The Nine Roles Proposed by Belbin are:-
- Plant
Creative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems. However tends to ignore incidentals and be too immersed to communicate effectively.
- Resource Investigator
Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative. Explores opportunities and networks with others. However can be over optimistic and loses interest after initial enthusiasm has waned.
- Co-ordinator
Belbin's Co-ordinator is a mature, confident and a natural chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision-making and delegates effectively. However can be seen as manipulative and controlling. Can over delegate by off loading personal work.
- Shaper
Challenging, dynamic, thrives under pressure. Jumps hurdles using determination and courage. However can be easily provoked and ignorant of the feelings of others.
- Monitor Evaluator
Even tempered, strategic and discerning. Sees all the options and judges accurately. However can lack drive and lack inspired leadership qualities.
- Team Worker
Co-operative, relationship focused, sensitive and diplomatic. Belbin described the Team Worker as a good listener who builds relationships and who dislikes confrontation. However can be indecisive in crisis.
- Implementer
Disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. Acts on ideas. However can be inflexible and slow to see new opportunities.
- Completer-Finisher
Conscientious and anxious to get the job done. An eye for detail, good at searching out the errors. Finishes and delivers on time. However can be a worrier and reluctant to delegate.
- Specialist
Single minded self starter. Dedicated and provides specialist knowledge. The rarer the supplier of this knowledge, said Belbin, the more dedicated the specialist. However can be stuck in their niche with little interest in the world outside it and dwell on technicalities.
Allowable Weakness
These summaries describe the characteristics of each role in the Belbin theory and also give 'allowable weakness' points.
This means that managers can expect these weaknesses to emerge and therefore an allowance should be made.
Therefore if a 'Team Worker' will have a natural tendency to be indecisive in a crisis, then the team can make sure that they don't have high expectations in that situation.
Team workers will be happiest if the crisis is foreseen and policy decisions which involve them made before the pressure is turned on.
It is evident that many of these roles will naturally conflict with each other.
It is very powerful when individuals within a team first understand that the conflicts that sometimes occur are caused by these natural behaviours and tendencies and not because the other person 'does not like me'.
Open University Y159 - Understanding Management.
ECA Option 2
The Strategic Approach To Resource Management – Alan Bramwell.
To summarise the collective work of Fayol, Mintzberg, Maslow, Stewart, Belbin, and Taylor will be difficult.
When we focus on the ‘strategic approach’ we are drawn to the properties of ‘The Task’. In addition to those mention in the course notes we should respect the works of Hertzberg, Burns and Stalker, Gantt and Berne. There is much to be understood about management, we can not ignore game players.
Management is all about the ‘The Task’. There are two types of tasks. A standard task has a number of properties, including resource allocation. The special task ‘Milestone’ has all the properties of a standard task, including dependency links but has no resource allocation. The Milestone assists planning, the creation of a GANTT Chart and the production of the CPA, (Critical Path Analysis). Project managers group tasks into activities which are in turn grouped into phases. The collection of a group of projects is called a super project. These have become the industry standards for the ‘strategic manager’.
It is the collection of information that drives the modern business. The four factors of constructing a business used to be Land, Labour, Material and Capital. The effective management of working capital was the key to success. Controlling the working capital is the life force of the business. To this we must now add Information.
The first of the four strategic stages is Reflection and Analysis. The recording of accurate information with regards top the performance of a specific task is invaluable. The reflection and analysis of internal and external influences on the business can be achieved with accurate recording of facts. JIT, (Just In Time), inspection for total quality allows immediate reaction to an unexpected event from an external source. Controlling materials before they get embedded into the product is essential in today’s competitive markets. Stakeholders now have significant responsibility as the devolved ownership of the task has been made possible by Information Systems.
Establishing clear goals now become simple as we strive for more information about the task it is possible to find better ways of conducting the whole project. Allowing managers to multi-task with many concurrent projects allows flexibility and control. The more tasks a manager has to manage the more synergies he/she has can create and contingencies to keep the resources fully utilised. Information systems allow managers to effective communicate clear goals.
Reflection and analysis provide the fuel for the planning and scheduling of tasks. Interdependencies and best practises are gained by education and experience. Information systems and knowledge base solutions are one again essential to this process.
