THE CLASSICAL ORGANIZATION THEORYTHE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to study the relevance of classical theories of management in the understanding of organizational behavior today. Undoubtedly, business and management theories mutate in accordance with changes in the business environment .Managers and entrepreneurs together agree on the fact that business practices change almost every decade.

INTRODUCTION

The term Scientific Management also called Taylorism was coined in 1910 by Frederic W. Taylor (1856-1915) and his followers. During the industrial revolution, from human manual craft work to the application of mechanization to factory, the advancement of technology and its’ application to manufacturing industry in late eighteen century and early ninety century made this theory became possible for the purpose of economic efficiency and labor productivity. In Taylor’s practice of scientific management, the discovery of “high-speed steel,” alone with the application of systematic method improved the performance of metal cutting, though a systematic study of labor flow, including time and motion studies, workers were rewarded or punished upon the conditions of reduction or elimination of waste, task standardization and best practice of labor procedures. Application of scientific management yielded significant improvements in productivity. Scientific management worked well for organizations with assembly line setups and other reutilized jobs. From 1901 to 1915 the scientific management was introduced to at least 181 American factories.

RESEARCH APPROACH

Most business and management degree awarding institutions offer

a number of courses with classical management theories as components’ almost every text book in this area has at least a chapter dealing with these theories. This suggests that these theories constitute important learning component in the formation of managers and leaders. However, many decades are passed since the postulation of these theories. The nature of business practice has changed a lot hence the need to reassess the relevance of these theories in managerial development.

THEORY: THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

ORIGIN

Early attempts to study behaviour in organizations came from a desire by industrial efficiency experts to answer this question: What can be done to get workers to do more work in less time? It is not surprising that attempts to answer this question were made at the beginning of the twentieth century, since this was a period of rapid industrialization and technological change in the United States. As engineers attempted to make machines more efficient, it was natural to focus efforts on the human side—making people more productive, too.

The nineteenth-century factory system was characterized by ad hoc organization, decentralized management, informal relations between employers and employees, and casually defined jobs and job assignments. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, increased competition, novel technologies, pressures from government and labour, and a growing consciousness of the potential of the factory had inspired a wide-ranging effort to improve organization and management. The focus of this activity was the introduction of carefully defined procedures and tasks. Historians have labelled these innovations "systematic management."

The central figure in this movement was the American engineer, inventor, and management theorist Frederick W. Taylor. Born in 1856 to an aristocratic Philadelphia family, Taylor started his career in the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company in 1878, rose rapidly, and began to introduce novel methods. In the next decade he devised numerous organizational and technical innovations, including a method of timing workers with a stopwatch to calculate optimum times. After a brief career as the manager of a paper company, Taylor became a self-employed consultant, devoted to improving plant management.

During these years Taylor, an 1883 engineering graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology, also became a major figure in the engineering profession, whose adherents sought an identity based on rigorous formal education, mutually accepted standards of behaviour, and social responsibility. In factories, mines, and railroad yards, engineers

rejected the experiential knowledge of the practitioner for scientific experimentation and analysis. They became the principal proponents of systematic management.

In the 1890s, Taylor became the most ambitious and vigorous proponent of systematic management. As a consultant he introduced accounting systems that permitted managers to use operating records with greater effectiveness, production systems that allowed managers to know more precisely what was happening on the shop floor, time studies to determine what workers were able to do, piece-rate systems to encourage employees to follow instructions, and many related measures. Between 1898 and 1901, as a consultant to the Bethlehem Iron Company (later Bethlehem Steel), Taylor introduced all of his systems and engaged in a vigorous plan of engineering re-search. This experience was the capstone of his creative career. Two developments were of special importance. His discovery of "high-speed steel," which improved the performance of metal cutting tools, assured his fame as an inventor, and his efforts to introduce systematic methods led to an integrated view of managerial innovation. By 1901, Taylor had fashioned scientific management from systematic management.

