Theories of Management
This section traces the development of theories of management starting from the Scientific
Theory to the Behavioural Science Movement.
Scientific (Classical) Management Movement
The founder of this theory is Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1917). As a labourer and
manager, Taylor spent most of his time working on the problems of achieving greater efficiency
on the shop floor. He had observed that workers were in charge of both planning and performing
their duty, a situation he considered too wasteful and inefficient. Taylor looked at 'man-as-
machine.' To him, human beings could be made to work as systematically determined without
attention to the human factor, just like machines.
Taylor and his followers believed that workers needed constant directives and were motivated by
economic but limited psychological wants. He formalized the principles of scientific
management. The fact-finding approach he put forward and which was widely adopted replaced
old way of handling workers as foremen and managers. At the time of Taylor's work, typical
manager had very little contact with the activities of the factory. Generally, a foreman would be
given the total responsibility for producing goods demanded the salesman. Under these
conditions, workers used whatever tools they had or could get and adopted methods that suited
their own style of work Taylor emphasized increased efficiency in the factory.
Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s Contributions to Scientific Management
By 1881, Taylor had published a paper that turned the cutting of metal into a science. Later he
turned his attention to shovelling coal. By experimenting with different designs of shovel for use
with different materials (from 'rice' coal to ore), he was able to design shovels that permitted the
worker to shovel all day. In so doing, he reduced the number of people shovelling at the
Bethlehem Steel Works from 500 to 140. This work and his studies on the handling of pig iron,
contributed greatly to the analysis of work design and gave rise to method study. He also wrote a
number of papers on incentive schemes in 1895. In 1909, he published the book for which he is
best known, Principles of Scientific Management. A feature of Taylor’s work was stop-watch
timing as the basis of observations. However, unlike the early activities of Perronet and others,
he started to break the timings down into elements and was the first to coin the term ‘time study’.
This section traces the development of theories of management starting from the Scientific
Theory to the Behavioural Science Movement.
Scientific (Classical) Management Movement
The founder of this theory is Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1917). As a labourer and
manager, Taylor spent most of his time working on the problems of achieving greater efficiency
on the shop floor. He had observed that workers were in charge of both planning and performing
their duty, a situation he considered too wasteful and inefficient. Taylor looked at 'man-as-
machine.' To him, human beings could be made to work as systematically determined without
attention to the human factor, just like machines.
Taylor and his followers believed that workers needed constant directives and were motivated by
economic but limited psychological wants. He formalized the principles of scientific
management. The fact-finding approach he put forward and which was widely adopted replaced
old way of handling workers as foremen and managers. At the time of Taylor's work, typical
manager had very little contact with the activities of the factory. Generally, a foreman would be
given the total responsibility for producing goods demanded the salesman. Under these
conditions, workers used whatever tools they had or could get and adopted methods that suited
their own style of work Taylor emphasized increased efficiency in the factory.
Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s Contributions to Scientific Management
By 1881, Taylor had published a paper that turned the cutting of metal into a science. Later he
turned his attention to shovelling coal. By experimenting with different designs of shovel for use
with different materials (from 'rice' coal to ore), he was able to design shovels that permitted the
worker to shovel all day. In so doing, he reduced the number of people shovelling at the
Bethlehem Steel Works from 500 to 140. This work and his studies on the handling of pig iron,
contributed greatly to the analysis of work design and gave rise to method study. He also wrote a
number of papers on incentive schemes in 1895. In 1909, he published the book for which he is
best known, Principles of Scientific Management. A feature of Taylor’s work was stop-watch
timing as the basis of observations. However, unlike the early activities of Perronet and others,
he started to break the timings down into elements and was the first to coin the term ‘time study’.