Finally we need to consider the true value of information. There should always be time to review and evaluate a project. The performance of individuals and mechanical resources is essential. Circumstances change the world does not stand still. Organisations are becoming less mechanistic and more organic. The influence of external forces, particularly legislative and technical is having huge impacts upon stakeholder. The UK government, since the mid 1980’s have increasingly put more load of the employer. The administration of SSP, (Statutory Sick Pay), was one of the first applications that was trust upon employers. Companies once employed Personnel Officers who looked after the welfare of employees. As the introduction of effective personnel systems became the norm the roll of the Human Resource Executive immerged.
The roll, (the sum of the tasks assigned to the resource unit – Personnel Officer), is to effectively manage the ‘strategic approach’ to business that the theorists proclaim.
The one theory that is useful to my business is Planning In Order To Achieve Goals. This is essentially task management primarily theorised by Fayol, Taylor, Belbin, and Mitzberg.
Fayol had five functions, To Forecast, To Organise. To Command, To Co-Ordinate, To Control which he synthesised fourteen principles for organisational design which included The specialisation/division of labour. Today as managers we provide resource units with employment contract, job specifications and terms of reference designed to protect stakeholder interests.
Taylor ‘The Father Of Scientific Managemant’ immerged as an engineer at a similar time to Fayol. The white coat, stop watch and clip board were the tools of the trade for the ‘Time and Motion’ resource unit that evolved form his writings.
We have not yet discussed the task prioritisation which orders work in the the two scales of importance and urgency. This may well be seen by the A,B,C principle of file management. File ‘A’ Do it now, File ‘B’ of less importance but if left will become an ‘A’, File ‘C’, desirable but of low impact to the business and finally file WPB, waste paper basket, when combined with the theory that every piece of paper should be handled only one we have an effective working procedure. (This is why I have introduced a pre-submission document to my OU action plan and deferred all my work to the end of the course. I have clear objective for this course, one of which is to apply the theories of the masters.
This nicely lends it way into the works of Meredith Belbin who discusses team roles, Implementor, Coordinator, Shaper, Plant, Resource Investigator, Monitor / Evaluator, Team Worker, Completer Finisher and the work Rosemary Stewart who informed us about Demands and Constraints. All these factors affect the planning in order to achieve goals. To ignore one of these basic principles of management is criminal.
The age of information technology makes this easy, the modern project manager has to benefit of computing and volumes of facts and figures at his/her finger tips.
Solutions like PMW, (Project Managers Workbench), were once highly value pieces of software. Open Workbench is now Open Source. CA-Superproject, (Computer Associates) and MS-Project, (Microsoft) are other example of applications that have evolved from the fundamentals of the ‘strategic approach’.
The modern ‘Strategic Manager’ is only a click away from success. The evolution of review and evaluation will continue.
Word Count : 1000
Task 2
I have issues with education born about by a bad learning experience which has turned me into a maverick. The cost in terms of career opportunity is significant. The production of academic reports frustrates me. The help that I needed was not forthcoming, I now fear the system, I find it difficult to judge myself and almost impossible to submit work for assessment. The result of my failure to address this s has left me psychologically damaged with a far too large be perfect driver.
This is a major weakness in that I do not value my own work, it is immature, irrational. The very process of creating an academic piece of work is a very emotive subject. The realisation that I have a weakness is one that I am trying to address. I was damaged by a bad tutor and have not recovered. The resulting events took me out of the education system and, (to my loss), I have adopted my own personal style.
I will address my learning difficulties with the assistance of my Open University Tutor. I have purposely held back from submitting my work as the reflection on past experiences is emotionally upsetting. I have been very satisfied with the OU and will look forward to further learning experiences. Once I have ‘broken the mould’ and establish the correct learning methods I am certain that I will excel.
I can not support this work with evidence as I have no evidence to reflect upon.
Henry Mintzberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Professor Henry Mintzberg, OC , OQ , Ph.D. , D.h.c. , FRSC (born September 2, 1939) is an internationally renowned academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he has been teaching since 1968, after earning his Master's degree in Management (M.B.A.) and Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1965 and 1968 respectively.[1]
Henry Mintzberg writes prolifically on the topics of management and business strategy, with more than 140 articles and thirteen books to his name. His seminal book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, criticizes some of the practices of strategic planning today and is considered required reading for anyone who seriously wants to consider taking on a strategy-making role within their organization.
