Is scientific organization of work only history?

Résumé du document

In 1893, Frederick Winslow Taylor became general manager of the Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia where he noticed two main problems: the saunter of workers and the high number of qualified workers with high salaries. Therefore, he developed a theory of management, "the scientific organization of work" that he exposed in 1911 in The Principles of Scientific Management. He described in his book the "one best way" work could be done to increase productivity of each worker and therefore the output of the organization.

The scientific management of work started a real transformation of the industrial work organization. This kind of organization knew great success especially after the Second World War as it allowed huge profits, and was part of the reason the "Trente Glorieuses" period was so prosperous. However, the system collapsed at the end of the 1970s and it seems today that it is completely discredited.

Has the scientific been relegated to an obsolete theory that was only efficient in ancient history or is it still used today?

Extraits

[...] Therefore, the major problem of the scientific organization of work was its dissociation between management and human affairs. Hersey considered it treated “humans as instruments or machines to be manipulated by their leaders”, without any interest in the emotions or mental health of its employees. Taylor did have interest in the workers' goals but considered these goals were simply motivated by maximizing profits. However, J. G. March and H. A. Simon stressed that men are not only homo economicus: they have more diverse and complex motivations than money and their feelings need to be taken into account. [...]

[...] However, this type of management has revealed weaknesses and it is actually a failure in Sweden: it probably focused too much on the social aspect of work and not enough on the management of the production that needs to be intelligent not to encourage absenteeism and idleness. III. Taylor's approach is still present in today's organizations, mostly in new forms adapted to today's society We notice that the complete rupture with scientific organization has generally been a failure. A less utopian solution is probably not to refuse it but to combine it with a more humanist approach, which is what some have tried to do. [...]

[...] On the other hand, the scientific organization failed to take into account the importance of relationships at work. First, there is a huge importance of feeling recognized by superiors and the scientific organization wasn't satisfying as it completely cut the links between conception and application. To be ideal, an organization shouldn't be too rigid and pyramidal and should allow the workers to establish relations with their superiors. Therefore, they would feel socially integrated and would assume more their responsibilities. The Hawthorne experiment led by Elton Mayo in 1927 actually showed that individuals are more efficient in their jobs if they feel recognized in what they do. [...]

[...] We showed that the scientific organization of labor is not only part of history. It did reveal lots of weaknesses mainly a lack of recognition of the psychology of workers and a lack of flexibility that caused difficulty to adapt to the evolutions of society; however, its principles are still used today. Indeed, most of the actual models try to reconcile the basic assumptions brought by Taylor with the new demands of the market and the taking into account of the human factor: only this kind of realism seems to be productive as we see the models that completely refused the scientific approach lacked efficiency. [...]

[...] First, the timed work is the foundation of fast-food restoration as the client never has to wait. Then, the labor is divided: to sell a hamburger in MacDonald's, three people are needed: the one cooking it, the one packing it and the on selling it. However, thing are not all black and white and most companies have tried to combine the human relation movement with the scientific organization of work. Taylor's approach was re-appropriated. A good example of this combination is toyotism, which is designated by Frédéric Lemaître as intermediary organization form”. [...]