Field of Organizational Behavior

Behavior Management

Scientific management can best be defined as a method for conducting business operations by implementing a scientific approach to a company's business practices. Scientific management is normally associated with the methodology used by manufacturing companies who employed assembly line workers on a large scale. The methodology emphasized the manner in which the employees were employed, especially concentrating on labor, time and measurement of performance of each employee. Early scientific management methods were also implemented in other areas (outside of manufacturing) such as; the railroads. One article states "that scientific management techniques were far more widespread in railroading than has been thought" (Aldrich, 2010, p. 503) and then went on to explain that "while most studies of scientific management in industry have emphasized incentive pay and time studies, in the railroads there were less important than standardization, production scheduling and routing, and assembly line repair methods" (Aldrich, p. 503). The rational standardization of work that is espoused by scientific management allows both the worker and the employer to benefit from its use. The employee can benefit through the incentives provided rewarding good working habits, and the employer can benefit by ensuring that each employee is paid according to the amount of effort put forth; no employee can piggyback on someone else's efforts. Scientific management does have some drawbacks however, one drawback could include the fact that employees may see it as a method for determining exactly how much work each employee should be able to accomplish in a certain amount of time. Scientific management also allows for very little flexibility or creativity in the workplace, which could undermine the individual employee who might wish to change the manner in which some work is completed.

The Hawthorne effect on employees is best described as when an employee perceives that the employer cares (whether or not it is true) about the employee, the worker will become much more productive. In the field of organizational behavior such an effect cannot be easily overlooked; if the organization can produce employees who are more efficient and productive just by maintaining a sense of compassion and care, then it would make sense to implement those procedures in the workplace that produce such feelings in the employee(s).

A good example of a bureaucracy is any local, state or even the Federal government. A bureaucracy is usually described as any administration or organization that has an established hierarchy and rules, guidelines, regulations and procedures. If one wished to experience a local bureaucracy, one need only enter the nearest Bureau of Motor Vehicles in any state in the union. It is there that one can find the impersonal relationships and rigid adherence to obscure rules and regulations that are most equated with a bureaucracy. This organization functions well as long as everyone adheres to every stipulation. Once an act that is any manner out of the norm takes place, the entire system can bog down for hours, days and months at a time. The employees can actually end up in a temporarily paralyzed state of mind by being asked to accomplish a task outside the norm. As one recent study found, "bureaucratic agencies may have the capacity to impinge on citizens' freedom in ways that are illegitimate, or arbitrary" (Koll, 2009, p. 135) and that fits the BMV to a tee.

Over the last two decades, globalization in the workplace has changed the method in which many companies conduct business. Many business leaders now focus on how to integrate a worldwide perspective into the local business entity. Business can now efficiently and effectively be conducted through electronic means that were not available until the last twenty years. Labor is still a relatively local factor, but such factors such as shipping, ordering, purchasing and selling can now be accomplished in any market accessible to the internet. A global expansion has taken place through communication and electronics that has opened the eyes of business managers across the globe.