Principles of Scientific Management
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Scientific management is involved with rationalization and labor-control methods whereby production systems will involve both people and machines in order to improve efficiency. In most countries, the natural resources are seen to vanish with no action being taken against people responsible for depleting these resources. Most people argue that they lack professionals who can handle such instances well. Why should a whole nation wait for someone to emerge from nowhere and take control of their resources while they could manage it themselves? Those past things whereby people though managers and leaders are born and not developed should be dealt away with since every individual has the capacity of leading or managing others, the only requirement is trust, courage and faith in oneself. A nation that conserves its available resources always achieves good national efficiency in terms of labor and production. In the absence of scientific management, a nation suffers great loss through many inefficiencies occurring day in day out. Every individual has the responsibility in ensuring that a nation’s resources are well managed through taking part in various management practices. According to Taylor scientific management principles are applicable in all human related activities thus people should call for elaborate collaborations in their actions (2006).
Frederick Taylor came up with some key elements in his approach to scientific management discussed below. The five elements of scientific management discussed by Taylor are; labor, position, selection, actions and decisions, and management (Taylor, 2006). From the first element, labor, Taylor discussed the relationship between employers and employees. These two parties should have maximum prosperity that ensures an organization or business achieves its best and excels well in all its activities. By maximum prosperity towards employees, the employer does not have to motivate the employees through giving them high wages while their level of production is low. Employees have the responsibility of ensuring high productivity by an individual working to his or her maximum efficiency and striving to reach the highest level that an individual can achieve. It creates a bad image in an organization to find people idle simply because a machine has broken down due to a small fault and instead of employees fixing the situation; they sit down waiting for experts to work on it. These are small issues that lead to slowing down of operations in an organization. In management, development of true science, and a good selection of scientific workmanship form the two important elements (Sandrone, 2012).
The manager today has to make crucial decisions regarding business opportunities every day. The greatest challenge is that the business environment is fast growing and extremely dynamic. One finds that whatever business strategy that worked yesterday effectively is no longer applicable today. The business environment is global meaning macroeconomic factors from all over the world sometimes have impacts on businesses in different parts including small businesses. The modern environment has consumers with varying lifestyles and values from time to time. This affects the consumers and target market needs since it affects their tastes and preferences and thus the business managers should keep changes in order to maintain their customers and attract others Shim & Siegel, 1999; Daft, & Marcic, 2008).
In scientific management, every person is a stakeholder thus has the responsibility occupying a given position in decision making. Organizations hire risk managers to foretell about the future of the business they engage in. organizational culture also makes managers engage themselves in certain actions that are worthless leading to depression of the organization. Commitment in all actions geared at benefiting the business and nation at large is very important since through this, people come to realize the importance of engaging at nation building activities. This worldwide advancement in technology has seen to it that many organizations managers adopt the new technology and get into new positions. This has been so since most of the current global business transactions are been carried out via the internet. The changes in technology have further triggered the managers to adopt them in the management systems. These management systems help the manager to keep an effective track of the organization ranging from employee management to organization process management (Levin, n.d).
On the other hand, psychology has a commonly established perception that it is a study in the science field, which explores cognitive processes and behavior of human beings (Simond, 2008). Being a scientific phenomenon, psychology should have a definable subject matter, a construction theory, and a hypothesis that has the potential of testing. Science has elements of being objective and free from any form of bias. As such, psychology receives a myriad of definitions based on key theoretical approaches and orientations. This leads to scholars stipulating differing arguments on the psychology topic. In 1998, Kline claimed that psychology is a self-contained discipline with contrasting facets in the discipline. He claims psychology consideration as a science can occur only if there is a global perspective from all the workers. Kuhn, on the other hand, argues that psychology has no paradigm, while other scientists perceive psychology as a field that has undergone two revolutions. Finally, psychology receives a third view, which claim psychology has several paradigms.
Selection forms the third key element of scientific management. In every situation, selection of the best practice to undertake is very important since it allows people to evaluate and come up with the best alternative. In a working environment, managers carryout interview in order to select the best candidates for a given post. Production and operations management entails the decision-making process to ensure that goods and services creation occurs within the scheduled time, according to the stipulated specifications, and at a minimum cost. Resources, such as labor and materials inputs, aid in service and goods creation through the use of transformation or conversion processes to aid in value addition. As such, scientific management process starts at high-level business strategies and plans, over both short and long run. Product and service demand dictates the strategies and plans adopted. After the production process gives the output of goods, the distribution of the goods occurs geographically in line with the business market (Lewis & Slack, 2003).
Actions and decisions made by employers and employees contribute a lot in the success of an organization. Organizations need to adopt a system whereby each person has the right to contribute in decision making since even the minorities have their say. Development cannot take place in the absence of mistakes because it is through this that people come to learn the best route to take. Since all organizations have a goal of attaining effectiveness in their endeavors, Taylor claimed that a good relationship among people is the key to success (Jones and George, 2006). Employees in an organization are the principle elements for success attainment, and thus, the article makes it clear that the employee needs to enjoy their working environment, and get job satisfaction at the same-time. Therefore, the topic of the article is very important in understanding organization behavior and effectiveness advancement. In achieving scientific management, changes made in a given nation should be gradual in order to allow every individual understand the need for changes and take them positively. In work places, managers should know their employees well and assign them duties depending on the individual’s capability (Griffin & Moorhead, 2007; Harris & Hartmen, 2002).
Finally, the fifth key element of scientific management principle is management. Arguments arise concerning whether management is a science or art. In general, management is both a science and art since it involves an individual applying skills and knowledge in showing facts and principles. In scientific management, leaders are asked to use specific ideas and information to educate their followers. Taylor described management as effective when someone achieves what other expected. Development lacks in situations where managers take advantage of their position and misuse others in lower levels. In most developed countries, both managers and their followers work together with no fear and favor. According to Dubrin, management entails leading people in doing activities that bring about development in a nation. In his book, Dubrin suggested Frederick Taylor as one of the researches who were involved in determining the impact of management in various organizations (2003). In building a nation’s vision, science plays a great role since it forms the basis of all activities in the world. Countries should teach their citizens to manage themselves in order to avoid instances such misuse of available resources. Organizations should encourage management talents through sending their managers in developed countries to learn the art of management and deliver back their knowledge to people at grassroots (Kuhn, 1996).
Applying the above principles in our daily activities will lead to more developments and understanding among individuals in a nation. Some industries have tried to adopt scientific management principles and this has assisted them a lot in making various decisions and changes within the organization. In most cases, manufacturing firms utilize scientific management in all their activities. Taking an example of plastic molding company, employees are always exposed to many life risks and require good observation while undertaking their duties. On the other hand, the activities carried out in such industries bring about a lot of pollution leading to global warming. Managers involved in such industry should know how to do away with such issues while at the same time achieve high profits ().
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