Remove all responsibility for the work method from the worker and give it to management. Managers are responsible for ensuring that the best person for the job does the job using the best methodology.Ĥ. Managers should select the best person to perform the task and ensure that the best training is given.ģ. A ‘best’ methodology should be developed scientifically for each task.Ģ. Taylor developed four principles of scientific management:ġ. Thus, it was only applied to low-level routine and repetitive tasks that could be managed at supervisory level. Taylor’s management theory rests on a fundamental belief that managers are not only superior intellectually to the average employee, but that they have a positive duty to supervise staff and organise their work activities. Scientific management theory states that jobs should be designed so that each worker has a well-specified, well-controlled task and specific procedures and methods for each job must be strictly followed. The only way to expand productivity was to raise the efficiency of workers. In the United States especially, skilled labour was in short supply at the beginning of the twentieth century.

His approach emphasised empirical research to increase organisational productivity by increasing the efficiency of the production process.

It has three schools of thinking: Scientific management, which looks at ‘the best way’ to do a job Bureaucratic management, which focuses on rules and procedures, hierarchy and clear division of labour and Administrative management, which emphasises the flow of information within the organisation.įrederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) is known as the father of scientific management. The Classical Management Theory is thought to have originated around the year 1900 and dominated management thinking into the 1920s, focusing on the efficiency of the work process.

Classical management theory