Term Paper 1
The world that existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was one of high inefficiency. And because of this inefficiency, the manufacturing system underwent systematic investigations that acquired a common body of knowledge and has become a formal discipline of study. A common thread among those interested in these management concerns were studies that provided insight into why people perform work as they do. By far the most important fact which faced industries in our country is that nineteen out of twenty workmen throughout the civilized world firmly believed that it was in their best interest to go slow instead of move fast (Taylor, 1916).
It was going to take both a “mental revolution” and a change of work habits to alter the manufacturing process. Many of the workers of this time period had an “us versus them” mentality. It was the investigators of this early period (Taylor, 1916; Smith, 1776; Mayo, 1945; Follett, 1949) whose observations of these conditions convinced them that success was possible when employers and employees cooperated and worked jointly toward a common goal.
Adam Smith (1776) made an argument on the economic advantages that organizations and society would achieve from the division of labor, which is the breakdown of jobs into narrow, repetitive tasks. Smith concluded that division of labor increased productivity by increasing each worker’s skill and dexterity, by saving time that is usually lost in changing tasks, and by the creation of labor saving inventions and machinery.
Building on Smith’s “Division of Labor”, Frederick Taylor (1916) developed the theory of Scientific Management, which is the use of the scientific method to define the “one best way” for each job to be accomplished. Taylor noticed that many employees used different techniques to do the same job. He set out to correct this situation and in doing so provided his four principles of management.
• Each worker’s job should be broken down...
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