As the events of Taylor's career indicate, systematic management and scientific management were intimately related. They had common roots, attracted the same kinds of people, and had the same objectives. Their differences also stand out. Systematic management was diffuse and utilitarian, a number of isolated measures that did not add up to a larger whole. Scientific Bethlehem, Taylor resolved to devote his time and ample fortune to promoting both. His first extensive report on his work, "Shop Management," published in 1903 in the journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, portrayed an integrated complex of systematic ma Scientific management, also called Taylorism or the Classical Perspective, is a method in management theory that determines changes to improve labour productivity. The idea was first coined by Frederick Winslow Taylor in The Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful study of an individual at work.

In management literature today, the greatest use of the concept of Taylorism is as a contrast to a new, improved way of doing business. In political and sociological terms, Taylorism can be seen as the division of labour pushed to its logical extreme, with a consequent de-skilling of the worker and dehumanisation of the workplace.

FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

The Principles of Scientific Management is a monograph published by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911. This influential monograph, which laid out the principles of scientific management, is a

seminal text of modern organization and decision theory and has motivated administrators and students of managerial technique. Taylor was an American manufacturing manager, mechanical engineer, and then a management consultant in his later years. He is often called "The Father of Scientific Management." His approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or Taylorism.

Taylor started this paper by quoting then President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. stating that "The conservation of our national resources is only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency." Taylor pointed out that while a large movement had started to conserve material resources, the less visible and less tangible effects of the wasted human effort was only vaguely appreciated. He argues the necessity of focusing on training rather than finding the "right man", stating "In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first", and the first goal of all good systems should be developing first-class men.

TAYLOR’S FOUR PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

Taylor's four principles are as follows:

1. Replace working by "rule of thumb," or simple habit and common sense, and instead use the scientific method to study work and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks.

2. Rather than simply assign workers to just any job, match workers to their jobs based on capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.

3. Monitor worker performance, and provide instructions and supervision to ensure that they're using the most efficient ways of working.

4. Allocate the work between managers and workers so that the managers spend their time planning and training, allowing the workers to perform their tasks efficiently.

Critiques of Taylorism

Taylorism promotes the idea that there is "one right way" to do something. As such, it is at odds with current approaches such as MBO   (Management By Objectives), Continuous Improvement initiatives,

BPR   (Business Process Reengineering), and other tools like them. These promote individual responsibility, and seek to push decision making through all levels of the organization.

The idea here is that workers are given as much autonomy as practically possible, so that they can use the most appropriate approaches for the situation at hand. (Reflect here on your own experience – are you happier and more motivated when you're following tightly controlled procedures, or when you're working using your own judgment?) What's more, front line workers need to show this sort of flexibility in a rapidly-changing environment. Rigid, rules-driven organizations really struggle to adapt in these situations.

Teamwork is another area where pure Taylorism is in opposition to current practice. Essentially, Taylorism breaks tasks down into tiny steps, and focuses on how each person can do his or her specific series of steps best. Modern methodologies prefer to examine work systems more holistically in order to evaluate efficiency and maximize productivity. The extreme specialization that Taylorism promotes is contrary to modern ideals of how to provide a motivating and satisfying workplace.

Where Taylorism separates manual from mental work, modern productivity enhancement practices seek to incorporate worker's ideas, experience and knowledge into best practice. Scientific management in its pure form focuses too much on the mechanics, and fails to value the people side of work, whereby motivation and workplace satisfaction are key elements in an efficient and productive organization.

Key Points -Taylor's principles became widely practiced, and the resulting cooperation between workers and managers eventually developed into the teamwork we enjoy today. While Taylorism in a pure sense isn't practiced much today, scientific management did provide many significant contributions to the advancement of management practice. It introduced systematic selection and training procedures, it provided a way to study workplace efficiency, and it encouraged the idea of systematic organizational design.

OVERVIEW

General approach

Select workers with appropriate abilities for each job. Training for standard task.

Planning work and eliminating interruptions. Wage incentive for increase output Standard method for performing each job.

