what prompted Frederick Taylor to come up with clear guidelines for the workers?
Answers
Answer:
Peter Drucker is often called 'the guru's guru'. Drucker himself would suggest that accolade should be given to Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915):
'Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's `scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since - even though he has been dead all of sixty years." (Peter Drucker, Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. Heinemann,1973).
In Taylor's seminal work, The principles of scientific management, he puts forward his ideas of `Scientific Management' (sometimes referred to today as `Taylorism') which differed from traditional `Initiative and Incentive' methods of management.
Life and career
Although Taylor passed the entrance examination for Harvard College, failing eyesight meant that he could not take up his place. Instead, in 1874, he took the unusual step for someone of his upper-class, almost aristocratic, background of becoming an apprentice patternmaker and machinist at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works.
Following his apprenticeship, Taylor took up an unskilled job at the Midvale Steel Works in 1878, and after several different jobs and a master's degree in mechanical engineering he was appointed chief engineer there. In 1890 he became general manager of Manufacturing Investment Company (MIC), eventually becoming an independent consulting engineer to management. By 1910, Taylor and his management methods had become well known.
Key theories
Scientific management
Taylor's work The principles of scientific management (source of all the following quotes) was published in 1911. His ideas were an accumulation of his life's work, and included several examples from his places of employment.
The overriding principles of scientific management are that:
Each part of an individual's work is analysed 'scientifically', and the most efficient method for undertaking the job is devised; the 'one best way' of working. This consists of examining the implements needed to carry out the work, and measuring the maximum amount a 'first-class' worker could do in a day; workers are then expected to do this much work every day.
The most suitable person to undertake the job is chosen, again 'scientifically'. The individual is taught to do the job in the exact way devised. Everyone, according to Taylor, had the ability to be 'first-class' at some job. It was management's role to find out which job suited each employee and train them until they were first-class.
Managers must cooperate with workers to ensure the job is done in the scientific way.
There is a clear 'division' of work and responsibility between management and workers. Managers concern themselves with the planning and supervision of the work, and workers carry it out.