Scientific Management: Organisational Design and its Implications

This report delves into the principles of scientific management and its profound influence on organisational design. It explores how the theory, pioneered by Frederick Taylor, aimed to enhance efficiency and productivity. The report highlights the impact of this theory on modern organizations, examining its strengths and weaknesses through case studies. For instance, it discusses how Henry Ford applied scientific management to revolutionize car manufacturing, significantly reducing assembly time. Conversely, it points out the theory's shortcomings, particularly its neglect of employee well-being and its potential to cause high employee turnover. The report also analyzes the case of Foxconn, illustrating how the application of scientific management can boost production but at the expense of employee welfare. Overall, the report aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of scientific management and its implications for organisational design, including both its benefits and drawbacks, and its impact on employee relations.

Organisational Design

TABLE OF CONTENTS
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

The scientific theory of management was proposed by the Frederick Taylor which was
focused on the analyzing and synthesizing the workflow with the objective of enhancing the
economic efficiency and mainly the productivity of the labor. This theory had a huge impact over
the modern organizations working design, highlighting its strength and weaknesses. For
example, Henry Ford, was the first to use this theory of Taylor in his production industry (Taska,
2017). He owns a car manufacturing organization where the various aspects of assembling takes
plan and before implementing the Taylor scientific management method, it generally took near to
12 hrs for assembling just one care but after the application of this theory, it took only 93
minutes. This system helped in increasing or even doubling the production outcome, optimum
utilization of the resources leading increase in profits and rewarding of employees. But on the
other side, it completely ignored the human resource factor, social well-being of employees
which caused higher employee turnover which is its biggest weakness.
Another example is of Foxconn which is Chinese company, working in assembling the
different components of computer and were monitored by the managers for ensuring assembly
line is in order (Parker, 2016). This management principle helps the organization in meeting up
with the high demand, leading to greater revenue. But it totally neglected the health and well-
being of employees. Managers made employees work in an unbearable condition , making
workers heeling depressed and even had the tendency of suicide. Even through, wages were
increasing but the suicide was increasing.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Parker, L. D., 2016. From scientific to activity based office management: a mirage of
change. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change.
Taska, L., 2017. Scientific management. The Oxford Handbook of Management. pp.19-38.