Contributions

Scientific approach to business management and process improvement

Importance of compensation for performance Began the careful study of tasks and jobs Importance of selection and training

Elements

Labour is defined and authority/responsibility is legitimized/official Positions placed in hierarchy and under authority of higher level Selection is based upon technical competence, training or

experience Actions and decisions are recorded to allow continuity and memory Management is different from ownership of the organization Managers follow rules/procedures to enable reliable/predictable

behaviour

Mass production methods

Taylorism is often mentioned along with Fordism, because it was closely associated with mass production methods in manufacturing factories. Taylor's own name for his approach was scientific management. This sort of task-oriented optimisation of work tasks is nearly ubiquitous today in industry, and has made most industrial work menial, repetitive, tedious and depressing; this can be noted, for instance, in assembly lines and fast-food restaurants. Ford's arguments began from his observation that, in general, workers forced to perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work (which he called "soldiering", but might nowadays be termed

by those in charge as "loafing" or "malingering" or by those on the assembly line as "getting through the day"), he opined, was based on the observation that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work the slowest among them does: this reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their compensation. He therefore proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. From this he posited that there was one best method for performing a particular task, and that if it were taught to workers, their productivity would go up.

Taylor introduced many concepts that were not widely accepted at the time. For example, by observing workers, he decided that labour should include rest breaks so that the worker has time to recover from fatigue. He proved this with the task of unloading ore: workers were taught to take rest during work and output went up.

Today's armies employ scientific management. Of the key points listed; a standard method for performing each job, select workers with appropriate abilities for each job, training for standard task, planning work and eliminating interruptions and wage incentive for increase output. All but wage incentives for increased output are used by modern military organizations. Wage incentives rather appear in the form of skill bonuses for enlistments.

Division of Labor

Unless people manage themselves, somebody has to take care of administration, and thus there is a division of work between workers and administrators. One of the tasks of administration is to select the right person for the right job:

Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who

is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. (Taylor 1911, 59)

This view – match the worker to the job – has resurfaced time and time again in management theories.

Influence of Taylorism

Taylor’s approaches and his thoughts influenced several people and organisations during his time. For several years, a powerful scientific management movement prevailed in USA and some countries of the west. The remuneration and the productivity of the workers also improved significantly. Some of the notable management authors and thinkers like Frank Gilbreth, Henry Gantt, Emerson and Barth developed and refined Taylor’s ideas and approaches. A new scientific culture of work management, time and motion studies, simplification and standardization, production planning and control etc. took place in USA.

FRANK AND LILLIAN GILBRETH

It was the early 1900s, and Frank, a young contractor in Boston, set his eyes on Lillian, a recent college graduate from California. Clearly, Katy Perry had it right about California girls being undeniably beautiful because Frank's attempts at wooing Lillian must have worked. After just six months after meeting for the first time, they were married. Being the smart woman she was, Lillian quickly joined Frank in his construction business and began to take on a leadership role within the company.

Lillian Gilbreth was one of the earliest industrial psychologists and received her doctor’s degree in this field in 1915. After her husband’s untimely death in 1924, she carried on his consulting business and was widely acclaimed as the “first lady of management” throughout her long life, which ended in 1972 when she was 93. Frank Gilbreth long emphasized that in applying scientific management principles, we must

look at workers first and understand their personalities and needs. Gilbreth came to the conclusion that it is not the monotony of work that causes so much worker dissatisfaction but, rather, management’s lack of interest in workers.

Three years later, in 1907, the couple was introduced to Frederick Taylor. Entranced with Taylor's work with time studies, the Gilbreths rapidly became involved in scientific research. Using what they learned while working with Taylor, the Gilbreths decided to shift their focus to scientific management consulting and severed their working relationship with Taylor in 1914. Lillian continued her education by earning a doctorate in psychology and later used what she learned during this degree program to better understand the practice of management.

With this newfound knowledge relating to psychology, the Gilbreths were able to combine the human element of management with the technical observations they had made during their research. The two quickly tied the idea of worker satisfaction to productivity and saw that when worker satisfaction increased, so did the level of productivity and efficiency in those same workers. What resulted was the design of a system that would ease the amount of fatigue a worker experienced by providing them with specific movements to use while completing their jobs. They also noticed the need to consider the working conditions and overall environment in which the workers performed their jobs. This lead to innovations in office furniture, and many credit them with leading the way to the study of ergonomics.

