Necessity of scientific management
During F W Taylor’s days, workers used to choose their own work and trained themselves as best as they could. In those days, all the work and other responsibilities were thrown on the workmen. The management was unorganized as workers themselves used to take administrative decisions, which generally used to result in high expenditure costs to manufacturing output. F W Taylor was a mechanical engineer but sought to organize the management. So he began trying to discover a way for workers to increase their efficiency and productivity with low cost.

Principles of scientific management
According to Taylor, scientific management involves a complete mental revolution on part of workers towards their duties, their work, their fellow employees and their problems and towards their managers. The main objective of the management is to secure maximum prosperity for the employer as well as for each employee of the organization. He stresses more on the productive efficiency of each worker through scientific management which would maximize the earnings of workers and employers.

Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful examination of work. Taylor thought that by analyzing or assessing the work, “One Best Way” to do it could be found. He said that an organization should scientifically select, train, teach and develop workers. There must be equal division of work and responsibility between management and workers. Taylor focused more on cooperation, not individualism.

Techniques of scientific management
Taylor proposed the concept of functional foremanship under which a worker is supervised and guided by eight functional foremen or specialized supervisors. He didn’t believe in single foremanship where a worker receives orders from only one superior. Taylor’s time and motion studies were very popular, where he focuses on determining standard work methods or best way to work and standard time for completion of work. Scientific management involves setting up a large daily task by the management, with reward for achieving targets and penalty if the targets are not met.

Some of the core values of Taylor’s scientific management include improved quality, lower costs, higher wages, higher output, labor-management cooperation, clear tasks and goals, feedback, mutual help and support, and careful selection, training and development of workers. Since scientific management rests on clearly fixed laws, rules and principles, it is applied in all types of organizations universally. It helps simplify the work process, assesses the work and gives status of the work, and also helps improve quality and quantity of the production.

Applications of scientific management
The theory of scientific management had a significant impact on administrative thought and practice in both industrial as well as governmental organizations throughout the world. It spread from USA to other countries including former USSR. These principles can be applied in almost any activity including the management of our homes, our businesses, our universities and even our governmental departments. These principles form the foundation for more advanced areas or more extensively used in some widely admired companies.

One of the biggest users of scientific management today is McDonalds, an American fast food restaurant that has spread its business successfully throughout the world. Henry Laurence Gantt, an American mechanical engineer and management consultant applied Taylor’s scientific management principles in his ‘Gantt Chart’ which helps to measure worker efficiency and productivity. Henry Ford, the American founder of the Ford Motor Company applied the principles of scientific management to his car factories to increase productivity as well as profits.

During the 1940s and 1950s, scientific management evolved into Operations Research and management cybernetics. Today’s Six Sigma and lean manufacturing can be considered as new forms of scientific management, though their principles vary. Shigeo Shingo, one of the originators of the Toyota Production System, believed that Japanese management culture in general should be seen as a kind of scientific management. Even the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) ratings are given to organizations based on scientific management principles.

In France, Taylor’s scientific management was introduced throughout government owned plants during the first world war. In Switzerland, an International Management Institute was established to spread scientific management techniques. In the USSR, Stalin started Stakhonavite movement employing hard work or Taylorist efficiencies to over-achieve on the job.

Harvard, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management based its first-year curriculum on Taylor’s scientific management.

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Let us understand this with an example, ’1 yard = 91.43999 cms’. Accuracy refers to the ‘correctness’ of a measurement i.e 91 cms is a more accurate representation of 1 yard while precision could be identified as the ability to resolve smaller differences i.e. 91.44 cms is a more precise representation of 1 yard.

A measurement can be precise without being accurate, and it can be accurate without being precise. 91 cms is an accurate representation of one yard, but it is not precise. 91.3333 is as precise representation of 1 yard, but it is not accurate. Airline schedules, train timings are usually precise to the minute, but they are not very accurate. Measuring people’s height in whole feet might be accurate, but it would not be precise.

For example, suppose one employee estimates that the a particular project will be completed in 2 and 6 days but he actually completes the project in 5 days. Thus, the estimation is accurate, but not very precise. However, second employee estimates that the project will be completed in 6 days but takes 8 days to complete it. This estimation by second employee is very precise, but completely inaccurate.

Shortest possible execution is achieved by creating the most accurate estimates possible, not the most precise. If you want to achieve fastest execution, avoid false precision.

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Understand The Motivational Theories In Management

1. Avon
David H. McConnell started Avon in 1886 without really meaning to. McConnell sold books door-to-door, but to lure in female customers he offered little gifts of perfume. Before long, the perfume McConnell was giving away had become more popular than the books he was selling, so he shifted focus and founded the California Perfume Company, which later became Avon.

2. Nokia
The telecom giant got its start in Finland in 1865, when Fredrik Idestam opened a pulp mill and started making paper on the banks of Tammerkoski. The company later bounced around a number of industries before getting serious about phones in the 1960s.

3. 3M
When the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company’s founders opened their business in Two Harbors, Minnesota, in 1902, they weren’t selling Post-It Notes. The partners originally planned to sell the mineral corundum, an important ingredient in building grinding wheels, directly to manufacturers.

4. Berkshire Hathaway
The sprawling holding company helmed by Warren Buffett was originally a textile manufacturer that took off in 1839. Buffett took control in 1962, though, and by 1967 he started to move outside of textiles into insurance and other sectors.

