On scientific management - a brief note

The main ideas of scientific managenment:

1. Workers and their jobs as the basic organization building blocks
2. Jobs are divided into simpler units as extensions of machine
3. Much managerial/ supervisory effort to ensure workers' compliance with instructions and operations stability
4. Supervisors absorb residual operational uncertainty and variabilities

Affiliated management concepts are (i) bureaucracy, (ii) machine metaphor in organization, (iii) Operational Research/ Management Science, (iv) industrial engineering (including work study), (v) business process re-engineering.

Some related concerns: (i) alienation, (ii) deskilling, (iii) mechanically paced motions, and (iv) demotivation. Also compare scientific management with human relation model and human resources model of management.

References

1. On Frederick Taylor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
2. Trist, E. (1983) "Article 5: A socio-technical critique of scientific management" in Lockett, M, and Spear, R. (editors) Organizations as Systems, The Open University Press, Milton Keynes.