. If I agree with Wilson then the public administration was much more than technical detail and it was to be conducted in a political context.

Thus I assumed, politics and public administration as “two sides of a coin”.

Henri Fayol: A Visonary...

Fayol is one of the greatest thinkers in the field of administration. He was a classical management theorist, widely regarded as the father of modern Operational Management Theory. His ideas are a fundamental part of modern management concepts. Therefore, He is considered as the Father of Classical Theory of Public Administration and also considered as the founder of the Management Process School. His classical work Industrielle et Generale laid the foundation of Classical Management Theory.

His work Industrielle et Generale was first published in French (1916), but it did not come to light in the English speaking countries until its English translation published in 1949 under the title General and Industrial Management.

About Henri Fayol:

Henri Fayol was born in Constantinople, Istanbul, Turkey in 1841, where his father was working as an engineer. He was educated at the Lycee in Lyons (France) and thereafter at the National School of Mines. At the age of 19, he worked as a mining engineer, at the mining company named Compagnie de Commentry-Fourchambault-Decazeville in Commentary. He was promoted as the Manager in 1872 and Managing Director of the Company in 1888.

Fayol retired as Managing Director in 1918, having spent his entire working life with the Company, he remained Director of the Company until his death in December 1925, at the age of 84. Fayol’s efforts as the Managing Director enabled the company to rise from a position of financial disaster to that of great financial success.

Fayol was influenced by Cartesian philosophy and Adam Smith’s writings. He founded the Centre d’Etudes Administratives in France, which has profound influence on business, army and navy. At the Centre, he used to chair weekly meetings of prominent industrialists, writers, officials, academics, and members of the military. He also influenced the French Government to pay attention towards the principles of administration. He used to advise the Government and investigate into the workings of the Posts and Telegraphs, and the Tobacco Industry.

Fayol was a prolific writer on technical and scientific matters as well as on management. Apart from ten publications on mining, engineering and geology, he published as many books or papers on management. The most outstanding of his writings is his book General and Industrial Management.

His reputation, to a large extent, rests on this single short publication, which is still being frequently reprinted. A large number of his papers are concerned with the reform of the public services. His paper on The Theory of Administration of the State was presented to the Second International Congress of Administrative Sciences in 1923, which is considered a major contribution to the theory of public administration.

The Theory of Administration or Management:

Fayol emphasize on the following three elements of the theory of management. They are:

1. Administrative Theory

2. Elements of Management

3. Principles of Administration

Administrative Theory:

Fayol attempted to develop a science of administration for management. He thought that his principles would be useful to all types of managers. He truly advocated the notion that, if a manager wants to be successful, he only needs a certain set of management principles. If a manager climbed the corporate ladder and reached higher positions, would depend less on technical knowledge and more on administrative knowledge.

He emphasized the role of administrative management and concluded that all activities that occur in business organizations could be divided into six main groups. They are:

• Technical (production, manufacturing)

•  Commercial (buying, selling, exchange)

• Financial (obtaining and using capital)

• Security (protection of property and persons)

• Accounting (balance sheet, stocktaking, statistics, costing)

• Managerial (planning, organising, commanding, coordinating, controlling)

He concluded that the six groups of activities are interdependent and that it is the role of management to ensure all six activities work smoothly to achieve the goals of an enterprise.

Elements of Management:

Fayol identified, as we have seen earlier, the five elements of management i.e., planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling (POCCC) which are discussed below:

Planning:

Fayol used the French term ‘Prevoyance’ which means to ‘foresee’, to ‘anticipate’ and to ‘make plans’. Planning is the most effective tool or instrument in the view of Fayol. Planning enables the separation of the short-run events from the long-range considerations. It endows forethought to the operations of an organisation. Fayol considers that experience is an asset in drawing a realistic plan. To him, unity, continuity, flexibility and precision are the broad features of a good plan of action.

Organising:

To organise an industrial firm or a government agency some material are required for its functioning, such as; raw materials, tools, capitals, personnel, etc. Fayol classifies these activities into two categories: the material organisation, and the human organisation. The latter includes personnel, leadership and organisation structure.

Commanding:

The art of command, according to Fayol, rests on certain personal qualities and knowledge of the general principles of management. Its degree of proficiency differs from unit to unit.

Coordinating:

It consists of working together and ‘harmonizing’ all activities and efforts so as to facilitate the functioning of the organisation. Essentially, the objective of coordination is to ensure that one department’s efforts are coincident with the efforts of other departments, and keeping all activities in perspective with regard to the overall aims of the organisation.

Controlling:

Its objective is to obtain conformity with the plan adopted, the instructions issued and principles established. In the process, weakness and errors have to be rectified and their recurrence prevented. For control to be effective it must be done within a reasonable time and be followed up by sanctions. He uses the term control in the wider French sense of watching, monitoring, checking, auditing and obtaining feedbacks.