TIME AND MOTIONS STUDY- Although their contributions were many, what the Gilbreths are most known for is their work on motion studies. If you're familiar with the phrase 'work smarter, not harder', then you will know exactly what Frank and Lillian were after. The interest in standardization and method studies developed while Frank was working as a bricklayer. In fact, it didn't take long as an apprentice for Frank to notice that no one bricklayer performed his or her job quite the same. He found some workers to be highly productive, while others were extremely slow and ineffective. While we can certainly attribute some of the slowness and inefficiency to pure laziness, Frank focused on identifying the basic movements needed to lay brick effectively and isolated them to eliminate unnecessary movements. Frank presented his findings to his fellow bricklayers and found that those who used the movements he recommended were able to increase their output from

1,000 to 2,700 bricks per day.

Just imagine what that would mean for you as a manager. If you were able to come up with a standard set of movements, practices, methods, or procedures for your workers to follow that would maximize their efforts, how much more could your employees do during their 8-hour shift? How much more could be done on a given week, a month, or a year? And how much more profit could you earn as a result? What the Gilbreths discovered by studying the motions of others was a way to immediately impact the bottom line for the better. There was no fancy equipment to buy, elaborate marketing schemes to draw up, or innovative products needing to be developed. It required nothing more than spending time observing, analyzing, and scrutinizing effective movements of workers as they went through the motions of their jobs. Again, work smarter, not harder!

Key theories

Work simplification

Work simplification was based on respect for the dignity of people and work and was developed by Frank Gilbreth from the age of seventeen, when he began work as a bricklayer. He documented the different ways that individuals laid bricks and from these observations he determined the most efficient way to carry out this task. For Frank, efficiency was of benefit both to the employer (through an increase in the number of bricks that any one bricklayer could lay), and also to the employee, through minimising the levels of effort and exertion required, and so reducing employees' tiredness and risks of injury. Through his extensive analysis of bricklaying methods, Frank pioneered a new system of laying bricks, and the use of this system increased output per worker from 1000 to 2700 bricks per day.

Another application of Frank's efficiency studies can be seen in operating theatres in hospitals around the world today. Prior to the efficiency study he carried out, surgeons would find all the instruments they needed for operations for themselves, wasting precious minutes as the patient lay on the table. Frank introduced the procedure of a nurse assisting the surgeon by passing instruments into an open hand, as they were required.

Frank took his efficiency systems very seriously, even at home. In Cheaper by the dozen, it is stated that he used two shaving brushes to lather his face in order to save 17 seconds on his shaving time; he abandoned attempts to shave with two razors, however, as while saving

44 seconds this also led him to have to spend an extra two minutes bandaging his cuts.

The Gilbreths' children were not exempt from their parents' efficiency methods, either. They were all given their own tasks and became individually responsible for duties such as buying the family's birthday presents or being the chairperson of the house budget committee.

Therbligs

In their study of hand movements, the Gilbreths found that terms such as "move hand" were too general to allow detailed analysis. They split hand movements into 17 basic units of motion that could then, through various combinations, form the hand movements being monitored. These units were known collectively as "therbligs"--Gilbreth spelled backwards, with the `th' transposed.

Microchronometer

In the course of their motion study work, the Gilbreths used photographs to record and then analyze workers' movements. To aid in the clear analysis of their films, they developed the microchronometer--a clock that could record time to 1/2000 of a second which was placed in the area being photographed. This device is still sometimes used today. Process and flow charts

Around the time that the Gilbreths began working, Henry Gantt developed the ideas that grew into what came to be known as the `Gantt chart'--a system of recording the planning and controlling of work in progress. Frank and Lillian used a Gantt chart in their work and in their turn, they added process charts and flow diagrams. These new tools graphically demonstrated the constituent parts that need to be carried out to complete a task.

Psychology of management and personnel issues

The importance of employees' welfare was reflected throughout the work of both the Gilbreths, ranging from Frank's concern over the minimization of employee fatigue and stress to their mutual interest in incentives, promotion and employee welfare. Although not the originator of the discipline of industrial psychology, Lillian Gilbreth's research for her doctoral thesis raised awareness of the importance of the human element in industry. Many publishers refused to publish a book by a woman on such a technical subject, but Psychology in the workplace was finally published in installments by the Society of Industrial Engineers between 1912 and 1913. The Gilbreths' interest in industrial psychology continued

throughout their lives and was demonstrated by Lillian's participation in various US government committees on subjects ranging from unemployment and war production to problems related to ageing and disability.

In perspective

The Gilbreths are largely unknown and uncelebrated in today's modern corporate world, which tends to minimize the importance of measurement minutiae and favours the space and thinking time needed for creativity and innovation. Earlier in the twentieth century, however, from the 1940s on, management writers such as Lyndall Urwick and Edward Brech had lionied the Gilbreths, along with Taylor and Fayol, as scientific management became the popular gospel.

As we move into the 21st century, any 'glory' for original time-and-motion work is largely assigned to Taylor, and the work of the Gilbreths is often forgotten or ignored. As the human relations school of management gained in momentum, with the Hawthorne studies and the work of motivational theorists such as McGregor, Maslow, Likert and Herzberg, people rather than processes slowly became the central pivot for many management thinkers.

The overwhelming influence of scientific management faded from the 1960s onwards. The work of the Gilbreths, however, combining the disciplines of both motion study and industrial psychology, deserves to be recognized for its lasting contribution to management thought, and to the ways in which we work today.

HENRY GANTT

Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is best known for developing the Gantt chart in the 1910s.

Gantt charts were employed on major infrastructure projects including the Hoover Dam and Interstate highway system and continue to be an important tool in project management.

Gantt’s Legacy

1. The Gantt chart: Still accepted as an important management tool today, it provides a graphic schedule for

the planning and controlling of work, and recording progress towards stages of a project. The chart has a modern variation, Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT).

2. Industrial Efficiency: Industrial efficiency can only be produced by the application of scientific analysis to all aspects of the work in progress. The industrial management role is to improve the system by eliminating chance and accidents.

3. The Task And Bonus System: He linked the bonus paid to managers to how well they taught their employees to improve performance.

4. The social responsibility of business: He believed that businesses have obligations to the welfare of the society in which they operate.

The Gantt Chart

As Gantt spent time scrutinizing the work process with the comprehensive goal of planning and implementing a work breakdown structure, he wanted to have a visual representation of what was actually occurring over the course of a project. Specifically, Gantt focused on creating a graphical representation of work processes that showed scheduling and monitoring projections. What Gantt came up with was a bar chart that demonstrated a project's schedule, showing terminal and summary elements from start to finish.

Terminal elements are the smaller more intricate tasks that need to be completed as part of a larger task. A summary element is made up of terminal elements to form the larger task. For example, a summary element for a car manufacturer would be to paint the vehicle. The terminal elements of painting the vehicle would be to strip any original paint, primer, apply your first, second and top coats, and finally, wash, wax and buff the new paint job. Once the terminal and summary elements are defined, a manager can then add projected and actual projection for completion of each of those elements. The time schedules are plotted on the graph using bars. These can be used to come up with deadlines. Once plotted together, it becomes easy for others to understand the individual work tasks and their due dates within the greater project deadline. This also demonstrates areas that can be done concurrently with other tasks and what tasks are dependent on the

completion of others.

Gantt created many different types of charts. He designed his charts so that foremen or other supervisors could quickly know whether production was on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule. Modern project management software includes this critical function even now.

Gantt describes two types of balances:

• The "man’s record", which shows what each worker should do and did and

• The "daily balance of work", which shows the amount of work to be done and the amount that is done.

Gantt gives an example with orders that will require many days to complete. The daily balance has rows for each day and columns for each part or each operation. At the top of each column is the amount needed. The amount entered in the appropriate cell is the number of parts done each day and the cumulative total for that part. Heavy horizontal lines indicate the starting date and the date that the order should be done. According to Gantt, the graphical daily balance is "a method of scheduling and recording work". In this 1903 article, Gantt also describes the use of:

"production cards" for assigning work to each operator and recording how much was done each day.In his 1916 book "Work, Wages, and Profits" Gantt explicitly discusses scheduling, especially in the job shop environment. He proposes giving to the foreman each day an "order of work" that is an ordered list of jobs to be done that day. Moreover, he discusses the need to coordinate activities to avoid "interferences". However, he also warns that the most elegant schedules created by planning offices are useless if they are ignored, a situation that he observed.

In his 1919 book "Organizing for Work" Gantt gives two principles for his charts:

one, measure activities by the amount of time needed to complete them;

two, the space on the chart can be used to represent the amount of the activity that should have been done in that time.

Gantt shows a progress chart that indicates for each month of the year, using a thin horizontal line, the number of items produced during that month. In addition, a thick horizontal line indicates the number of items produced during the year. Each row in the chart corresponds to an order for parts from a specific contractor, and each row indicates the starting month and ending month of the deliveries. It is the closest thing to the Gantt charts typically used today in scheduling systems, though it

is at a higher level than machine scheduling.

Gantt’s machine record chart and man record chart are quite similar, though they show both the actual working time for each day and the cumulative working time for a week. Each row of the chart corresponds to an individual machine or operator. These charts do not indicate which tasks were to be done, however.

A novel method of displaying interdependencies of processes to increase visibility of production schedules was invented in 1896 by Karol Adamiecki, which was similar to the one defined by Gantt in 1903. However, Adamiecki did not publish his works in a language popular in the West; hence Gantt was able to popularize a similar method, which he developed around the years 1910–1915, and the solution became attributed to Gantt. With minor modifications, what originated as the Adamiecki's chart is now more commonly referred to as the Gantt Chart

THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

After 1901, Taylor devoted his time to publicizing his work and attracting clients, whom he would refer to as trusted lieutenants, such as Henry L. Gantt, Carl G. Barth, Morris L. Cooke, and Frank B. Gilbreth. Taylor and his followers emphasized the importance of introducing the entire system. Most manufacturers, however, only wanted solutions to specific problems. They were particularly drawn to time study and the incentive wage, seemingly the most novel features of Taylor's system, which they had hoped would raise output and wean employees from organized labour. Taylor and his followers had little sympathy for unions and were slow to realize the implications of this course.

By 1910, the metal trade unions and the American Federation of Labour (AFL) had become outspoken enemies of scientific management and Taylor and his followers were embroiled in a controversy that would continue for another five years. These developments had a substantial influence on Taylor's efforts to publicize his work.

To respond to opportunities like the 1911 rate case hearings, as well as the union attacks, Taylor (with Cooke's assistance) prepared a new account of his system that he called The Principles of Scientific Management . He embraced the term "scientific management," made time study its centrepiece, and used it as a metaphor for the system as a whole.

Taylor argued that he had discovered universal "principles" of management:

The substitution of scientific for "rule-of-thumb" methods The "scientific selection and training of the workmen," An equal division of work between managers and workers. To

implement the principles successfully, managers and workers had to undergo a "complete revolution in mental attitude.

The Principles of Scientific Management was an immediate success. Its simplicity, colourful anecdotes, and insistence that the details of factory management were applicable to other activities captured the imaginations of readers. Translated into many languages, it became the best-selling business book of the first half of the twentieth century.

Two additional developments greatly extended Taylor's influence in the following years. First, other writers restated his principles in more inclusive terms and explored their implications. The most notable example was Henri Fayol, a prominent French mine manager who discussed the functions of top executives in several technical papers and in General and Industrial Administration. Though Fayol operated independently of Taylor, he demonstrated that Taylor's ideas applied to the entire organization, not just the factory. Second, a growing corps of consultants installed scientific management in industry. Gantt, Barth, Cooke, Gilbreth, and others closely associated with Taylor initially dominated this activity, but outsiders such as Harrington Emerson and Charles Bedaux, who took a more flexible and opportunistic approach to the application of Taylor's methods, became increasingly popular.

EARLY ADVOCATES’ LEGACY

Scientific management was the first attempt to systematically treat management and process improvement as a scientific problem. With the

advancement of statistical methods, the approach was improved and referred to as quality control in 1920s and 1930s. During the 1940s and 1950s, the body of knowledge for doing scientific management evolved into Operations Research and management cybernetics. In the 1980s we had total quality management, in the 1990s reengineering. Today's Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing could be seen as new names for scientific management. In particular, Shigeo Shingo, one of the creators of Lean Management who devoted his life to scientific management, says that the Toyota Production System and Japanese management culture in general should be seen as scientific management.

