Топик: Two approches to the scientific management

1. Work study :
One experiment detailed movements of workers in a shop and suggested short cuts or more efficient ways of performing certain operations. Within three years the output of the shop had doubled.

2. Standardised tools for shops:
In another area he found that the coal shovels being used weighed from 16 to 38 pounds. After experimenting, it was found that 21-22 pounds was the best weight. Again, after three years 140 men were doing what had previously been done by between 400 and 600 men.

3. Selection and training of workers:
Taylor insisted that each worker be assigned to do what he was best suited for and that those who exceeded the defined work be paid "bonuses." Production, as might be expected, rose to an all-time high.

Taylor, as a result of these experiments, advocated assignment of supervisors by "function" - that is, one for training, one for discipline, etc. This functional approach is evident today in many organisations, including libraries.

Taylor took many of his concepts from the bureaucratic model developed by Max Weber, particularly in regard to rules and procedures for the conduct of work in organisations. Weber, the first to articulate a theory of authority structure in organisations, distinguished between power and authority, between compelling action and voluntary response. He identified three characteristics which aided authority:

1) charisma (personality)
2) tradition (custom)
3) bureaucracy (through rules and regulations)

The concept of bureaucracy developed about the same time as scientific management, and thoughts on specialisation of work, levels of authority, and control all emerged from Weber's writings. Weber was more concerned with the structure of the organisation in which people perform their work roles, rather than with the individual. Most of his writings and research related to the importance of specialisation in labour, regulations and procedures, and the advantages of a hierarchical system in making informed decisions.

Luther Gulick and Lyndal Urvick's Principals of Administration

The culmination of the Principles of Administration Approach was the publication of Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration. In that time, 1937, public administration scholars had come to believe in a static set of principles by which any organisation could be designed or its function improved. These principles, implied that organisations were very much like machines, and that managers could follow a set of formulae to maximise their efficiency.

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick are known in the world for the work "Notes on a Theory of Organization" issued in 1937. They developed the acronym POSDCORB to describe the administrative functions of managers.

POSDCORB stands for:

P lanning - Preparing methodical plans for managing programs;

O rganising - Creating the different sub-units of the organisation;

S taffing - Hiring competent employees to fill vacancies;

D irecting - Issuing directives with time and performance criteria;

C o-ordinating - Interrelating employees' effort efficiently;

R eporting - reports for superiors;

B udgeting - Preparing and executing budgets.

Analysis of two stands

An often repeated criticism of the scientific management approach is that it overemphasised productivity and underemphasised human nature. This criticism is well expressed by Amitai Etzioni, who wrote that "although Taylor originally set out to study the interaction between human characteristics and the characteristics of the machine, the relationship between these two elements which make up the industrial work process, he ended up by focusing on a far more limited subject: the physical characteristics of the human body in routine jobs - e.g., shovelling coal or picking up loads. Eventually Taylor came to view human and machine resources not so much as mutually adapt able, but rather man functioning as an appendage to the industrial machine". Similar criticism could be levelled at other movements within the scientific management approach. The Scientific Management approach directed to create scientific, specialized, technocratic environment which makes it clear how to be more productive and maximize rewards. But his theory can be seen as one-sided. You cannot interpret the human being as a machine as it has it's own interest, it's own needs, that the human being is a entity of the different moods and emotions. He hasn't counted that the motivating factor for employees can be not only monetary, worker can be motivated for example by the interest of working in the particular field (e.g. teachers do not owe a lot of money from their work but they are usually motivated by the interest working with people; e.g. some tourists guides also do not owe a lot of money but they are interested in meeting new people and travelling), experience that he/she would gain through being on particular working place (e.g. nurse doesn't get much money for her work, but she wants to get more experience with time). It is also noted that

design of work procedures is not possible to establish in every field.

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick tried to establish principles of management to motivate worker they believed that economic efficiency rooted in human tendency toward rationality and order.

As with the Principles of Administration Approach, subsequent experience has shown public organisations, and the implementation process, to be far more complex than was imagined in 1937.

The both of theories was searching for the "one best way of doing work" for increasing of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of completing any work. But implementation of each of them has limited effect on the productivity and depends on particular circumstances.

Not any of listed theories can be implemented in modern society, specially in modern Public Administration, the reason for that is extremely complicated human relations. Public Administration is a human science therefore human behaviour plays the most important role in the subject of PA.

Therefore, there is no use in implementing of the considered theories of Science Management in practice.

List of Bibliography used:

1. Lecturer Notes.