Frederick Taylor's Contribution to the Evolution of Management Thoughts
Appendix a: History of management thought
I. INTRODUCTION
The systematic study of management began during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, after the industrial revolution had swept through Europe and America.
• With the introduction of steam power and sophisticated machinery and equipment, the industrial revolution changed the way things were produced. Large factories operated by semi-skilled or unskilled workers were replacing small shops run by craftsmen.
• Owners and managers of the new factories found themselves unprepared for the challenges that accompanied the shift away from crafts production. Because they were unprepared for the social problems that occur when people work together in large groups, they began to search for new managerial techniques.
II. F.W. TAYLOR AND SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
• Frederick W. Taylor (1856 – 1915) is best know for defining the techniques of scientific management, which is the systematic study of relationships between people and tasks for the purpose of redesigning the work process to increase efficiency.
• He believed that the production process could be made more efficient by using specialization and the division of labor to reduce the amount of time and effort expended by each worker to produce a unit of output.
• He also believed that the best way to determine the most efficient division of labor was by using scientific management techniques, rather than intuition or informal rule-of-thumb knowledge.
• Based on his experiments and observations, he developed the following four principles:
Principle 1: Study the way workers perform their tasks, gather all the informal job knowledge possessed by workers, and experiment with ways of improving the way tasks are performed to increase efficiency. One of Taylor’s main tools was the time and motion study, which involves the careful timing and recording of the actions taken to perform a particular task.
Principle 2:
I. INTRODUCTION
The systematic study of management began during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, after the industrial revolution had swept through Europe and America.
• With the introduction of steam power and sophisticated machinery and equipment, the industrial revolution changed the way things were produced. Large factories operated by semi-skilled or unskilled workers were replacing small shops run by craftsmen.
• Owners and managers of the new factories found themselves unprepared for the challenges that accompanied the shift away from crafts production. Because they were unprepared for the social problems that occur when people work together in large groups, they began to search for new managerial techniques.
II. F.W. TAYLOR AND SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
• Frederick W. Taylor (1856 – 1915) is best know for defining the techniques of scientific management, which is the systematic study of relationships between people and tasks for the purpose of redesigning the work process to increase efficiency.
• He believed that the production process could be made more efficient by using specialization and the division of labor to reduce the amount of time and effort expended by each worker to produce a unit of output.
• He also believed that the best way to determine the most efficient division of labor was by using scientific management techniques, rather than intuition or informal rule-of-thumb knowledge.
• Based on his experiments and observations, he developed the following four principles:
Principle 1: Study the way workers perform their tasks, gather all the informal job knowledge possessed by workers, and experiment with ways of improving the way tasks are performed to increase efficiency. One of Taylor’s main tools was the time and motion study, which involves the careful timing and recording of the actions taken to perform a particular task.
Principle 2: