SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

By the early 20^th Century, the Industrial Revolution and the ideas of Adam Smith had transformed the economies of the United States and Western Europe. Technology and industrial might had replaced population and agriculture as the major determinants of national strength. France, rich in population and farmland, had once been the dominant power of Europe. It was now overshadowed by its more industrial rival, Great Britain. And America was emerging as the industrial powerhouse whose factories would swing the outcomes of the century’s two world wars.

This was the age of economies of scale. Between 1895 and 1905, some of the largest U.S. corporations were created through consolidation and merger activity, including Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Standard Oil, and Navistar International.

The factories of the early 20^th Century were beginning to look like something that could be reasonably compared to the factories of today, but appearances could be deceiving. Early mass production methods were more efficient than the cottage industry methods of several centuries earlier; but processes were chaotic by today’s standards. Despite the fact that large-scale production was taking place in factories that employed hundreds or thousands of employees, worker training was minimal, and sophisticated systems of equipment maintenance, quality assurance, and production control were still decades in the future.

Into this unruly flux came a new variety of worker: the professional manager. It was the professional manager’s job to somehow make sure that Adam Smith’s “expensive machines” and their human counterparts were working efficiently. But this new managerial class was in search of principles to guide them.

Frederick W. Taylor is given the primary credit for developing the basic ideas on which scientific management is founded. Taylor was a foreman for the Midvale Steel Company in Philadelphia from 1878 to 1890. Early in his management career, Taylor observed that the workers under his supervision engaged in soldiering—the practice of deliberately working slower than one’s capabilities. Because the management of Midvale Steel had little real knowledge about the jobs performed in the plant, the practice went mostly undetected.

Taylor identified several factors that created incentives for the employees to engage in soldiering. To begin with, the workers believed that if they worked more efficiently, the company would need fewer of them and some jobs would be eliminated. Secondly, Taylor saw time-based pay rate system as a disincentive to hard work. If an employee will make the some money regardless of the pace at which he works, why should he bother to work faster? Working faster would only set a new, higher baseline of performance.

Finally, Taylor detected problems in the methods of work themselves. The processes in the plant had never been systematically studied, so in many cases work was being performed according to inefficient, haphazard procedures. Taylor addressed the problem by conducting a detailed study of each process in the plant. This often took the form of a time study; Taylor would watch workers perform their jobs with a stopwatch in hand. Taylor used the time study results to determine a standard, or “best” way to perform each process.

Taylor believed that workers should be systematically assigned to jobs that best suited their abilities. For example, pig iron handling was an especially important and strenuous job. In fact, only about 12% of Midvale’s workforce had the physical strength needed to perform this task at an optimal pace. Taylor specially selected the strongest workers in the plant to handle pig iron. This resulted in an increase in the total amount of pig iron moved in the plant each day.

Taylor also changed the Midvale’s pay system. Workers were no longer paid according to the time they spent on the job. Taylor instituted a piece rate system which paid workers only for the amount of work that they completed during the workday. (This made perfect sense to Taylor; he believed that money was the only factor that motivated employees.)

After leaving Midvale, Taylor worked as a management consultant for some major manufacturing firms, including Bethlehem Steel Company, and Simonds Rolling Machine Company. In 1911, he revealed his findings and guiding principles in the book Principles of Scientific Management, thereby establishing himself as the leader of this school of thought.

What Edwards Deming had to say about the piece rate system:

Edward Deming, the father of statistical quality control and the American engineer of Japan’s postwar “quality revolution,” was no fan of Taylor’s piece rate system. Deming believed that piece rate pay systems were “man’s lowest form of degradation.”

Scientific management practices led to improvements in the consistency and efficiency of workplace processes. However, scientific management practices were also criticized for making jobs more monotonous. Attempts by management to implement scientific management practices sometimes resulted in backlashes. Workers particularly resented the use of stopwatches. Complaints about the dehumanizing effects of scientific management practices (often referred to pejoratively as “Taylorism”) led to an investigation by the United States Congress.