Frederick Winslow Taylor and His Scientific Management

Frederick Winslow Taylor, "Father" of the Scientific management, was born in 20th
March 1856 in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a lawyers family. He was
one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly
conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. Taylor created the bases to
making management a lot more efficient while improving economic efficiency, especially
labor productivity. Said bases consists of three main principles: selection of personnel,
management cooperation and functional supervising.

The first principle describes the selection of labor force via scientific methods, training
and developing them. Personnel selection is one of the essential functions of todays
human resources management because the selection process gives employers the
opportunity to diversify their workforce if done externally. Also, a good training increases
the motivation of the personnel, which, consequently, brings greater productivity.
Another benefit is that employees become better at making decisions and solving
problems. Its for this reason that the selection of personnel and training constitutes one
of the best investments in Human Resources and one of the main sources of well-being
for staff and organization.

Heartily collaboration between the management and employees comes to be the second
principle. This principles main goal is to ensure that all work is done in accordance with
the principles of the science that has been developed. Monitoring worker performance,
and providing instructions and supervision helps to guarantee that employees are being
as efficient as possible. Unfortunately this principle is not an available situation as desired
by Taylor in todays conditions. Studies are carried out in order to prevent the clashes
from occurring between the manager-employee rather than a heartily collaboration.

The third principle which refers to the state of equal responsibility between the
management and employee in the labor division is located as the division of planning and
implementation nowadays. The management take over all work for which they are
better fitted than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the
greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men. Now, thanks to this
division of work nearly equally between managers and workers, the manager does
not intervene the employee in the implementation of work, they only deal with
planning and the employee works to complete the mission given.

As can be understood from these basic principles, Taylor gave the priority to the
recruited personnel after developing the management as a science since
according to Taylor the performance of the employee is crucial for the
productivity of the work place. Generally it is assumed that the interests of the
employee and employer are the opposite. On the contrary, scientific management
puts the claim that the interests of both parties are the same. If the employer
cannot provide the employees welfare, she/he cannot ensure his/her own welfare
on the long term. So to speak, the employer should make an effort to pay high
salary as much as they can.