Criticism of scientific management

There has been a lot of criticism of Taylor’s scientific management and its assumptions concerning human behavior. Scientific management examined the job function of workers in the factories through an organizational system that incentivized work to resolve the conflict between employees and managers by aligning their interests. That is, Taylor argues for work specialization and simplification as a means to improve efficiency and productivity. But where Taylor saw a comprehensive and rational approach to work organization, his critics saw a ‘mechanistic’ approach to the functions and processes of the work. If you need a refresher on Taylorism, you can find it here. Several scholars throughout the 20^th century have called Taylorism morally indefensible. Anti-Taylorist movements such as industrial democracy oppose such de-humanizing systems for more worker autonomy, skill enhancement, and participatory management style systems.

Criticism of scientific management – Challenging the assumptions

The first and foremost assumption, critics argue, that such self-proclaimed ‘scientific’ approaches make is that an individual can be viewed as an ‘economic man’. That is, if the pay is determined fairly if the employee was shown the best way to do the work, and if employees are allowed to get a bonus for over-performing, then there is no reason for a man to not behave as a rational economic being. This, by most accounts, is an oversimplified view of motivation. The human relations approach rejected such an over-simplified notion of economic incentive’s ability to explain employee behavior.

Harry Braverman, maybe, was one of the sharpest critics of Taylor. He provided systematic criticism of scientific management. First, Taylor made several assumptions about human behavior. He argued that workers are naturally lazy, try to avoid work, and are opportunistic (systematic soldiering). But his principles of scientific management only addressed and directed management intervention toward the systematic problem of ill-designed organizations and not the human condition. Additionally, if laziness was really a concern he suggested no interventions through sociopsychological strategies or other behavioral approaches. There was little attempt to engage workers as collaborators or getting them to identify with the organization.

Braverman argued that “scientific” management lacked the true characteristics of science. He argued that unlike true science, scientific management does not attempt to discover the causes of the antagonistic social relationship between the management and the worker. It, however, takes this relationship for granted rather than looking for the causes of such relations. Other criticism of scientific management includes a very a-social view of workers. Scientific management treats workers as a mere instrument of production reducing them to a cog in a machine. Such an outlook represents a capitalist viewpoint rather than a human viewpoint. It does not investigate labor conditions but rather works on labor adaptability to the needs of capitalists. Taylor desired absolute control of the work process to dictate the precise manner in which work is to be performed. To this end, he pioneered a far greater division of labor than anyone else to establish the “work ethic”.

In another criticism of scientific management, scholars argue that the idea about ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ is also ill-defined. In reality, a ‘fair’s day’s work’ was the maximum amount of work a person could do without collapsing. Why a fair day’s work defined this way was never made clear. One can argue that a fair day’s work can be equated to the amount of labor necessary to add to the product a value equal to the worker’s pay. But this is not how it is defined. Why? There can’t be any profit under such conditions. Thus, there is nothing fair about this process making this phrase meaningless. A fair day’s wage is defined as the minimum amount that could be paid to induce the worker to give the defined level of effort.

Braverman’s take on the principles of scientific management

Braverman argued that Taylor’s principles of scientific management can be better defined as:

Dissociation of the labor process from the skills of the workers achieved through extreme division of labor. It put management in control of the work process and diminished the autonomy of workers. Additionally, it leads to deskilling that reduces the skills needed for a given product or service and/or can involve loss of skill as a result of failure to exercise them. Additionally, deskilled workers have little power as they can be easily replaced leads to worker alienation.
By separating conception and execution it created dehumanizing conditions by separating mental and manual labor. When workers are completely excluded from the process that governs their behavior, how can it be considered ‘the science of work’? Additionally, why does the work need to be studied by management and not by workers? Why not scientific workmanship rather than scientific management? Braverman argues that the only reason this is done is to establish management control and cheapen the worker’s effort or labor.
Monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labor process and its mode of execution. The rise of management has been systematically associated with rendering conscious the tendencies of capitalist production. This ensures that as the craft declined, the workers sink to a level of general and undifferentiated labor power, adaptable to a greater range of simple tasks, while the process knowledge is concentrated in the hands of management.

Overall, scientific management resulted in a massive transfer of power to management from the workers, reduced the autonomy of workers, eroded working conditions, and threatened unemployment. Braverman argued that scientific management undermined cooperation between managers and workers.

Despite all these valid criticisms of scientific management, its effect has been enormous in today’s workplace. Taylorism was directed towards a permanent monopolization of organizational knowledge through rationalization and work design. It became an important outlook of modern organizations where efficiency and effectiveness are central. There has been a tremendous increase in productivity and the replacement of craftspeople by unskilled workers. Taylor was fond of telling his workers that they are not supposed to think. There are other people paid to think. Today, the physical processes of production are carried out in one place and the design, planning, and record-keeping in another place. Workplaces have now become dehumanized in their operations such that they create and train workers who can work like interchangeable parts in a well-oiled machine. Taylorism expects workers to be reliable, efficient, and predictable. The production unit operates as a hand, watched, corrected, and controlled by a distant brain. His biggest impact was that his work laid the foundation for the commodification of time. He treated time as a factor of production that ushered an era of industrial capitalism where management (timekeepers) quantified and transformed activities into monetary value through an extreme division of labor.

Bibliography

Braverman, H. (1974). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Clarke, P.A. (1978). Temporal innovations and time structuring in large organizations, in (Eds) J.T. Fraser, N. Lawrence, and D. Park. The study of time, vol. 3. New York: Springer.

Handel, M. J. (2003). The sociology of organizations: Classic, contemporary, and critical readings. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Hoxie, R. F. (1915). Scientific management and labor. New York, London: D. Appleton and Company.

Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. New York: The Macmillan company.

Morgan, G. (2006). Images of organization (Updated ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Taylor, F. W., Taylor, F. W., & Taylor, F. W. (2003). The early sociology of management and organizations: Volume I. New York: Taylor & Francis.