A Critical Review of Scientific Management...

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Many of the contemporary behavioral scholars are critical of the concept of scientific management, because its objective is to achieve efficiency at the cost of over working the employees as slaves of management and feed arm or extensions of machinery. The principal itself is impersonal in nature and lack the social behavioral touch, one of reasons for this is that many of early management thinkers were engineers (Aken, 2004).

Taylors scientific management has come under most criticism by Trade Unions, Workers Managers and scholars. There are many criticisms but the fact that Taylorism has stood the test of time speaks for its integrity. MacDonald’s, Starbucks all use principles of scientific management they are not only world class organizations but global example of the strengths of scientific management.

Some of the Criticisms

Exploitation of the Worker. While some thinkers assume that it puts pressure in the work to perform faster. But Taylor experimented with best approach method and time study which was supposed to enhance output and productivity. Which apparently lead to Trade Unions becoming more powerful which perhaps let to miss- trust among workers and managers as it was the trade unions modus operandi to create the miss-trust between workers and employers (Mullins, 2004).

On the other hand, Taylors approach was considered mechanistic and placed importance that people need to work as extensions of the machinery they work with and therefore they had to work swiftly. Taylor experimented with the idea the right person, ideally size of spade to optimize production with the work time framework in coal mining. It is considered that Taylorism promoted individualism unlike todays team work.

Taylor is criticked for separating planning from doing therefore the planners, supervisor and managers didn’t actually know how to work this is another though unacceptable argument as the father of Time and Motion Study he trained to create ideal solutions to work problems and today time and motion study is a science in manufacturing flow and highly advance science.

Closing remarks:

Perhaps while there are some truths to the criticism of Taylorism it has stood the test of time even contemporary companies use much of his concepts to achieve productivity, eliminate tardiness and optimize production and production flow.

Reference:

Aken, J. E. v. (2004), Management Research Based on the Paradigm of the Design Sciences: The Quest for Field-Tested and Grounded Technological Rules. Journal of Management Studies, 41: 219–246. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.

Mullins, Laurie J. (2004), Management and Organisational Behaviour (7th ed.), Financial Times–FT Press–Prentice-Hall–Pearson Education Ltd, ISBN 978-0-273-68876-1.