Principles and Applications of Taylorism

Introduction & Overview

he work of Fredrick Taylor, (1856 – 1915), widely known as the founder of scientific management, has been instrumental in shaping management thought and action in diverse areas of business and industry for the major part of the 20th century. Whilst Adam Smith took up the study of scientific management in the 1850s, some decades earlier than Taylor, it was Taylor who formulated and developed its concept and theory; through extensive observation and study of the working of men, methods, and materials. Taylor’s book, The Principles of Scientific Management, first published in 1911, details the ways and means by which application of scientific methods towards management of workforce can lead to significant enhancement of productivity.

Whilst Taylorism was adopted widely by western manufacturing organisations from the early years of the 20th century, it was subjected to increasingly severe criticism by management and behavioural experts in the post Second War period; primarily because of its disregard for individual human skills, abilities, and aspirations, and its tendency to treat workers like inhuman robots.1 Whilst modern day management experts are near unanimous in their perception of Taylorism being inadequate for meeting the demands of the far more complex, flexible, variable, knowledge based and competitive modern day environment, a number of very successful business organisations and business sectors appear to be applying the fundamental principles of Taylorism to their business operations with remarkable operational and success.

The successful application of principles of Taylorism in modern day firms, especially in the more aware and progressive western environments, is prompting modern day experts to argue that Taylorism was never actually discarded by business; it was just the discourse that had changed.
This short study takes up (a) the principles and applications of Taylorism, (b) the criticism that has been directed at it, and (c), its relevance in the 21st century, in order to assess the veracity of such an argument.

Commentary

Principles of Taylorism

Work in the days before the advent of scientific management principles was executed by highly skilled craftsmen, who imbibed their technical expertise through long years of training and apprenticeship. Such workers took decisions on their own about the performance of their jobs, leaving supervisors to ensure that workers did not remain idle.

Taylor however called for the application of scientific management methods towards such activities, stating that such an approach would help in optimising ways for performance of tasks and simplification of jobs; this in turn would help train workers to perform their actions or motions in one determined, specific, and “best” sequence. Observing the actions of workers at length in the iron and steel industry, Taylor attributed the poor productivity of workers to three main reasons, namely (a) the widespread belief that greater worker efficiency would lead to lesser worker requirement and consequent job elimination, (b) the inadequacy of equal-pay-zero-incentive wage systems in motivating workers to improve their efficiency and effectiveness and (c) the dependence of workers upon traditional methods, rather than upon scientifically determined optimal working processes.

Working on the basis of results derived from numerous time and motion studies, Taylor emphasised that the most elementary and basic activities could be organised in a manner that could lead to dramatic enhancement in productivity. Using a stop watch to time the sequence of activities used by workers during the execution of their jobs, he worked out production methods in pig iron manufacturing units that radically improved worker efficiency.

Taylor formulated four scientific management principles, i.e. (a) the need to replace work methods that were based upon rule of thumb with those that were based upon scientific study, (b) the need to select, coach, and develop workers to function in scientific ways rather than by allowing them to train themselves, (c) the need to cooperate with workers in order to ensure adherence to scientifically developed methods and (d) the need to divide work appropriately between workers and managers, such that managers could use principles of scientific management for work planning, even as actual performance of work was carried out by workers.

Taylor’s ideas were developed extensively by other scientific management experts like Gilbreth and Gantt. Whilst Gilbreth applied scientific management principles to the manufacture of electric lamps and brick laying, redesigning worker movements to increase productivity by practically 300%, Henry Gantt humanised Taylorist principles by (a) reducing worker deskilling, (b) replacing the piece rate basis for payment with a remuneration system based upon a minimum salary and production bonuses, and (c) devising the Gantt chart for coordinating the work of managers and employees.

Scientific management principles gained widespread recognition and acceptance after their extensive implementation by Henry Ford. The owner of the eponymous and internationally famous automobile manufacturing company, Ford used Taylorist principles to construct assembly lines for manufacture of automobile components. Such assembly lines, which were based upon concepts of labour division and task simplification, led to dramatic increases in production efficiency. Breaking up the complex process of automobile manufacture into simple activities that could easily be taught to unskilled workers, Ford was able to staff his factories with lower paid and unskilled labour and still manufacture products of good quality.

Such principles, put forward by Taylor, and later modified and augmented by experts like Gilbreth, Gantt, and Ford, were progressively adopted by manufacturing organisations across the world; they became instrumental in the enormous enhancement of production capacity in countries like the United States, the UK, Germany, and even Japan. Hitler even gave Henry Ford an appreciative medal at a well attended public reception.

Critique of Taylorism

Taylorism, whilst being instrumental in achievement of dramatic enhancement in work force productivity, (especially so in manufacturing organisations), has been subjected to severe criticism by behavioural experts during the last few decades.