He recently published a book entitled Managers Not MBAs which outlines what he believes to be wrong with management education today and, rather controversially, singles out prestigious graduate management schools like Harvard Business School and the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania as examples of how obsession with numbers and an over-zealous attempt at making management into a science actually can damage the discipline of management. He also suggests that a new masters program, targeted at practicing managers (as opposed to younger students with little real world experience), and emphasizing practical issues, may be more suitable.
Ironically, although Professor Mintzberg is quite critical about the strategy consulting business, he has twice won the McKinsey Award for publishing the best article in the Harvard Business Review.
In 1997 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1998 he was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec.
He is married to Sasha Sadilova and has two children, Susie and Lisa.
[edit] Theory on Organizational Forms
The organizational configurations framework of Mintzberg is a model that describes six valid organizational configurations
- Mutual adjustment, which achieves coordination by the simple process of informal communication (as between two operating employees)
- Direct supervision, in which coordination is achieved by having one person issue orders or instructions to several others whose work interrelates (as when a boss tells others what is to be done, one step at a time)
- Standardization of work processes, which achieves coordination by specifying the work processes of people carrying out interrelated tasks (those standards usually being developed in the technostructure to be carried out in the operating core, as in the case of the work instructions that come out of time-and-motion studies)
- Standardization of outputs, which achieves coordination by specifying the results of different work (again usually developed in the technostructure, as in a financial plan that specifies subunit performance targets or specifications that outline the dimensions of a product to be produced)
- Standardization of skills (as well as knowledge), in which different work is coordinated by virtue of the related training the workers have received (as in medical specialists - say a surgeon and an anesthetist in an operating room –responding almost automatically to each other’s standardized procedures)
- Standardization of norms, in which it is the norms infusing the work that are controlled, usually for the entire organization, so that everyone functions according to the same set of beliefs (as in a religious order)
According to the organizational configurations model of Mintzberg each organization can consist of a maximum of six basic parts:
- Strategic Apex (top management)
- Middle Line (middle management)
- Operating Core (operations, operational processes)
- Technostructure (analysts that design systems, processes, etc)
- Support Staff (support outside of operating workflow)
- Ideology (halo of beliefs and traditions; norms, values, culture)
According to the organizational configurations framework there are six valid coordinating mechanisms in organizations:
- Direct supervision (typical for entrepreneurial organizations)
- Standardization of work (typical for machine organizations)
- Standardization of skills (typical for professional organizations)
- Standardization of outputs (typical for diversified organizations)
- Mutual Adjustment (typical for innovative organizations)
- Standardization of norms (typical for missionary organizations)
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] External link
Fayol (1841-1925) Functions and Principles of Management
Henri Fayol, a French engineer and director of mines, was little unknown outside France until the late 40s when Constance Storrs published her translation of Fayol's 1916 " Administration Industrielle et Generale ".
Fayol's career began as a mining engineer. He then moved into research geology and in 1888 joined, Comambault as Director. Comambault was in difficulty but Fayol turned the operation round. On retirement he published his work - a comprehensive theory of administration - described and classified administrative management roles and processes then became recognised and referenced by others in the growing discourse about management. He is frequently seen as a key, early contributor to a classical or administrative management school of thought (even though he himself would never have recognised such a "school").
His theorising about administration was built on personal observation and experience of what worked well in terms of organisation. His aspiration for an "administrative science" sought a consistent set of principles that all organizations must apply in order to run properly.
F. W. Taylor published "The Principles of Scientific Management" in the USA in 1911, and Fayol in 1916 examined the nature of management and administration on the basis of his French mining organisation experiences..
Fayol synthesised various tenets or principles of organisation and management and Taylor on work methods, measurement and simplification to secure efficiencies. Both referenced functional specialisation.
Both Fayol and Taylor were arguing that principles existed which all organisations - in order to operate and be administered efficiently - could implement. This type of assertion typifies a "one best way" approach to management thinking. Fayol's five functions are still relevant to discussion today about management roles and action.
- to forecast and plan - prevoyance
examine the future and draw up plans of action - to organise
build up the structure, material and human of the undertaking - to command
maintain activity among the personnel - to co-ordinate
bind together, unify and harmonise activity and effort - to control
see that everything occurs in conformity with policy and practise
Fayol also synthesised 14 principles for organisational design and effective administration. It is worthwhile reflecting on these are comparing the conclusions to contemporary utterances by Peters, Kanter and Handy to name but three management gurus. Fayol's 14 principles are:
- specialisation/division of labour
A principle of work allocation and specialisation in order to concentrate activities to enable specialisation of skills and understandings, more work focus and efficiency. - authority with corresponding responsibility
If responsibilities are allocated then the post holder needs the requisite authority to carry these out including the right to require others in the area of responsibility to undertake duties. Authority stems from:
- that ascribed from the delegation process (the job holder is assigned to act as the agent of the high authority to whom they report - hierarchy)
- allocation and permission to use the necessary resources needed (budgets, assets, staff) to carry out the responsibilities.
