Frederick Taylor's Era Of Modern Management Case Study

In the early twentieth century, Frederick Taylor started the era of modern management with his theory called the scientific management. He advocated a change to a new system of management and it was a primary development in traditional approach which led to the modern day management practices. Throughout the years, Taylor`s theory has been severely criticised and its role decreased to an extent that nowadays people might argue whether it still exists or not. In this essay, I will try to discover whether the scientific management is still viable in the modern day management or not. Also, I will discuss the future challenges for managers and alternative ways to understand the management thought.
In ancient epochs, people have been building and …show more content…
Braverman (1974) argued that Taylorism was “not a science, but rather a control system”. Managers were the only ones who designed the operations, assigned the tasks and inspected the worker performance. Employees were firmly told not to think about these issues. This strict rules and hierarchical structure make the organisation mechanical. There are still examples where this type of organisations can be seen. Call centres have this standard that must be followed by employees. Incoming calls are rigorously monitored and listened by managers. It does not sound really encouraging for employees as this complete control removes the sense of freedom and self-determination. The job will be quite monotonous and stressful as well. The management’s perspective might be different as they would achieve a quick service with uniform quality. One of the problems of this hierarchical structure is that will make the organisation inflexible. A call centre is relatively stable environment where innovation and adjustment are rarely required but the employee absenteeism can disrupt the organisation as employees have to say the same lines …show more content…
It is basically dividing the work between managers and workers, so that the only managers will plan the operations. Workers will only perform the tasks which are determined by the management. The superior part of the organisation, the managers, would do the planning and controlling tasks as workers do the physical work. Taylor wanted to tackle “soldiering”, doing the job according to the slowest worker. He thought that the division would work because they would have no chance to think. Burrell and Morgan (1979) states that following his thoughts, organisations were seen as “a machine” where processes were vital and workers were treated as passive parts of it. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in “dehumanising” employees and led to strikes and decline in job satisfaction. Nyland (1996) concludes that workers were “denigrated” and “deskilled” causing the efficiency to drop