Question

Research Essay Question

As technological advances and artificial intelligence play an increasingly prominent role in modern organisations, is Taylor's Scientific Management more or less relevant today and into the future than it was in the 20th century? Your answer to this question should be based on your research and should be supported by relevant examples.

Answer 1

Scientific management is a management theory whose main objective is to increase the economic efficiency mainly increase of  labour productivity.Some are of the opinion that Taylor's scientific management in its pure form are available in developing economies,however some believe that scientific management in pure form is not visible in modern organisation but elements of it , mixed with other theories are found in modern organisations .In many developing countries,manufacturing plants are set up in areas where labour is cheap and labour needs money.In doing so businesses get high productivity for labour which is cheap and Taylor's view of 'fair days pay for fair days work ', work well. Scientific management is still a part of any organisation in the 21st century.Scientific management makes a distinction between functions of management and work functions and this has been employed in many organisations at present.Scientific management replaces 'rules of thumb' with scientific facts and modern organisations apply this.In order to increase productivity ,Taylor has worked on decreasing the number of attempts in doing a task. This is used by managers today as we find in McDonalds. Mc Donalds is a world renowned fast food chain and follows a standard method of making burgers followed by the workers.This standard method along with Taylor's scientific method which lays stress on division of task and responsibility ,providing training to workers to do their job efficiently and to have strict control on them,using scientific method to do the task have contributed to more productivity and the success of the company.All over the world,customers get their order within 60 mins and this is because of the study of Taylor's Time and motion. However Taylor's approach was considered to be rigid and inflexible and so many organisations like Google do not use Taylor's approach and lays emphasis  on Hawthrone experiment.