#2 Assignment
Watch the following videos. Prepare a 1-2 page reaction paper to the videos. Consider the following questions. What type of motivation is being used in the examples? Why are you (the worker) willing to work in the conditions outlined? What is the change that happens between the worker of 1930 and the worker of 1980? whar are the strengths and weaknesses of Scientific Management? Is it still useful?
Scientific Management and Ford Part 1
Scientific Management and Ford Part 2
Reorganization at GM
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The Ford plant had increased wages in order to entice new employees. They were able to do this because they increased efficiency and production had increased dramatically. They also had literacy/language schools within the businesses because a lot of their workers were immigrants. By using the assembly line, they were able to control the work pace because the workers had to work as fast as the machine moved. Lastly, they decided to change the direction of management by treating all employees equally (management & workers) and allowed the worker on the line to be the expert. The workers were willing to work in these conditions because the pay was great and they were given the opportunity to be apart of a booming business. There were many changes going on during this era, and due to the concept of mass production, lower costs, and higher pay their was a booming industry that needed workers in order to increase production. As mentioned before, many workers were immigrants and the companies were beginning to adapt to those situations by offering languages schools. The level of thinking also changed hands from management to the worker on the line, and the workers were given more flexibility within their teams and were allowed to form their own processes- within reason. Some of the strengths of scientific management include; frequent rest breaks for workers, companies should train and develop their employees, that the interests of the employee and employer are one and the same, and divide the work and responsibility equally between management and workers. Some of the weaknesses are; monitoring the workers to ensure that the work was carried out as specified, part of me feels like that “watch-dogging” every move of the worker is a little over the top. Taylor argued that responsibility for the planning, coordinating and controlling of work should be exercised by management, thus leaving the worker to concentrate on performing the actual task, which I think it is important to involve the workers so that they feel like they have some stake in the outcome. He also focused on isolating the workers from each other, which I think is too extreme of a measure to take and that they job needs to be enjoyable and is partly about forming relationships with your fellow workers. I think parts of Scientific Management is useful, and that for the most part we have implemented the concepts while tweaking them to fit into current standards.
ReplyDeleteWe have to admit Scientific Management really helped organizations become more efficient. For me the problem was that we always seem to take these things to the extreme and then we get a backlash. We definitely don't want to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and reject everything from SM, but moderation is definitely important.
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