Scientific Management

Abstract

Scientific management is a management technique developed by Winslow Taylor during the later stages of the industrial period. Also called Taylorism, scientific management focuses on systematising the work processes and quantifying the results to maximise productivity. Taylorism is characterised by a transparent incentive structure which rewards workes that perform well with a direct monetary reward and penalises workers who underperform. Although Taylorism was borne in the old factories, its influence is still felt today in certain industries. This article will first explore the historical context of scientific management, as it is important for our understanding of modern implementation. Then some examples of Taylorism outside of the traditional American factory will be explored to show how Taylorism or aspects thereof can be applied in diverse contexts. Finally advice on how to implement Taylorism in a modern project will be outlined to help future project managers take the best from the theory.

Historical context

Winslow Taylor

Scientific Management was created by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the last decades of the 19th century. For this reason the concept is also known as Taylorism. This was a time of great industrial development in The United States when she was beginning to catch up to the production of the British Empire. Unlike today where most of society's value is created from service and more abstract sources, this is a period characterised by the development of the modern factories, with a clear division of labour, production quotas, and machinery controlled manually.

At Midvale Steel factory where he worked he observed that the daily output would almost always be significantly below what should be possible to accomplish. As he says: "Why is it, then, (...) that the great majority of our men are deliberately doing the opposite [of determined effort], and that even when the men have their best intentions their work is far from efficient?" [1] In his work on Scientific Management he made three observations, which are symptomatic of a larger problem in industries.

1) The fallacy that a material increase in the output of workers or machines would result in the firing of workers, as fewer men are able to do the same work.

2) Management in general is inefficient, making it necessary for workers to work slowly to protect their own self-interests.

3) The inefficient rule-of-thumb methods, which exist universally across all trades and waste resources and work hours. It is especially the last point that Taylor sought to remedy with his new method of management, and focus on standardisation and measuring of tangible results.

Principles

The single most important part of scientific management is what Taylor calls the "task idea". As far as is possible, all aspects of the worker's work is planned out at least one day in advance, and to avoid misunderstandings all of his instructions are written down. This planning is done by the joint effort of management and the worker. These instructions explain the worker's task and exactly by what means he is to accomplish the task. It also allots time for the task, and if the worker succeeds in finishing his task correctly and on time, he is to be rewarded with a 30% to 100% increase in his wage. However, if he fails in his task he should feel it directly by sharing in the loss of the factory. In this way, Taylor's management technique works with a carrot and a stick: He realised that giving workers a stake and incentive in their work made them more motivated to work efficiently, making it possible for wage-increases to be a win-win situation for management and workers alike. In other words, he seeks to create a symbiotic relationship.

The four core principles of Scientific Management can be summed up as follows.

1) That all aspects of the work be analysed critically and quantitively.

2) That workers be assigned the jobs that fit them the best.

3) That workers and manager corporate to maximise efficiency. Managers focus on managing, which includes the supervision of workers and results. It is the manager's job to make sure that the work is being done in the most efficient manner at all times.

4) Managers and workers work scientifically in their respective field, so that there is a clear division of labour.

Practice

As a management technique Taylorism emphasises the optimisation of efficiency by improving task allocation and communication between different layers of the organisation (i.e. workers and managers). The point of the incentive structure outlined above, is to support an efficient working environment where interventions and changes are ideally minimised due to the workers' best interests being aligned with those of the managers (maximising efficiency). Although this management technique is mostly relevant for the repetitive manual labour of the factories of the industrial era, aspects of Taylorism can still be seen in modernity.

