Scientific Management and High-Tech Organizational Leadership

Introduction

Managers are concerned with controlling, directing, organizing, and planning activities for their employees. Over the course of the twentieth century, various management theories were developed to assist managers in these fundamental endeavors. While some of these theories have been largely discarded, they merit study in order to understand how managers approach the function of managing. An approach like scientific management can improve processes such as the installation process of a telecommunications installation company (INCO Tech Inc.).

Today's business environment is rapidly changing. Technology has entered the workplace to a degree never before seen, and the interaction between humans and machines is changing the very nature of work. Increasingly, machines are being used not only to perform tasks that are dangerous for humans, but also tasks that cannot be done as quickly or as effectively by human beings. The result is that today's workers differ in their knowledge, skills, and expectations from the workers of the Industrial Age, which means that different approaches to management are necessary and that different challenges now face managers.

Understanding the characteristics of the high-technology organization — with its rapid rate of change, its global orientation, and its shift away from managers as monitors toward managers as leaders — is critical if high-technology organizations are to prosper. In addition, traditional human resource considerations, such as compensation and retention, often become the responsibility of the operational manager in a high-technology organization.

Management in the American workplace grew out of the manufacturing environment that emerged as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Productivity was measured by how much a worker produced, and managers monitored and controlled employees' time and tasks. Over the course of the twentieth century, the roles of managers evolved to include planning and evaluating, and managers became leaders as well as monitors in some situations. In the last years of the twentieth century, the workplace was transformed by the Internet, electronic commerce, and technological innovation. The American economy became increasingly service-oriented rather than product-oriented, and managers struggled to adapt to the new environment. This paper considers the evolution of management thought — which shapes how managers relate to workers — and examines how management in a high-technology environment differs from management in a traditional environment.

According to Hitt, Middlemist, and Mathis (1989), management is the "effective and efficient integration and coordination of resources to achieve desired objectives" (p. 13). Objectives support an organization's overriding mission and vary over the short term; missions themselves tend to be consistent over long periods of time. For example, a hospital's mission might be to provide health care services to the local community, while its objectives might include maintaining an 80 percent occupancy rate.

What Is Management?

The term "effective" refers to how well an organization reaches its objectives in a particular period of time, while "efficient" refers to how well it uses its resources. Thus an organization that has as its objective selling 100 widgets per day and which in fact does so can be said to be "effective," but if the organization cannot realize a profit doing so, it is not efficient. "Resources" are the various inputs — people, capital, technology, vendors, time, and even customers — that are part of the process used by the organization (Hitt, Middlemist & Mathis, 1989, p. 14).

Within this broad definition of management, there are various types of managers. Some of these — often called supervisors or first-line managers — coordinate the work of nonsupervisory employees and report to middle managers in larger organizations, or directly to executives in smaller ones. First-line managers deal with day-to-day operational issues. Middle managers link executives and supervisors and typically supervise only individuals who, in turn, supervise others. Executives are concerned with long-term strategic planning and broad issues; these are communicated to middle managers, who translate the executive team's broad vision into objectives that supervisors can achieve (Hitt, Middlemist & Mathis, 1989).

In order to understand the role of managers and the function of management in a high-technology organization, it is necessary to understand the various roles that managers have within an organization. Managers — depending on their level and responsibility — organize, control, direct, plan, and make decisions. They might also develop a strategic vision, create a mission for the company or their area of responsibility, and provide leadership to those around them. Managers have typically sought various ways to improve how they perform these tasks, and scholars as well as management analysts have committed significant resources toward helping managers improve their performance by presenting various management approaches and techniques (Hitt, Middlemist & Mathis, 1989).

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in Philadelphia in 1856. He prepared for college at Phillips Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and was accepted at Harvard. After his eyesight failed, he became an industrial apprentice during the depression of 1873. At Exeter, he was influenced by the classification system invented by Melvil Dewey in 1872, known today as the Dewey Decimal System. In 1878, Taylor became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Company. He later wrote a book describing his promotions to gang-boss, foreman, and finally chief engineer. He introduced time-motion studies in 1881, following ideas developed by Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth, strong personalities who were immortalized in books written by their twelve children, including Cheaper by the Dozen. In 1883, Taylor earned a degree through night study from Stevens Institute of Technology. Taylor became general manager of Manufacturing Investment Company in 1890 and was subsequently made a consulting engineer to management.

Taylor wrote extensively about his ideas and was influential as a result. However, though his ideas were clearly enunciated in his writings, they were also widely misinterpreted as employers used time and motion studies simply to extract more work from employees at less pay. Unions condemned such practices and noted the lack of voice workers had in their work, blaming what they called "Taylorism" for this. Quality and productivity declined when Taylor's principles were simplistically implemented in this fashion. His influence, however, has been evident throughout the discipline. Modern management theorists such as Edward Deming often credited Taylor with creating the principles upon which they built. Others, such as Juran, continued to criticize Taylor's work. Modern theorists generally place more emphasis on worker input and teamwork than was common in much of Taylor's time. A more careful reading of Taylor's work, however, shows that he placed the worker's interest as high as the employer's in his studies and that he recognized the importance of mechanisms such as the suggestion box in a machine shop to increase worker participation.