- selection - the person has the expertise to carry out the responsibilities and the personal qualities to win the support and confidence of others.
The R = A correspondence is important to understand. R = A enables accountability in the delegation process. Who do we cope with situations where R > A? Are there work situations where our R< A?
"judgement demands high moral character, therefore, a good leader should possess and infuse into those around him courage to accept responsibility. The best safeguard against abuse of authority and weakness on the part of a higher manager is personal integrity and particularly high moral character of such a manager ..... this integrity, is conferred neither by election nor ownership. " 1916
A manager should never be given authority without responsibility--and also should never be given responsibility without the associated authority to get the work done.
- discipline
The generalisation about discipline is that discipline is essential for the smooth running of a business and without it - standards, consistency of action, adherence to rules and values - no enterprise could prosper. "in an essence - obedience, application, energy, behaviour and outward marks of respect observed in accordance with standing agreements between firms and its employees " 1916
- unity of command
The idea is that an employee should receive instructions from one superior only. This generalisation still holds - even where we are involved with team and matrix structures which involve reporting to more than one boss - or being accountable to several clients. The basic concern is that tensions and dilemmas arise where we report to two or more bosses. One boss may want X, the other Y and the subordinate is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. - unity of direction
The unity of command idea of having one head (chief executive, cabinet consensus) with agree purposes and objectives and one plan for a group of activities) is clear. - subordination of individual interest to the general interest
Fayol's line was that one employee's interests or those of one group should not prevail over the organisation as a whole. This would spark a lively debate about who decides that the interests of the organisation as a whole are. Ethical dilemmas and matters of corporate risk and the behaviour of individual "chancers" are involved here. Fayol's work - assumes a shared set of values by people in the organisation - a unitarism where the reasons for organisational activities and decisions are in some way neutral and reasonable. - remuneration of staff
" the price of services rendered. " 1916
The general principle is that levels of compensation should be "fair" and as far as possible afford satisfaction both to the staff and the firm (in terms of its cost structures and desire for profitability/surplus).
- centralisation
Centralisation for HF is essential to the organisation and a natural consequence of organising. This issue does not go away even where flatter, devolved organisations occur. Decentralisation - is frequently centralisaed-decentralisation !!! The modes of control over the actions and results of devolved organisations are still matters requiring considerable attention. - scalar chain/line of authority
The scalar chain of command of reporting relationships from top executive to the ordinary shop operative or driver needs to be sensible, clear and understood. - order
The level of generalisation becomes difficult with this principle. Basically an organisation "should" provide an orderly place for each individual member - who needs to see how their role fits into the organisation and be confident, able to predict the organisations behaviour towards them. Thus policies, rules, instructions and actions should be understandable and understood. Orderliness implies steady evolutionary movement rather than wild, anxiety provoking, unpredictable movement. - equity
Equity, fairness and a sense of justice "should"pervade the organisation - in principle and practice. - stability of tenure
Time is needed for the employee to adapt to his/her work and perform it effectively. Stability of tenure promotes loyalty to the organisation, its purposes and values. - initiative
At all levels of the organisational structure, zeal, enthusiasm and energy are enabled by people having the scope for personal initiative. (Note: Tom Peters recommendations in respect of employee empowerment) - esprit de corps
Here Fayol emphasises the need for building and maintaining of harmony among the work force , team work and sound interpersonal relationships.
In the same way that Alfred P Sloan, the executive head of General Motors reorganised the company into semi-autonomous divisions in the 1920s, corporations undergoing reorganisation still apply "classical organisation" principles - very much in line with Fayol's recommendations.
Catering Establishment Exercise
To ReadPugh, Hickson and Hinings, Writers on Organisation, Penguin
Child J, Organisation - Problems and Practice.
(© Chris Jarvis) Last updated on: 09/09/2005 16:37:30
Frederick Winslow Taylor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 to March 21, 1915) was an American engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. A management consultant in his later years, he is sometimes called "The Father of Scientific Management." He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era.