Modern China

A modern variation of Taylorism has been observed in the tech industry in China. Here advanced management software is used to surveil teams of workers, with rewards handed out to the most productive teams or those teams who work the most hours. It is not unusual for workers to work 2 hours overtime daily, and overtime is usually unpaid. According to Liu, this leads to burnout and stress, with workers often feeling like tools. However, unlike traditional Taylorism whose defining characteristic is the clear and detailed work plan, managers in the tech industry generally do not offer such plans to their workers. Through programs such as DigiTalk, managers keep constant track of their workers. The program is installed on the phones of all workers from the day they start working. Through this application, workers receive their tasks and are expected to start working immediately upon receiving the message, being sent constant reminders until they start [4]. Sometimes workers are even sent messages during off-days or during night hours, resulting in increased stress for workers. In this way, Taylorism has become an intrinsic part of project management in some companies in China, where worker-protection laws are less prevelant than in the west and where creativity and freedom in the workspace is de-prioritised or even frowned upon.

Soviet Union

Already in 1918 before the formal formation of the Soviet Union Lenin noted the usefulness of incorporating aspects of Taylorism into the soviet economy, saying "We must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system and systematically try it out and adapt it to our own ends."

In spite of Lenin's vision, scientific management was never formally implemented into the soviet economy. It did, however, employ some of its principles in its industrial planning and management practices. For example, the Soviet Union used a centralized planning system, which involved breaking down production into specialized tasks, standardizing procedures, and setting targets for output. In this surveillance and management was essential. An integral part of this system was the Five Year Plan, which were a series of economic plans spanning 2-6 years. Russo-American Walter N. Polakov helped develop the Five Year Plan model by helping the Soviets implement the Gantt Chart, a planning technique developed by Henry Gantt who helped Taylor formalise scientific management. According to Van Atta Taylorism can not be said to have been implemented as there was no systematic sanctioning of workers not living up to their quotas. Moreover, the Soviet economy was oriented towards maximisation of production rather than profit, as was the case in American factories.

Modern industries

Certain industries may be better suited for Taylorism than others. Any business that is constantly changing or has a fluid structure should look for other management models. Although modern day factories are quite different from those of the 1920s, in which manual labour was a big part of the work load, the underlying characteristics of factory work have not changed much. Factory work is still largely menial and repetitive and it is easy to track performance with a few KPIs. For example, number of units produced per hour. For this reason, Taylorism can in theory easily be incorporated into fast-food chains, which work similarly to the assembly lines of a factory. Here workers generally specialise in a few simple tasks which can be optimised and analysed without difficulty. The customer service and especially call centre industries have already implemented many aspects of Taylorism. For example, it is common for call-centres to give their employees personality tests, which allow managers to see what customer group an employee is best at persuading. Employees at call-centres are generally given bonuses based on the number of sales they give, and these bonuses often constitute a large part of an employee´s salary. Although, low performance employees are not given literal penalties to their salary, the low-base salary in practice functions as a penalty. In theory Taylorism could be implemented for retail workers, however, monitoring performance is more difficult than the above examples. As shall be explained below, there are more challenges to implementing Taylorism in the Western World.

In project, program, and portfolio management

As regards project, program, and portfolio management the techniques of analysing work processes and building incentive structures can be incorporated into modern practices. As Taylorism builds on standardisation and stratification (i.e. workers and managers) it generally requires large teams to be implemented fully. A typical startup will not gain anything from incorporating Taylorism, since roles are constantly shifting and due to the lack of standard task that can be optimised and perfected over many repetitions. The first step to implementing Taylorism into a modern project, program, or portfolio is to have a clear distinction between managers and workers. Assignmments should be divided into subtasks that are easy to manage and have clear success criteria. Ideally it should be possible to define a 'standard task', i.e. a day's work or another standard quantity of work. Manager should pick workers who fit a certain task especially well, this may be done with the help of personality tests. After a worker has been picked for a task he should be trained to excell at that task specifically, and a penality/reward system should be set up. This could be a 5% bonus if he accomplishes his part of the daily project work or the same penality if he falls significantly behind. As with any large scale team work, communication is paramount. Managers need to be given a lot of information, as the scientific approach to work requires a constant sourse of feedback. This is especially true in the early stages of the work. While Taylorism focuses on the standardisation of tasks it is not by necessity static, and managers should be ready to implement changes or experiment to find the best formula, similarly to how a scientist works in the lab working with trial and error.

Advice on implementation

Based on the above information, concrete advice on the implementation of scientific management in a modern project. As a management technique the principles of Taylorism can be incorporated into project, program, and portfolio management. However, the more complex and unpredictable these are the less practical scientific management is, and for this reason scientific management should not be applied wholely to program nor portfolio management. Project managers, too, may want to use other management techniques, as Taylorism was not created for modern projects but repetitive factory work. In How Scientific Management can be Harmful to Project Management Marisa Silva argues that four assumptions are driving an increased endorsement for scientific management (Taylorism). 1) That humans make rational decisions. 2) That the world, and as a result projects, are unpredictable. 3) That project lifecycles are stable. 4) That projects are similar and can be standardised.

If a project manager wishes to incorporate scientific management he should follow the steps below.

(1) Make sure there is enough repetitive work to make accurate and continued measurements of productivity. This includes clarifying the task idea, the basic unit of work that can be expected of an employee in a specific time frame (i.e. per day or per week). In modern projects, such a task idea may be more arbitrary than Winslow Taylor intended.

(2) That the project is big enough to allow for clear, rigid roles and a hierarchy. Although managers in the classic inception of scientific management are supposed to be entirely focused on just monitor and managing, managers in modern projects may have other tasks and even work alongside workers, such as modern project management, stakeholder management, and other tasks. In a modern project fewer managers are necessary, as modern technology makes it easier to observe productivity.

(3) In accordance with local union regulation or state law, the project manager should set up a systematic incentive structure so that workers are predictably rewarded when performing well. Strictly speaking according to Taylorism, workers should be penalised for poor performance, but this may run contrary to law and in a western project environment create a bad work environment, which runs counter to the best of the project. The project manager must never forget his role in people management and in ensuring that the incentive structure and manager oversight does not harm the mental health of the workers.

(4) Employees need to see the sense and benefits of the implementation of Taylorism. It is important that employees see the incentive structure as beneficial to them and not just the bottom line of the CEO or the company: They need to be made to understand that the new management technique will bring them direct monetary benefits as long as they apply themselves and deliver on time.

(5) Employees may be included and allowed to influence the implementation of Taylorism. As in the original inception of Taylorism, employees need to be involved in planning and in formulating the task idea, so that any doubts or misunderstandings are avoided at the outset. Employees may feel that the task idea is too ambitious or have other criticisms about the management technique - in such cases, their feedback should be taken seriously.

(6) Managers should avoid being resented. In post-modern western society, jobs are more egalitarian than they were during the industrial revolution, and managers are not necessarily respected solely based on hierarchy alone. If the manager is seen as not contributing or his decisions around incentives, benchmarks, or measurements of productivity are seen as arbitrary, workers may come to recent him. This is ultimately to the detriment to the health of the project, program or portfolio.

Criticism

Taylorism has been criticised by unions for limiting the creativity of workers by making their jobs too rigid As we have seen, this was true in the factories of the second industrial revolution where workers worked long days on repetitive tasks, but the criticism is not necessarily valid for project management, although the pressure from the overseeing managers can be oppressive, as in the Chinese tech industry discussed earlier. Another criticism of scientific management, is that Taylorism reduces human motivation by explaining motivation in terms of monetary reward rather than deeper psychological needs. In this way Taylorism is a departure from the human relations approach to explaining motivation. By boiling down the worker's motivation to one that is primarily monetary, the worker is seen as an interchangeable economic unit and his well-being becomes de-prioritised, and other factors that lower employee-turnover, such as social relations, the feeling of having a say, and task flexibility become less important to the manager. As illustrated in the above example on Taylorism in modern day China, employees may feel uncomfortable with the constant supervision and intervention by their managers, and the invasion of privacy that digital supervision constitutes can feel stressful and inhuman.