Taylorism

Basic Principles of Taylorism

The principles of scientific management (hereafter SM) according to Taylor (1998) can be summed up as follows:

• A radical division of work between manager and worker, where the manager will have the full responsibility for developing and designing the procedures and the organization of the work processes, leaving the workers the task of enacting or implementing the work

The managers’ tasks will thus be to do the following:

• Assess scientifically the best way to perform the tasks and outline them in a specific scheme of actions that can be distributed to a series of actors performing simple actions instead of complex ones
• Select the best persons to perform the tasks according to scientific methods
• Guide and train the workers to perform the tasks efficiently
• Monitor the performance of the workers to ensure that the procedures are followed and the expected result achieved
• Treat the workers as individuals—create systems of incentives and learning addressing the individual workers rather than the collectivity of workers

Taylor’s principles of management and organizing gained a lot of influence within industrial work from the early and mid twentieth century, associated with standardized mass production of, for instance, cars (so-called Fordism, even though many sources claim that Ford did not know about Taylor when he designed his first mass production factory). It has also contributed to the enlargement of bureaucracies, as systems of standardized and impersonalized routine processing and implementation of decisions.

What has been termed by Ritzer as McDonaldization of service work is basically Tayloristic in its [Page 763]management and organization. The concept of ‘lean operations’ that is currently mushrooming through both private and public sectors internationally is another example. By using expert observation and analyses as a basis for redesigning all kinds of tasks, from surgical operations at hospitals and care work within nursing homes to processing of insurance cases, these ‘lean’ strategies of change are typically Tayloristic. Specific management technologies like ‘balanced scorecard’, measuring specific performances and so on are often claimed to be practised in a Tayloristic

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