Taylorism
Taylorism, also known as scientific management, is a management theory developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early 20th century. The core idea behind Taylorism is to enhance worker efficiency by breaking down complex tasks into simpler, manageable parts and optimizing factory layouts. Taylor proposed that workers should be compensated based on their productivity, aiming to prevent what he termed "soldiering," where employees would work at a minimal pace. His principles emphasized systematic study and scientific methods in selecting and training workers, as well as redefining the roles of managers and workers, with managers responsible for planning and workers for execution.
While Taylorism significantly boosted productivity, it faced backlash from skilled laborers who felt dehumanized and exploited under this system. Critics argued that the approach stifled creativity and innovation, leading to labor protests and the strengthening of unions. Despite its decline in popularity due to these negative consequences, the legacy of Taylorism persists, influencing various modern management practices, including lean manufacturing and quality control systems. In recent years, the rise of "digital Taylorism," characterized by extensive employee monitoring through technology, has reignited discussions about the balance between productivity and worker dignity in the workplace.
Taylorism
Taylorism, also called scientific management, is a school of thought pioneered by mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915). Taylor specialized in maximizing worker efficiency by streamlining factory layouts and redesigning the relationship between workers and management. Scientific management increased the efficiency and output of factory workers by breaking complex tasks into smaller parts. It also proposed that workers be compensated relative to their productivity. The concept proved influential, and some of its principles have been incorporated into later business and management theories. Scientific management was not always well received, however. Many skilled laborers protested the movement, claiming that it gave management unfair power over workers.
The Life of Frederick Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born on March 20, 1856, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a politically active feminist and staunch abolitionist. Taylor was academically gifted and planned to attend Harvard Law School from an early age. He easily passed the prestigious school’s entrance exam, but chose not to attend due to his failing eyesight. Instead, Taylor took a job as an apprentice patternmaker and machinist.
After completing his apprenticeship in 1878, Taylor took a low-level machinist job at Midvale Steel Works. Over time, Taylor rose from the work floor to the lofty post of chief engineer. During this rise, Taylor formed his theories about effective management practices. He published these theories in a paper entitled The Principles of Scientific Management. When implemented at Midvale Steel, Taylor’s ideas dramatically increased efficiency. Taylor then worked as a consultant for other factories and firms, helping them redesign their buildings’ layouts and the relationships between managers and workers.
Scientific Management
Taylor’s scientific management theories were designed to improve the efficiency of a factory system and worker-manager relations and to prevent soldiering, which Taylor defined as the tendency of workers to only complete enough work to avoid being penalized or reprimanded.
Taylor conducted time-and-motion studies in a variety of industries for a number of tasks. For example, his science of shoveling study found that the optimal weight a worker could shovel was twenty-one pounds. Since substances vary by weight and volume, Taylor suggested shovels should be designed to hold twenty-one pounds of whatever material was to be moved and provided to the workers. Before this change, workers brought their own shovels of any size. This study greatly increased productivity.
Eventually, Taylor developed four principles of scientific management:
- Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
- Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
- Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed.
- Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
Taylor had his managers redefine the relationship between workers and managers. Under the old system, the workers used their experience and preferences to decide how to do their job, and the managers made sure the jobs were accomplished on time. Under Taylor’s system, the managers would decide every detail of the work. Thinking was a manager’s job, while doing was a worker’s job. Taylor had his managers examine the workers’ jobs and break each down into the simplest, quickest steps possible. They timed each step, finding a maximum acceptable time for every motion.
Managers next needed to convince workers to follow the new method. Taylor suggested finding an employee well-suited to the task and offering the worker a specified wage for every time the individual completed a task with the new methods and within the timeframe. He believed that because this worker is finishing more work, his or her total pay should be more than the previous rate. Taylor also believed that when other workers saw the example worker accomplishing more and being paid more, they would happily switch to the new system.
Taylor advocated carefully studying the workers, so that they could be assigned tasks that best suited each person's abilities. He proposed that a manager or veteran worker should take the time to carefully teach the new worker how to perform the job appropriately.
Henry Ford and Taylorism
One of the earliest and most famous adopters of Taylor’s scientific management theory was the entrepreneur Henry Ford. Beginning in 1908, he applied Taylor’s ideas, especially time studies, worker specialization, and the elimination of any unnecessary movements, to the manufacturing process of his Model T automobiles.
Ford placed his workers on an assembly line and had employees pull each car down the line. Every time a car reached a work station, that worker would perform the same, simple task as quickly as possible. As soon as the task was complete, the car was towed down the line to the next worker. This process allowed Ford to lower the market price of a Model T from $825 to $575 and within a few years had reduced the average manufacturing time of the vehicle from about twelve hours to ninety-three minutes.
Criticism and Legacy of Scientific Management
Though scientific management was often embraced by business owners, it faced a very negative reaction from skilled workers. Craftspeople who had spent years or decades mastering a process felt insulted by a manager telling them how to work, what tools to use, and how long each task should take. Laborers were expected to work as fast as possible at mindless tasks, and often experienced fatigue and unhappiness. Workers complained that they felt dehumanized, treated more like machines to be used than people. Additionally, many felt that by forcing workers to complete tasks in a uniform fashion, the chance for innovation and creative thinking was diminished.
Some workers also felt exploited. They claimed that although their production had dramatically increased, their pay had not. A number of labor protests—including the army munitions strikes of 1911—drew attention to the downside of scientific management. Historians have credited this opposition to Taylorism as a factor in the increasing influence of labor unions in the twentieth century. The backlash against scientific management was strong enough that its concepts were mocked and satirized in popular culture, including the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times and Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World.
Numerous new forms of understanding and regulating management and production in the workplace from a scientific perspective developed during the twentieth century, many of which incorporated some of the basic principles of Taylorism. However, scientific management itself faded from popularity as its negative consequences became more apparent and researchers began to emphasize the human element in management. Some critics have argued that the tenets of scientific management and its successors led to trends of job automation and offshoring that had and continue to have negative effects on the working class and even the broader global economy. The practice is rarely seen in its basic form in the twenty-first century, and strict adherence to such ideas could potentially clash with labor laws in many countries.
However, the 2010s saw a surge of interest in "digital Taylorism," as allegedly practiced by technology-focused companies like the online retailer Amazon; critics contended that pervasive computer technology allows employers to observe and quantify nearly every aspect of their workers, and that many companies simply fire those who underperform according to such metrics. Advances such as the Internet of things allows ever-closer measurement of various elements of employees' daily routines. This digital revival of scientific management sparked controversy just as Taylor's original ideas had, with proponents claiming that such methods allow for higher productivity and quality while opponents argue they dehumanize workers by treating them as disposable tools.
Still, the positive legacy of scientific management can also be detected in many areas of business into the twenty-first century. The widespread adoption of standardized quality control programs in industry from the 1920s onward, the growth of fields such as operations management, and the creation of detailed processes and systems such as lean manufacturing and Six Sigma all can be traced back to Taylor's ideas. Taylorism can also be seen as influential in the development of management practices outside of traditional industrial production. Some examples include managed care in medicine, productivity improvements in sales and marketing, and methods of coaching and statistical analysis in sports.
Bibliography
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