Compare and Contrast Mayo with Taylor free essay sample

Frederick Winslow Taylor also known as F. W. Taylor and George Elton Mayo have given some important definitions to the management work in the past. F. W. Taylor the Father of Scientific Management opposed the rule of thumb and said that there is only ‘one best way of doing work’ where as Elton Mayo proposed that the importance of groups affects the behaviour of individuals at work. As the topic suggests, there are many contrasts between Taylor and Mayo but the only similarity between these is that they both wanted to that more production can be possible only through more efficiency by the workers but Taylor explained it through the superior – subordinate relationship and Mayo by the informal organization. Before writing about the contrasts let’s look in detail about Taylor and Mayo and then define their contrasts. Frederick Winslow Taylor (20th March 1856 – 21st March 1915) Also known as F. W.Taylor, wan an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. We will write a custom essay sample on Compare and Contrast Mayo with Taylor or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants. 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 Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Taylor became an industrial apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience at a pump-manufacturing company Enterprise Hydraulic Works, Philadelphia. Taylors career progressed in 1878 when he became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Works. Taylor was promoted to chief engineer at Midvale. Taylor took night study at Stevens Institute of Technology and in 1883 obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering. 1898, Taylor joined Bethlehem Steel. Taylor was forced to leave Bethlehem Steel in 1901 after antagonisms with other managers. Taylor eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Late winter of 1915 Taylor caught pneumonia and one day after his fifty-ninth birthday, on March 21, he died. He was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Scientific management (also called Taylorism, the Taylor system, or the Classical Perspective) is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflow processes, improving labor productivity. The core ideas of the theory were developed in the 1880s and 1890s. Followers of Taylor include Gnatt, Frank and Lillian Gillberth and Emerson (Agarwal 1982). Taylor made contributions in the form of 4 scientific principles and 7 techniques. Let’s elaborate on them:- Scientific Principles of Management 1)Science not Rule of Thumb: He believed that there was only one best method to maximise efficiency and the method could be developed through study and analysis. The method so developed should substitute ‘Rule of Thumb’. Scientific method involved investigation of traditional methods through work – study, unifying the best practices and developing a standard method, which would be followed throughout the organisation. 2)Harmony, Not Discord: Factory system implied that managers served as a link between owners and the workers. The managers had the mandate to ‘get work done’ from the workers but Taylor was in the belief that there always existed the possibility of a kind of class – conflict. He recognised that this conflict helped none, the workers, the managers or the factory owners. He emphasised that three should be complete harmony between the management and workers. Both should realise that each one is important. Taylor called for a complete mental revolution on the part of both management and workers. )Cooperation, Not Individualism: There should be complete cooperation between the labour and the management instead of individualism. Competition should be replaced by cooperation. Both should realise that they need each other. For this, management should not close it ears to any constructive suggestions made by the employees. If any important decisions are taken, workers should be taken into confidence. At the same time workers should desist from going on strike and making unreasona ble demands on management. According to Taylor, there should be an almost equal division of work and responsibility between workers and management. 4)Development of each and every person to His or Her Greatest Efficiency and Prosperity: Taylor was of the view that the concern for efficiency could be built in right from the process of employee selection. Each person should be scientifically selected. The work assigned should suit her/his physical, mental and intellectual capabilities. To increase efficiency, they should be given the required training. Efficient employees would produce more and earn more. This will ensure their greatest efficiency and prosperity for both company and workers. Techniques of Scientific Management 1)Functional Foremanship: Taylor concentrated on improving the performance of the foreman who represents the managerial figure with whom the workers are in face – to – face contact on daily basis. He identified a list of qualities of a good foreman/supervisor and found that no single person could fit them all. Thus, he promoted functional foremanship through eight persons. Under the factory manager there was a planning incharge and a production incharge. The former had four personnel namely card clerk, route clerk, time and cost clerk and disciplinarian whereas the latter had personnel who would work were speed boss, gang boss, repair boss and inspector. 2)Standardisation and Simplification of Work: Standardisation refers to the process of setting standards for every business activity; it can be standardisation of process, raw material, time, product, machinery, methods or working conditions. These standards are benchmarks, which must be adhered to during productions. Simplifications aim at eliminating superfluous varieties, sizes and dimensions. It results in savings of cost of labour, machines, fuller utilisation of equipment and increasing turnover. 3)Method study: The objective of method study is to find out one best way of doing the job. The objective of the whole exercise is to minimise the cost of production and maximise the quality and satisfaction of the customer. 4)Motion Study: Refers to the study of movements like lifting, putting objects, sitting and changing positions etc. which are undertaken while doing a typical job. Unnecessary movements are sought to be eliminated so that it takes less time to complete the job efficiently. Taylor used stopwatches and various symbols and colours to identify different motions. 5)Time Study: It determines the standard time taken to perform a well-defined job. Time measuring devices are used for each element of task. 6)Fatigue Study: It seeks to determine the amount and frequency of rest interva ls in completing tasks. Rest intervals will help one to regain stamina and work again with the same capacity which will result in increased productivity. 