Frederick W. Taylor and the Origins of Scientific Management

The beginnings of Taylor's ideas can be found in stories he recounts about his time at Exeter. He cites George A. Wentworth, a professor of mathematics, and recalls wondering how Wentworth could deliver a lesson that always took Taylor two hours to complete. He finally discovered how Wentworth managed it:

"Mr. Wentworth would sit with his watch always hid behind a ledge on his desk, and while we knew it was there we did not know what the darn thing was for" (Wrege & Greenwood, 1991, p. 5).

Through observation, Taylor found that Wentworth tested to discover how many minutes it took the average student in the class to complete a given example, and Wentworth would then time himself when he first tackled these problems. He would then calculate a ratio to get the class working at a proper pace: "That was the first instance of time study of mental operation which I have ever seen" (Wrege & Greenwood, 1991, p. 5).

Many of Taylor's experiences contributed to his understanding of management and issues related to time and motion. His work at the Midvale plant was among the most important in shaping his management philosophy. He was made superintendent of machine shops when he was only 23, which provoked resistance from men he had previously worked alongside:

"The resistance offered by the men when he demanded more work gave Taylor his first problem as an executive and in this role he reverted to the characteristics engendered in him by his mother. Just as his mother demanded work and discipline, Taylor demanded work from his men, disciplining them if he believed they did not work to their full capacity" (Wrege & Greenwood, 1991, p. 31).

Taylor's first important writing came in 1893 with a paper presented to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers — "Notes on Belting." He also wrote about his differential piece-rate system, part of his effort against "soldiering," which meant that a worker would meet his daily standard and then had no reason to work beyond that point: "Whether they produced slightly above that standard, twice that standard, or three times that standard, or whatever, they were still paid the daily rate" (Wrege & Greenwood, 1991, p. 36). The "differential piece rate" was intended to eliminate this problem by substituting piece rates for day rates. This led to new problems, since "when the piece rate increased daily earnings, the rates were reduced" (Wrege & Greenwood, 1991, p. 39). Taylor addressed this problem through two steps:

1) Give each worker each day in advance a definite task, with detailed written instructions and an exact time allowance for each element of the work; and

2) Pay extraordinarily high wages to those who perform their tasks in the allotted time, and ordinary wages to those who take more time than they have been allowed.

The work of Frederick Taylor on scientific management constituted a major phase in public personnel management. Taylor focused his attention on the private sector, but the acceptance of the merit concept and the philosophy of Woodrow Wilson laid the groundwork for the adoption of Taylorism and scientific management in the public sector. The primary agents for this change were bureaus of municipal research, funded by private philanthropy and existing outside the boundaries of government. The basic assumption in the work of these bureaus was that there were no essential differences between the public and private sectors. Position classification is the primary element remaining from scientific management. In the private sector this had been used primarily to develop systems of efficiency ratings and productivity incentives, whereas in the public sector the purpose was equitable compensation. Congress passed the Classification Act in 1923 in response to pressures to standardize wages and promote greater efficiency in government. During this period, an emphasis on specialization fostered the rise of a number of new professions, and personnel management itself was one of those professions. Personnel work had previously been clerical work, but the demands of scientific management required considerably more (Dresang, 1991, pp. 31–33).

Taylor retired at the age of 45 but continued to devote time and money to promoting the principles of scientific management through lectures at universities and professional societies. From 1904 to 1914, Taylor lived in Philadelphia with his wife and adopted children. He was elected president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1906, and in that same year was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Pennsylvania. Many of his most influential writings first appeared in the Transactions publication of that society, among them "Notes on Belting" (1894), "A Piece-Rate System" (1895), "Shop Management" (1903), and "On the Art of Cutting Metals" (1906). Taylor's most influential work, The Principles of Scientific Management, was published commercially in 1911. His fame and influence grew further after he testified in 1912 at hearings before a special committee of the House of Representatives investigating his and other systems of shop management. Taylor considered himself a reformer and continued explaining the ideals and principles of his system of management until his death in 1915.

Conclusion

Scientific management can serve to direct and control the workforce for a high-tech company like INCO Tech Inc., with reference more to the theory as set forth by Taylor than the way it has often been applied by others. The assembly line concept is only one application of scientific management and not its essence. A thoughtful application of Taylor's core principles — careful task analysis, scientific selection and training of workers, and cooperative relations between management and employees — offers a meaningful framework for improving processes in modern high-technology organizations.