5. Wrigley
Like Avon, the chewing gum company got its start with a popular freebie. William Wrigley, Jr. founded the company in 1891 with the goal of selling soap and baking powder. He offered chewing gum as an enticement to his customers, and eventually the customers didn’t care about the baking powder; they only wanted the gum.

6. Tiffany & Co.
The jewelry and silverware hot bed was originally a stationer called Tiffany, Young, and Ellis when it started in 1837. In 1853 Tiffany switched its core business and began focusing on jewelry.

7. Coleco
The defunct electronics corporation actually began as a leather goods company in Connecticut in 1932. In the early days it was known as the Connecticut Leather Company, which was later shortened to “Coleco.”

8. Hasbro
The company behind Transformers and G.I. Joes began in 1923 as Hassenfeld Brothers. The titular brothers didn’t make toys, though; they sold textile remnants. Their business gradually shifted into school supplies before making the leap to toys after the 1952 introduction of Mr. Potato Head.

9. Raytheon
The defense contractor started up in 1922 as the American Appliance Company, which worked on refrigeration technology. Eventually the company branched out into other areas of electronics and became Raytheon in 1925.

10. Colgate
The hygienic products company got its start in 1806, but it didn’t make its first toothpaste until 1873. Founder William Colgate initially manufactured soap, candles, and starch.

11. Xerox
When Xerox got off the ground in 1906, it was as a maker of photographic paper and photography equipment called the Haloid Company. The company didn’t introduce what we would think of as a copier until the Xerox 914 made its debut in 1959.

12. John Deere
The man behind the giant fleet of green tractors got his start as a blacksmith in Grand Detour, Illinois. After struggling to make plows that could cut through the area’s tough clay, Deere hit on the idea of building plows out of cast steel, and his blacksmith gig gave way to a booming farm-supply business.

13. Reading Entertainment
Remember the Reading Railroad from the last time you played Monopoly? The company still (sort of) exists! The Reading Company got out of the railroad business in 1976 but was reborn as Reading Entertainment, which operates movie theaters mainly in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.

14. Abercrombie & Fitch
When David Abercrombie founded the clothing store in 1892 in New York City, he wasn’t dreaming of clothing high school and college students everywhere. The store was originally a sporting goods shop and outfitter; Abercrombie even outfitted Charles Lindbergh for his famous flight across the Atlantic. The version Abercrombie & Fitch you see in your local mall started to come about after Limited Brands bought the company in 1988.

Courtesty: CNN

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Types of Motivational theories

Content theories
It is also called ‘need theory’. The main focus of these content theories of motivation is on internal factors that energize and direct human behavior. Some of the major content theories are:

• Maslow’s need hierarchy theory: Maslow identified five levels of basic needs in every individual which are categorized as physiological needs, safety and security needs, social needs, needs for self esteem, and needs for self-actualization.
• Alderfer’s ERG theory: Alderfer compressed the Maslows five needs to three needs. They are Existence (physiological and security needs), Relatedness (social and esteem needs), and Growth (actualization needs).
• Herzeberg’s motivational theory (two-factor theory): Herzeberg identified two kinds of factors in the workplace, which result in job satisfaction and termed them as motivating factors or hygiene factors.
• McClelland’s motivational theory: Also called ‘acquired-needs theory’ because an individual’s specific needs are acquired over time and are shaped by one’s life experiences. These needs include need for achievement, need for power, and need for affiliation.
• McGregor’s Theory X and theory Y: McGregor’s work was based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He grouped Maslow’s hierarchy into ‘lower order’ (Theory X) needs and ‘higher order’ (Theory Y) needs.

Among different types of content theories, the famous and widely accepted theory is Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.

Process theories
Process theories give an opportunity to understand thought processes that influence behavior of an individual. Some of the major process theories of motivation include:

• Adams’ equity theory: According to this theory to motivate an individual/employee, there must be proper balance between individual’s inputs (efforts) and outputs (rewards).
• Vroom’s expectancy theory: This theory is based on three concepts Valance, Instrumentality, and expectancy. Vroom says the product of these concepts is the motivation.
• Porter & Lawer expectency theory: Building on Vroom’s expectancy theory, Porter and Lawler proposed a model of intrinsic motivation (satisfaction from the activity) and extrinsic work motivation (satisfaction from the consequences which the activity leads).
• Goal-setting theory: This theory suggests that the individuals are motivated to reach set goals if the goals are clear, attainable, consistent, feedback oriented and with moderate complexity.
• Reinforcement theory: This theory is concerned with controlling behavior by manipulating its consequences through positive and negative reinforcements.
• Ouchi’s Theory Z: It is often referred to as the ‘Japanese’ management style, which places a large amount of freedom and trust with workers, and assumes that workers have a strong loyalty and interest in team working and the organization.

These motivational theories are of great deal in any organization. They help in knowing the motivational levels of the employees and factors that motivate them. Thereby the management acts accordingly in order to engage the employees in the organization.

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Suggested Reading:
Lessons in Management: From The Ancient Roman Centurions
Leadership Attitude: Stockdale Paradox – Confront the facts however unpleasant but never lose hope!
Management is a Practice, Not a Degree
How Soft Skills Are Recognized And How It Is Related To Performance
Role Of Soft Skills In A Person’s Career
Accuracy and Precision