Peter Drucker sees Frederick Taylor as the creator of knowledge management, as the aim of scientific management is to produce knowledge about how to improve work processes. Although some have questioned whether scientific management is suitable only for manufacturing, Taylor himself advocated scientific management for all sorts of work, including the management of universities and government.

Scientific management has had an important influence in sports, where stop watches and motion studies rule the day. (Taylor himself enjoyed sports –especially tennis and golf – and he invented improved tennis racquets and improved golf clubs, although other players liked to tease him for his unorthodox designs, and they did not catch on as replacements for the mainstream implements.)

CONCLUSION

The classical thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century have made many valuable contributions to the theories and practices of management. However, their theories did not always achieve desirable results in the situations that were developing in the early twentieth century.

By the 1920s, self-conscious management, systematic planning, specialization of function, and highly structured, formal relationships between managers and workers had become the hallmarks of modern industry. These features of the twentieth-century factory system were the legacy of systematic management and especially of Taylor and his disciples, the most important contributors to the campaign for order and rationality in industry. In the process of reorganizing the factory they made scientific management a malleable symbol of the potential of modern organization for changing virtually every facet of contemporary life.

Successful management requires an understanding of the fundamental concepts of effective management techniques and

principles. In order to gain such insight, and manage effectively and efficiently, managers must develop an awareness of past management principles, models and theories. From the turn of the 19th Century, the need for a formal management theory was growing evidence that organizations required a system to guide managers in an attempt to improve productivity and efficiency of workers.

The classical theories are based on a pyramid, hierarchical structure and autocratic management, clear chain of command and short spans of control. Classical management theory is a group of similar ideas on the management of organization that evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As stated above in the paper Scientific, Bureaucratic / Autocratic, Administrative are presented as the 3 main categories under classical theory. The predominant and common characteristics of all the 3 branches is they emphasis the economic rationality of management and the organization. The economic rationality is based on the assumption that people are motivated to by the economic incentives and that they make choices that yield the greatest monetary benefits. Classical theorists recognized human emotions but also felt that a logical and rational structuring of jobs could control human emotions. The primary contribution of the classical school of management includes applying science in practical management, developing basic management function and processes, and determining the application of specific principles of management.

In the modern world, the classical theory is greatly criticized as being out-dated. The notion of rational economic person is often strongly criticized. Reward based management might be 100% applicable in the 19th century and for few people/organizations today. This might not hold good in the current work where the aspirations and education levels of people has greatly changed. Also organizations have grown more complex and hence require more creativity, ownership and judgment from each of the employees. Classical theory also assumes that all types of organizations can be managed according to one set of principles, but this need not be true in all cases. With changes in objectives, structures and environment, Organizations have made changes in principle and how organizations need to be managed efficiently and effectively for better productivity.

The principles detailed by the classical theory are not vigorously scientific and also did not stand the test of time. They reflected the individual’s empirical observations and their own logical deductions and not a true scientific-based research and evidence. Even though the classical theory is criticized as outdated and has become history, still this is the leading school of thought and the most prevalent kind of

management found in practice in today’s business structures even though they do not in practical terms reflect universal application and appeal.

REFERRENCES

Berdayes, V. (2002). Traditional Management Theory as Panoptic Discourse: Language and the Constitution of Somatic Flows. Culture & Organization, 8(1)

Eastern Warriors (n.d.). Principles of Management. Accessed: 25 May, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/2449617/Principles-of-Management.

Kruger, Wilfried (n.d.). Accessed: 25 May, 2011. Retrieved fromhttp://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_change_management_iceberg.html.

Hartman, Dr. Stephen W. (n.d.). Management Theory. Accessed: 13 May, 2011. Retrieved from http://iris.nyit.edu/~shartman/mba0120/chapter2.htm.

Frederick W. Taylor; Wikipedia

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth; Wikipedia

Henry Gantt; Wikipedia

THE CLASSICAL

ORGANIZATION

THEORY:

THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

Eunicia M. Mateo, MD