Frederick Taylor's "Theory of Scientific Management"

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that, the division of labor suggested in Taylor's theory is still extant in American business; in fact, it is undeniably present in businesses, such as telecommunications, that have both inside and outside functions, both executive/managers and a large complement of workers. The author points out that, while Frederick Taylor's ideas, used in their pure form, might have worked well in a pre-human potential movement era of abundant factory work and climbing wages; in today's labor market, they are likely to be counterproductive, unless balanced with a large amount of input from modern labor relations. The paper concludes that Taylor's emphasis on measurement should be simply a tracking tool, not a management hammer; used as such, it can point to the areas in which human/labor relations might need to step in.

Table of Contents
Division of Labor along with Narrow Specialization
Centralized Decision-Making
Proposed Solution

From the Paper:

"Taylor was not the first, by any means, to develop a theory of production. Earlier minds, such as that of economist Adam Smith, were also concerned with the problem of increasing production. Indeed, "Economic theory of production had a promising start with Adam Smith's pin factory" in which Smith explained the benefit of the division of labor. Smith was a perfect precursor to Taylor: he observed "how allotting specialized tasks to pin factory workers led to greater dexterity by the workers and considerable saving of time from moving from task to task and allowed for output of pins to increase from a mere 20 pins to 4,800 pins per worker per day." "

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