Taylor was born in 1856 to a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He wanted to attend Harvard University, but poor eyesight forced him to consider an alternative career. In 1874, he became an apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience that would inform the rest of his career. He obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering through a highly unusual (for the time) series of correspondence courses at Stevens Institute of Technology where he was a Brother of the Gamma Chapter of Theta Xi, graduating in 1883 (Kanigel 1997:182-183,199). He and Maunsel White (with a team of assistants) developed high speed steel. He eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Taylor believed that the industrial management of his day was amateurish, that management could be formulated as an academic discipline, and that the best results would come from the partnership between a trained and qualified management and a cooperative and innovative workforce. Each side needed the other, and there was no need for trade unions.
Louis Brandeis, who was an active propagandist of Taylorism (Montgomery 1989: 250), coined the term scientific management in the course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case, which Taylor used in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. His approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism. Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:
- Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
- Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
- "detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
- Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks
[edit] Managers and workers
Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system:
"It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adaption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adaption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone."
(Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, cited by Montgomery 1989:229, italics with Taylor)
Workers were supposed to be incapable to understand what they were doing. According to Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks. "'I can say, without the slightest hesitation,' Taylor told a congressional committee, 'that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron."
(Montgomery 1989:251)
The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. The strike at Watertown Arsenal led to the congressional investigation in 1912.
[edit] Propaganda techniques
Taylor promised to reconcile labour and capital. "With the triumph of scientific management, unions would have nothing left to do, and they would have been cleansed of their most evil feature: the restriction of output. To underscore this idea, Taylor fashioned the myth that 'there has never been a strike of men working under scientific management', trying to give it credibility by constant repetition. In similar fashion he incessantly linked his proposals to shorter hours of work, without bothering to produce evidence of "Taylorized" firms that reduced working hours, and he revised his famous tale of Schmidt carrying pig iron at Bethlehem Steel at least three times, obscuring same aspects of his study and stressing others, so that each successive version made Schmidt's exertions more impressive, more voluntary and more rewarding to him that [sic!] the last. Unlike [Harrington] Emerson, Taylor was not a charlatan, but his ideological message required the suppression of all evidence of worker's dissent, of coercion, or of any human motives or aspirations other than those his vision of progress could encompass." (Montgomery 1989:254)[1]
[edit] Management theory
Taylor thought that by analysing work, the "One Best Way" to do it would be found. He is most remembered for developing the time and motion study. He would break a job into its component parts and measure each to the hundredth of a minute. One of his most famous studies involved shovels. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined that the most effective load was 21½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful in getting his concepts applied and was dismissed from Bethlehem Steel. It was largely through the efforts of his disciples (most notably H.L. Gantt) that industry came to implement his ideas. Nevertheless, the book he wrote after parting company with Bethlehem Steel, Shop Management, sold well.
[edit] Relations with ASME
Taylor was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) from 1906 to 1907. While president, he tried to implement his system into the management of the ASME but was met with much resistance. He was only able to reorganize the publications department and then only partially. He also forced out the ASME's long-time secretary, Morris L. Cooke, and replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure as president was trouble-ridden and marked the beginning of a period of internal dissension within the ASME during the Progressive Era (Jaffe 1957:34).
In 1912, Taylor collected a number of his articles into a book-length manuscript which he submitted to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne. The committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford. Alford was a critic of the Taylor system and the report was negative. The committee modified the report slightly, but accepted Alford's recommendation not to publish Taylor's book. Taylor angrily withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval (Jaffe 1957:36-40; Nelson 1980:181-184)...
[edit] Taylor's influence
[edit] United States
- Carl Barth helped Taylor to develop speed-and-feed-calculating slide rules to a previously unknown level of usefulness. Similar aids are still used in machine shops today. Barth became an early consultant on scientific management and later taught at Harvard.
- H. L. Gantt developed the Gantt chart, a visual aid for scheduling tasks and displaying the flow of work.
- Harrington Emerson introduced scientific management to the railroad industry, and proposed the dichotomy of staff versus line employees, with the former advising the latter.
- Morris Cooke adapted scientific management to educational and municipal organizations.
- Hugo Münsterberg created industrial psychology.
- Lillian Gilbreth introduced psychology to management studies.