Attributes of Manager:

Fayol suggests that managers should have the following attributes:

• Physical: Health, vigour and appearance.

• Mental: Ability to understand and learn, judgment, mental vigour and adaptability.

• Moral: Firmness and willingness to accept responsibility.

• General Education: General acquaintance with matters not belonging exclusively to functions performed.

• Special Knowledge: Special knowledge of the functions being handled be it technical, commercial, financial or managerial.

• Experience: Knowledge arising from the work proper.

 Principles of Administration:

Henry Fayol states that the principles of administration / management are not rigid. On the contrary, they must be capable of adaptation to various enterprises and settings.

The fourteen principles of Fayol are as follows:

1. Division of work: Specialisation of labour produces more and better work with the same effort.

2. Authority and responsibility:  Authority should be commensurate with responsibility. In other words, the occupant of each position should be given enough authority to carry out all the responsibilities assigned to him.

3. Discipline: Obedience should be observed in accordance with the standing agreements between the firm and its employees.

4. Unity of command: For any action, an employee should have only one boss.

5. Unity of direction: One head and one plan for each activity.

6. Subordination of individual interest to general interest: The interest of one employee or group should not prevail over that of the total organisation.

7. Remuneration of personnel: The remuneration paid for services rendered should be fair and afford satisfaction to both personnel and the firm.

8. Centralisation: The degree of initiative left to managers varies depending upon top managers, subordinates and business conditions.

9. Scalar chain (Hierarchy): The line of authority of superiors ranging from the ultimate authority to the lowest ranks.

10. Order (Placement): Once the basic job structure has been devised and the personnel to fill the various slots have been selected, each employee occupies that job wherein he or she can render the most effective service.

11. Equity: For the personnel to be encouraged to fulfill their duties with devotion and loyalty there must be equity based on kindness and justice in employer-employee relations.

12. Stability of tenure of personnel: Suitable conditions should be created to minimize turnover of employees.

13. Initiative: The ability to think afresh would act as a powerful motivator of human behaviour.

14. Esprit de corps: Harmony, union among the personnel of an organisation is a source of great strength in the organisation.

Fayol's Philosophy of Gangplank:

The Gangplank refers to the need for ‘level jumping’ in a hierarchical organisation. Although Fayol places emphasis on formal organisation, he is alive to the dangers of conformity to hierarchy and formalism. It is an error to depart needlessly from the line of authority, but it is even greater one to keep it when detrimental to the businesses, asserts Fayol.

Gangplank:

Gangplank

He illustrates the problem with reference to the figure given below. If ‘F’ follows the principle of proper channel of communication, he has to send his message or file to ‘P’ through ‘E’, ‘D’ and so on, covering nine levels. It is, however, possible for ‘F’ to use ‘gangplank’ and avoid going through ‘A’ and all the other intervening layers as intermediaries. Recourse to ‘gangplank’ is possible only when the immediate superiors (in the case, ‘E’ and ‘O’) authorize such a relationship. Whenever a disagreement develops between ‘F’ and ‘P’, they must turn the matter to their superiors. While suggesting ‘gangplank’, Fayol is rather cautions. He feels that it may be less relevant to Government agencies in which the lines of authority are less clear than in private organisations.

Criticism of Fayol:

Fayol’s theory has been criticized on the following grounds:

Too formal: Fayol’s theory is said to be very formal. However, in any scientific and analytical study facts and observations have to be presented in a formal manner.

Vague: Some of the concepts have not been properly defined. For example, the principle of division of work does not tell how the task should be divided. Again, to say that an organisation needs coordination is merely to state the obvious. In the words of Herbert Simon, administrative theory suffers from superficiality, oversimplification and lack of realism.

Inconsistency: Principles of administrative theory were based on personal experience and limited observations. There is too much generalised and lack of empirical evidence. They have not been verified under controlled scientific conditions. Some of them are contradictory. For example, the unity of command principle is incompatible with division of work. The theory does not provide guidance as to which principle should be given precedence over the other.

Pro-management Bias: Administrative theory does not pay adequate attention to workers. Workers are treated as biological machines or inert instruments in the work process.

Some other grounds are:

1. He neglected the structural aspect and his treatment of the organisation was considered defective.

2. Peter Drucker observes that some of the worst mistakes of organisation building have been committed by imposing a mechanistic model of an ‘ideal’ or ‘universal’ organisation on a living business.

3. The empirical base used by Fayol for generating a full-fledged theory of management is too narrow.

4. His ideas are criticised on the basis of their value judgments involving ‘should’ or ‘ought’ statements, for lack of a sufficient experimental basis and for their internal contradictions. Elaborating their criticisms, Barnard and Simon argue that a managerial organisation cannot be explained purely in terms of a set of principles about formal organisation structure.

5. Fayol has mostly ignored the social-psychological or emotional needs of the employees.