Human Resource Management: An Evolution from Days of Assembly Lines

Dr Rahuul Singh, M.Phil & PhD, TISS, Mumbai

Scientific management propounded by F.W Taylor (1909) was a grave diversion to Karl Marx’s
seminal work in Das Capital (1867), which argues about the social change as linear. The last resort
of social change is Communism. Marx’s theory of Class in itself (in context of labor force without
solidarity) and class for itself (Labor force with solidarity) may be taken as the basis for formation
of trade union resulting in right to collective bargaining as means to resolve conflict i. But the
scientific management as given by Taylor was a jolt to collective bargaining and Taylor said in his
study that by virtue of incentive and technology the productivity can be enhanced. This resulted in
individual motivation. It set basis for individual output as precursor to incentives rather than
number of hours of work. Marx’s framework of evolution of capitalism is associated theory of
surplus and it emanated from barter system when people started producing surplus then they
brought barter (exchange) in practice which further resulted in construction of currency and thus
trade.

While Industrial revolution was in its nascent stage, there were disruption of serfdom and people
started migrating from rural areas to areas near factories to work, hence the workforce was
homogeneous during initial days of industrial revolution and till the dominance of manufacturing
industry in economies across the world. The jobs were mostly of assembly line and no high skilled
labor was the requirement. Though initially, the labor conflict was more in number because of
homogeneity of work force which caused solidarity and strength of trade unionism.

The role of F W Taylor scientific managementii is conspicuous as Ford had a high turnover rate as
380 percent in 1913.Ford hired 52000 employees in 1913 out of which they could retain only
14000. but just after a year line workers had their salaries as doubled from 2.25 $ a day to 5 $ a
day . They also reduced work hours from 9 hours a day to 8 hours a day. This intervention was
criticized by several industry experts as this move from Ford came at the time when most of the
automobile firms were trying to cut wages to lesser acceptable standards. Ford had argument on
this that higher wages may keep workers up as they may manage huge pressure in assembly linesiii

The further advancement in technology and investment of emerging economies on workforce led
to rise in skill of workforce, the technology traversed from manufacturing industry to service

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industry because the workforce skill level rose and the division of labor was seen as in practice.
Thus the dissolution of solidarity was noticeable hence the fall of trade unions across the globe.
The type of bargaining underwent a paradigm shift from collective bargaining to individual
bargaining and therefore it’s not the position that was important rather its skill and expertise that
became key factor. To understand a global context, let us see the case of America where trade
union membership has witnessed a decline from 20 million in 1979 to 14.5 million in 2013.The
significant point here is the decline in manufacturing employment from 20 million in 1979 to 13
million in 2013.This sets strong premise for argument that manufacturing industry is on decline.

Now with globalization and division of labor (that is specialization of Jobs) work force became
diversified and states across the world and organization started undergoing transformations
through managing their human resources effectively. Now the concern was from creating a culture
where employees like to join and spend long periods in organizations. Though challenges still
remain that is employee turnover because of more employers in the market

While managing human resources, today, few challenges ahead are the paucity of drinking water
and natural disaster in terms of water logging in various cities like Mumbai, Bhopal, Baroda and
many more cities in India. In Chennai due to scarcity of drinking water in this summer many IT
companies advised its employees to work from home. So managing human resources now are not
homogeneous rather its heterogeneous in terms of workforce and also in terms of factors affecting
human resource policies for firms. The journey started from Welfare Officer-1890-1913, Labor
Manager-1914-1939, Personnel Management:1945-1979, Human Resource Management:1980-
1990 and HR Business Partner or Human Capital till nowiv. The ground is now set for culture and
work freedom as top priority for human resources.

i
https://www.jstor.org/stable/657335?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
ii

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304222968_Frederick_Winslow_Taylor_Reflections_on_the_Relevance
_of_The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management_100_Years_Later
iii
https://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2018/06/curb-employee-turnover-henry-ford
iv
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/evolution-human-resource-management-gokila-lakshmi