On June 23, 1903 Frederick Winslow Taylor spoke to a room full of people about one the
biggest threats to the American society.
Was it about climate change?
No.
How about massive deforestation?
Not quite.
Well then surely it had to be about the eventual disappearance of resources like coal or iron?
Well, in fact, it was none of these.
Although United States President Theodore Roosevelt had just preached the importance
of conserving natural resources, Taylor thought that another threat existed.
One that was less visible, and intangible.
You see Taylor wasn't speaking to a room full of environmental scientists, politicians,
or business owners.
He was speaking to a room full of engineers.
And he was speaking to them on the topic of national efficiency.
Taylor would go on to present that national efficiency was far more significant than any
other topic currently being discussed.
He argued that the wasted human effort, that was largely unnoticed, was preventing the
country from reaching its optimal level of productivity.
In Taylor's book, The Principles of Scientific Management, he would go on to expound upon
these ideas and provide ultimately a blueprint, along with supporting evidence, for the implementation
of what we know to be Scientific Management.
If Scientific Management, or task management, could be summarized in one word, it would
be efficiency.
Taylor believed that every act could be reduced to a science.
Taylor claimed that today's workers were not operating at anything close to what he called
maximum efficiency and that wasted effort was rampant among task-oriented work.
He presented a few different reasons for this.
The first, was that men, who were the only gender present in his studies, had certain
social incentives to not increase their productivity.
Workers would engage in this concept of soldiering, which essentially means you would work at
a deliberately slow pace, to avoid the abuse from co-workers who didn't want management
to find out that increasing productivity was a possibility.
You see if one worker began to show increased productivity, management may begin to require
this level of productivity as the new norm.
The other issue was the presence of economic incentives.
During this period of time workers were commonly paid what is known as a fair days wage.
Management would determine this wage by observing what they believed to be a fair days work,
essentially what all employees should be able to produce, and then uniformly pay this wage
to all workers regardless of output.
So you can probably imagine there wasn't a strong incentive to actually increase productivity,
since workers were actually paid the same day's wage regardless.
If anything, workers under this system had an incentive to engage in soldiering so that
management wouldn't expect additional productivity for the same days wage.
After all, who really wants to expend additional energy or work longer hours for the same pay?
Probably not many, and those that did would succumb to the peer pressure of other workers
and reduce their output.
Soldiering thus became Taylor's primary concern.
If workers were deliberately reducing the pace at which they worked, whether it be due
to a natural tendency to take it easy, or due to various incentives, how could we create
the conditions for them to work at maximum efficiency?
Taylor believed that the primary objective of management should be to secure what he
called "maximum prosperity" for both the employer and the employee.
He advocated that in order to achieve any type of long-term success it was necessary
for the employer and employees to have a mutually beneficial relationship as opposed to viewing
one another as adversaries.
In order to accomplish this, Taylor supported that management should assume more of the
responsibilities that were actually left for the workers.
You see during this time workers developed there skills through observing another more
seasoned worker and perfecting their trade.
As result, the workers themselves were far more knowledgeable in their work than management.
So management allowed workers to determine how best to perform the individual tasks required
to complete their assignments.
The problem with this, is hundreds of different possible ways of performing certain jobs immerged
so there wasn't a consistency between them.
Taylor argued that a single and unified set of rules and procedures should be developed
that would outline the only way that certain tasks should be performed.
This determination would be made based upon observing workers to identify inefficiencies
and tracking the amount of time it took for workers to complete certain tasks.
Once enough data was collected, management could then establish a clear set of rules
to help workers accomplish their tasks in the most efficient manner.
Once these rules were created, management then had the responsibility to train and develop
workers in accordance with these procedures.
Unfortunately, training was lacking under the traditional model of management at this
time.
The original view was that since workers had more skills than management in terms of how
to perform the work they should be the ones to decide how it was to be performed.
But Taylor believed that managed didn't need to be the experts to identify preferred methods
of operation.
By training the workers, management can thus insure that the tasks are being performed
in the most efficient manner.
Management could also reassign workers at this stage as the goal was to allow workers
to perform the tasks that they could excel in.
The third principle of scientific management was for management to cooperate with workers
to insure the work is being performed consistent with the rules that were previously identified.
As mentioned before, this ran contrary to popular opinion of management and workers
viewing themselves as adversaries.
However, Taylor argued that both parties could achieve their desired outcomes, meaning lower
costs for management and higher wages for workers, if they worked in a mutually beneficial
way.
The last component of scientific management is the equal division of labor between management
and workers.
Historically workers were responsible for determining how the work should be performed,
but Taylor thought that this was rather unscientific.
Especially considering the individuals who worked in these types of jobs were as Taylor
put, of low intelligence, management was in a far better position to determine the optimal
method of performing tasks.
Furthermore, workers needed to focus on what they did best, actually performing the tasks.
So it was inefficient to have them really do anything else.
Although Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management has fallen under criticism for its harsh and
maybe even demeaning view of the worker, its focus on inefficiency through division of
labor, determining the optimal method of performing tasks, and incentivizing workers to perform
a "fair days" work is still present today.
Taylor's work also created interest in worker productivity and ultimately led to a number
of additional studies and subsequent theories.
If you really want to see the impact of Taylor's work, just walk into any fast food establishment
and you'll surely see some of Taylor's principles at work.
Well that's all for this video.
If you're interested in learning more about scientific management, I encourage you to
read Frederick Taylor's book, The Principles of Scientific Management.
The book has been digitized by Google and you can find a link to it in the video description
below.
In our next video, we'll discuss the work of French CEO Henry Fayol.
For questions please leave them in the comment box below and I'll do my best to get back
to those in a timely fashion.
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you while you sleep.
Thanks for watching.