Does the Closure of Volvo’s Uddevalla Manufacturing Plant, Together with the Takeover of the Company by Ford, Indicate That Taylorism Is Indeed the ‘One Best Way’?
Does the closure of Volvo’s Uddevalla manufacturing plant, together with the takeover of the company by Ford, indicate that Taylorism is indeed the ‘one best way’?
‘Taylorism’ or ‘Scientific Management’ has been a prevalent idea in business theory since Frederick Winslow Taylor produced his “Principles of Scientific Management’ in 1911. The book was written in response to then President Theodore Roosevelt’s challenge to the American people to introduce new methods to create greater efficiency in the American workplace. Taylor’s idea was to ‘secure maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with maximum prosperity for the employee’1. Meaning companies could not gain high levels of production without an initiative for the work force, however as time has passed this initiative process although implemented has been used as a tool just to get the workers to be more efficient whilst still treating them as single-purpose machine tools. Volvo’s, Uddevalla, manufacturing plant, however, set about to re-humanise the production process giving the workers a sense of value and not just a tool in production. It also tried to give management responsibilities to the production line so processes could be handled more efficiently by giving more power to the workers themselves. Despite this humanitarian approach the Uddevalla factory was closed and bought by the Taylorism giant of Ford tending to suggest that Taylorism is the one best way to run a production company.
A key facet in management is the ability to continually assess and adapt to any situation and in modern management, managers have to use systematic processes and be human-centred in their approaches to keep both employees and efficiency at a high standard. Taylor set four general priniciples that he believed were key to management. First, Taylor thought that workers were the key and believed that workers shouldn’t just be selected based on how cheap their work could be bought for, instead he believed they should by
‘Taylorism’ or ‘Scientific Management’ has been a prevalent idea in business theory since Frederick Winslow Taylor produced his “Principles of Scientific Management’ in 1911. The book was written in response to then President Theodore Roosevelt’s challenge to the American people to introduce new methods to create greater efficiency in the American workplace. Taylor’s idea was to ‘secure maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with maximum prosperity for the employee’1. Meaning companies could not gain high levels of production without an initiative for the work force, however as time has passed this initiative process although implemented has been used as a tool just to get the workers to be more efficient whilst still treating them as single-purpose machine tools. Volvo’s, Uddevalla, manufacturing plant, however, set about to re-humanise the production process giving the workers a sense of value and not just a tool in production. It also tried to give management responsibilities to the production line so processes could be handled more efficiently by giving more power to the workers themselves. Despite this humanitarian approach the Uddevalla factory was closed and bought by the Taylorism giant of Ford tending to suggest that Taylorism is the one best way to run a production company.
A key facet in management is the ability to continually assess and adapt to any situation and in modern management, managers have to use systematic processes and be human-centred in their approaches to keep both employees and efficiency at a high standard. Taylor set four general priniciples that he believed were key to management. First, Taylor thought that workers were the key and believed that workers shouldn’t just be selected based on how cheap their work could be bought for, instead he believed they should by