Scientific Management

Before scientific management, organizational decision making could best be described as “seat-of-the-pants.” Decisions were made haphazardly without any systematic study, thought, or collection of information. Customer orders were transmitted verbally from sales representatives to shop floor supervisors. They were not written down. If the “managers” hired by the company founder or owner decided that workers should work twice as fast, little or no thought was given to worker motivation. If workers resisted, “managers” often resorted to physical beatings to get workers to work faster, harder, or longer. In general, with no incentives for “managers” to cooperate with workers and vice versa, managers and workers gamed the system trying to systematically take advantage of each other. Likewise, nothing was standardized. Each worker did the same job in his or her own way with different methods and different tools. In short, there were no procedures to standardize operations, no standards to judge whether perform-ance was good or bad, and never any follow-up to determine if productivity or quality actually improved when changes were made.¹⁴

THE HISTORY OF MANAGEMENT

scientific management thoroughly studying and testing different work methods to identify the best, most efficient way to complete a job

This all changed, however, with the advent of scientific management, which, in contrast to the unsystematic “seat-of-the-pants” approach, thoroughly studied and tested different work methods to identify the best, most efficient ways to complete a job.

Let’s find out more about scientific management by learning about 2.1 Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management, 2.2 Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and motion studies, and 2.3 Henry Gantt and his Gantt charts.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-17