From Past to Present: Investigating the Legacy of Taylorism and its Current Forms
Fredrick Taylor was an influential management guru of the early 20th century. His “Principles of Scientific Management” was the first management blockbuster. Taylor’s appeal lay in his promise that management could be made into a science, and workers into cogs in an industrial machine. The best way to boost productivity, he argued, was to embrace three rules: break complex jobs down into simple ones; measure everything that workers do; and link pay to performance, giving bonuses to high-achievers and sacking sluggards (The Economist, 2015) Taylor believed that the components of every job could and should be scientifically studied, measured, timed, and standardized to maximize efficiency and profit. Central to Taylor’s system is the notion that there is one best way to do every task and that it is the manager’s responsibility to ensure that no worker deviates from it (Hartzband and Groopman , 2016) Taylorism is built on four key principles: Select methods based on sc...