7)Differential Piece Wage System: Taylor was a strong advocate of piece wage system and wanted to differentiate between efficient and inefficient workers. He wanted to reward the efficient workers and so introduced different rate of wage payment for those who performed above standard and for those who preformed below standard. According to him the inefficient worker will be motivated to perform better due to the difference in rewards. Elements †¢Labor is defined and authority/responsibility is legitimised/official †¢Positions placed in hierarchy and under authority of higher level †¢Selection is based upon technical competence, training or experience †¢Actions and decisions are recorded to allow continuity and memory †¢Management is different from ownership of the organization †¢Managers follow rules/procedures to enable reliable/predictable behaviour Taylor believed that scientific management cannot work unless the worker benefits. In his view work should be arranged in such a way the more is produced by the worker and being paid more for the work done making use of more efficient procedures. George Elton Mayo (26th December 1880 – 7th September 1949) George Elton Mayo was an Australian psychologist, sociologist and organization theorist. He emigrated to the USA in 1922 and in1926 became the director of the Department of Industrial Research at Harvard University. His primary concern was to examine the human aspects of work Mayo is known as the founder of the Human Relations Movement, and is known for his research including the Hawthorne Studies, and his book The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization (1933). The research he conducted under the Hawthorne Studies of the 1930s showed the importance of groups in affecting the behavior of individuals at work. However it was not Mayo who conducted the practical experiments but his employees Roethlisberger and Dickinson. According to him work satisfaction depended to a large extent on the informal social pattern of the work group. Where norms of cooperation and higher output were established because of a feeling of importance. Physical conditions or financial incentives had little motivational value. People will form work groups and this can be used by management to benefit the organization. He concluded that peoples work performance is dependent on both social issues and job content. He suggested a tension between workers logic of sentiment and managers logic of cost and efficiency which could lead to conflict within organizations. The Hawthorne Experiments These studies were conducted between 1924 and 1932 at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Plant near Chicago as they wanted to examine the relationship between worker output and workplace illumination. Group of researchers from American Academy of Sciences were invited. They ran a series of steps which manipulated illumination levels and recorded output. To their surprise the output seemed to increase both in control groups where illumination was constant and in experimental groups where illumination was lowered. This failure to relate illumination levels to output led in 1927 to the Company inviting the Harvard Industrial Research Team, under Mayo’s direction, to take over. The Harvard team assumed that the principal reason for the failure of the study was that the previous researchers had not been systematic enough, confining themselves to the study of a sole variable. They believed that it was imperative to select a small group of workers and place them in isolation, immune to disruption from other employees and departmental routine. The first series of experiments were carried out in the Relay Assembly Test Room also known as RAT Room Tests. The Relay Assembly Test Room experiments lasted for five years. A group of six female employees were selected and were happy to work together where they all had the same comparable skills. The task given to them required no use of machines and the women were placed in an observation room with one person, an observer, whose main task was to record output data and maintain a friendly atmosphere in the room. During this many changes were implemented like: a special group payment scheme; rest pauses; shorter hours and refreshment breaks. In all, more that ten changes were tried. Almost without expectation, after each adjustment was made, production output rose. After five years a return was made to the original conditions; a forty eight hour, six day week, no incentive, no rest pauses and no refreshments; output went up to the highest yet recorded. By this time it had become clear to Mayo and his team of researchers that none of the above variables commonly believed to have on effect o production could be used to explain the continual increase in output. The group had experienced an enormous increase in job satisfaction, partly due to the fact that they had a greater freedom in their working environment and partly because they had a certain amount of control over their own pace-setting. The fact that came into existence was a social system. The workers and supervisors developed a sense of participation, and as a result, established a completely new working pattern. The single most important discovery of the Hawthorne experiments was that workers had a strong need to co-operate and communicate with felloe workers. The significance of the Hawthorne investigation was in ‘discovering the informal organisation. Summary of Mayos Beliefs: †¢Individual workers cannot be treated in isolation, but must be seen as members of a group. †¢Monetary incentives and good working condition are less important to the individual than the need to belong to a group. †¢Informal or unofficial groups formed at work have a strong influence on the behavior of those workers in a group. †¢Managers must be aware of these social needs and cater for them to ensure that employees collaborate with he official organization rather than work against it. Criticism of Mayo: Adjusting men to machines, rather than with enlarging human capacity or freedom. As seen above, Taylor and Mayo have many contrasting facts but they do have one similarity between them but it differs just by on way of thought. Let’s first look at the contrasts between them: †¢Taylor had striven to minimise the scope for individuals to have any effect on the work group, in terms of altering the work pattern (informal organisation) while Mayo wished to harness individual effort to increase production. Taylor believed that planning should be separated from doing whereas Mayo believed in a far wider participation when it came to decision-making. †¢Taylor believed in application of authority while for Mayo it was the building of mutual confidence. †¢Taylor had rigid and external control on a workers performance while doing his tasks where as Mayo believed that individual growth within the organisation was important, the worker ideally attaining greater responsibility. The only similarity between Taylor and Mayo is that, they both focused mainly o n efficiency of worker which would lead to greater production.