- Frank Gilbreth (husband of Lillian) discovered scientific management while working in the construction industry, eventually developing motion studies independently of Taylor. These logically complemented Taylor's time studies, as time and motion are two sides of the efficiency improvement coin. The two fields eventually became time and motion study.
- Harvard University, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management in 1908, based its first-year curriculum on Taylor's scientific management.
- Harlow S. Person, as dean of Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance, promoted the teaching of scientific management.
- James O. McKinsey, professor of accounting at the University of Chicago and founder of the consulting firm bearing his name, advocated budgets as a means of assuring accountability and of measuring performance.
[edit] France
In France, Le Chatelier translated Taylor's work and introduced scientific management throughout government owned plants during World War I. This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol, whose 1916 Administration Industrielle et Générale emphasized organizational structure in management.
[edit] Switzerland
In Switzerland, the American Edward Albert Filene established the International Management Institute to spread information about management techniques.
In the USSR, Lenin was very impressed by Taylorism, which he and Stalin sought to incorporate into Soviet manufacturing. Taylorism and the mass production methods of Henry Ford thus became highly influential during the early years of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless "[...] Frederick Taylor's methods have never really taken root in the Soviet Union." (Atta 1986: 335). The voluntaristic approach of the Stakhanovite movement in the 1930s of setting individual records was diametrically opposed to Taylor's systematic approach and proved to be counter-productive. (Atta 1986: 331). The stop-and-go of the production process - workers having nothing to do at the beginning of a month and 'storming' during illegal extra shifts at the end of the month - which prevailed even in the 1980s had nothing to do with the successfully taylorized plants e.g. of Toyota which are characterized by continuous production processes which are continuously improved (Head 2005: 38-59).
"The easy availability of replacement labor, which allowed Taylor to choose only 'first-class men,' was an important condition for his system's success." (Atta 1986: 329) The situation in the Soviet Union was very different. "Because work is so unrythmic, the rational manager will hire more workers than he would need if supplies were even in order to have enough for storming. Because of the continuing labor shortage, managers are happy to pay needed workers more than the norm, either by issuing false job orders, assigning them to higher skill grades than they deserve on merit criteria, giving them 'loose' piece rates, or making what is supposed to be 'incentive' pay, premia for good work, effectively part of the normal wage. As Mary Mc Auley has suggested under these circumstances piece rates are not an incentive wage, but a way of justifying giving workers whatever they 'should' be getting, no matter what their pay is supposed to be according to the official norms." (Atta 1986: 333)
Taylor and his theories are also referenced (and put to practice) in the 1921 dystopian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
[edit] Articles
Taylor's life and work was discussed in Cynthia Crossen's "Deja Vu" column in the Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2006.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ For the stories about Schmidt Montgomery refers to Charles D. Wrege and Amadeo G. Perroni, "Taylor's Pig Tale: A Historical Analysis of Frederick W. Taylor's Pig-Iron experiments" in: Academy of Management Journal, 17 (March 1974), 6-27
[edit] References
- Aitken, Hugh (1960), Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal. Scientific management in action, 1908-1915, Harvard UPCompara
- Atta , Don Van (1986), “Why Is There No Taylorism in the Soviet Union?” in: Comparative Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Apr., 1986), pp. 327-337
- Boddy, David (2002). Management: An Introduction, 2nd ed., New York: Pearson Education. ISBN 0-273-65518-3.
- Head, Simon (2005), The new ruthless economy. Work and power in the digital age, Oxford University Press, Paperback Edition
- Jaffe, William (1957). L.P. Alford and the Evolution of Modern Industrial Management. With an introduction by David B. Porter. New York: New York University Press.
- Kanigel, Robert (1997). The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-86402-1.
- Montgomery, David (1989), The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925, Cambridge University Press, Paperback edition
- Nelson, Daniel (1980). Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-08160-5.
- Nelson, Daniel (ed.) (1992). A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management Since Taylor. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 0-8142-0567-4.
- Taylor, Frederick, Scientific Management (includes "Shop Management" (1903), "The Principles of Scientific Management" (1911) and "Testimony Before the Special House Committee" (1912)), Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0415279836
- Weisbord, Marvin (2004). Productive Workplaces Revisited (Chapter 2: Scientific Management Revisited: A Tale of Two Taylors; Chapter 3: The Consulting Engineer: Taylor Invents a New Profession.). ISBN 0-7879-7117-0.
[edit] External links
