Scientific Management: Fast Becoming Dated
In todays modern era of business, with its exploding technological advances, easier access to materials and a much more skilled and specialized labor force the ideology behind using scientific management is fast becoming as dated a method as the industries that still heavily rely upon its principles to function efficiently. Considering that the fundamental principles of scientific management consist of breaking down manufacturing into its constituent parts allowing unskilled, simple minded, untrained workers to do any one of the multiple tasks that produce a product. This method functions in a manner that maximizes laborers potential and thus company profits by using an assembly line type system. Under this system only management however is considered capable enough of making the big decisions, planning things out and managing the labor force. However with todays manufacturing technology and high tech products being produced, a whole new type of labor force is needed, one that is capable, educated and can make decisions for themselves along the lines of the overall plan or business objective. Turning a companies workforce into automated machines that will do whatever simple and menial task is handed to them along the assembly line as Henry Ford did to manufacture his cars is effective only in similar industries, such as fast food, shoes and clothing manufacturing and other like enterprises. It is effective solely in these sorts of environments principally because things never change and always remain simple and standardized. For example in his book “The McDonaldization of Society” George Ritzer quotes a piece from the McDonalds staff manual that clearly illustrates this way of thinking “It told operators… precise cooking times for all products and temperature settings for all equipment…It specified that French fries be cut at nine-thirty-seconds thick…Grill men…were instructed to put hamburgers down on the grill moving left to right, creating six rows of six