With the key principle in scientific management being the allocation and fragmentation of tasks and activities into smaller portions for the determination of optimal task solutions, the widespread application of Taylorist principles resulted in a plethora of specialist planners subdividing the work of labour to simple activities that could easily be learned and applied by large numbers of men. Whilst such optimisation processes led to enhancement of productivity in mass production environments, they also resulted in the deskilling of work force members, as well as in their disempowerment from acquiring new work skills or increasing their knowledge. As such, although Taylor advocated the use of financial incentives for enhancement of productivity, (arguing that workers would function with greater effectiveness if they knew that such working would lead to greater remuneration), the actual application of Taylor’s principles led to uniformity in working practices, elimination of unique work force skills, and stagnation in the earning capacity of workers because of the removal of opportunities for learning new skills.

The behavioural theories put forward by experts like Maslow, McGregor, Vroom, and Herzberg, (the validity of which were increasingly accepted from the 1960s), also strongly opposed the use of workforce practices based upon Taylorist and Fordist principles. These experts argued that the reduction of skilled work force members into deskilled robots was not compatible, not just with liberal ideas and values, but also with fundamental theories of motivation. Taylorism, they said, effectively relegated workers to inferior roles, robbed them of their rightful position in the workplace, and deprived business firms from tapping the tremendous repository of skills and knowledge that existed within organisational workers.

In addition to Taylorist and Fordist principles being contrary to established modern day concepts of diversity, equality, and equal opportunity, modern day management experts also believe that the application of scientific management principles works against innovativeness, flexibility, and customer engagement. Such stifling of innovative ideas and thought processes can lead to organisations becoming non-innovative, stagnant, and uncompetitive in the fiercely competitive contemporary environment8. The difficult market conditions being experienced by Ford and General Motors during the last two decades is attributed by some experts to the rigid, hierarchical and rather inflexible attitudes of Ford and GM managements, the result of decades of scrupulous adherence to Taylorist and Fordist principles.

With Taylorist principles essentially based on the premise of the bulk of the work force requiring direction because of their inadequate education, their application was felt to be increasingly inappropriate in contemporary knowledge based business environments where managements were working towards (a) improvement of employee job knowledge and (b) enhancement of employee contribution towards meeting of work place and business challenges. Modern day concepts like quality circles, vertical and lateral movement of information, and Communities of Practice are not felt to be sustainable in a Taylorist environment.

Whilst criticism of Taylorism is integral to postmodernist management theory, Taylorist principles continue to be applied with great success even today by some modern day businesses.

Application of Taylorist Principles in Contemporary Times

The rapidly changing business environment of contemporary times has led to the majority of business firms discarding or substantially modifying their working styles in response to the customer driven and intensely competitive contemporary environment. However, whilst market opportunities and altered environmental conditions have led many companies to discard Taylorist principles, the reverse also holds good in some cases.

McDonald’s, the international fast foods giant with a pan-global footprint provides one of the most successful examples of the utilisation of Taylorist scientific management principles. The company has successfully adopted and implemented assembly line food production processes that are essentially based upon subdivision of labour and specialisation of small individual tasks. Such processes are applied by the company even in their customer facing retail outlets for the final production and presentation of hamburgers and associated foods.

“Taylor’s main objective was to create the best man for the job and hence the division of labour and ultimately this brought about specialisation amongst employees.  The method in which McDonalds for example create their hamburger is a form of deskilling and division of labour.  For example they have simplified the job by firstly grilling the burger, putting in lettuce and tomatoes, adding sauce etc, putting onto rolls and then wrapping it up. As you can see this is a break down of the job … having individuals do each task … not only improves efficiency but also creates specialized personnel.  Other aspects such as cooking times, drinks dispensers, French fries machines, and programmed cash registers are all methods that are used to limit time needed to complete the task and hence show that aspects of Taylor, Ford and Gilbreth have been adapted.”

Apart from the example of McDonald’s, Taylorist principles are also used in modern day businesses like call centres and retail supermarkets. Productivity in both these sectors essentially depends upon (a) subdivision of work and (b) the utilisation of large numbers of limited skill employees in repetitive functions in order to finally create a complex and desired modern day service.

Conclusions

Taylorist principles are, as evident, still used with good results in modern day organisations like fast food companies, call centres and retail organisations. Such successful application leads to speculation that the essential features of Taylorism will be difficult to abandon in light of their role in improving productivity.

The use of Taylorist methods in such organisations does not in any way however prove that the basic principles of Taylorism, based upon the inadequacies of workers and the need to simplify and robotise their tasks, are essential in contemporary society or in the modern day economy. In fact some experts stress that such adherence, deliberate or unintended, to Taylorism leads to lack of innovation and agility in developing new work processes.

The working conditions at McDonald’s or at call centres are not ideal and have been subjected to intense criticism, much in the way that Taylorism has been pilloried in the past. Increase in productivity gained at the cost of workforce exploitation is essentially an anachronism in modern day society and cannot be self sustaining in the long run.

It is very clear that modern day knowledge based firms can have no place for Taylorist principles, that it would be impossible to reconcile TQM practices and the working of collaborative communities of practice with the dehumanising regimen of Taylorism.

The educated, trained, and empowered employees of contemporary organisations are likely to reject Taylorism principles, irrespective of their being camouflaged in management doublespeak. Taylorism will exist, if at all, in exploitative organisations like McDonald’s or in developing country settings, and that too until the winds of change catch up with them.

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