Part 3 -- We sometimes forget that the world has not always been organized under the structure of technology and manufacturing. Particularly at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, modern capitalism changed the way labor and management interacted. A number of people began to think about labor, about efficiency, and about the manner in which the two interacted so that manufacturing needs for modern developing societies could improve. One of these philosophical tenets, Taylorism, is also known as scientific management. This is a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized the process of workflow with the objective to improve both labor and economic productivity. In general, scientific management requires a high level of managerial control over employees and their work practices. Of course this means a higher ratio of managers to workers than previous methods. The importance of this approach was that management should conform to scientific (e.g. observable) notions so that consequences could be observed, predicted, and improved. For instance, prior to Taylor, there...
Taylor's solution was to break down the task into its smallest elements and relate to the time spent working on that task -- a time-motion study (Locke, 1982).
REFERENCES
Hax, a., Majluf, N. (1981). Organizational Design: A Survey and an Approach. Operations Research. 29 (3): 417-47.
Lannon, R. (2008, January). 12 Rules of Delegation. The ProjectManagementHut. Retrieved from: http://www.pmhut.com/12-rules-of-delegation
Locke, E. (1982). The Ideas of Frederick W. Taylor: An Evaluation. The Academy of Management Review. 7 (1): 14-24. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org / discover/10.2307/257244?uid=3739960&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101862561573
Sullivan, J. (2010). Four Basic Elements of Organizational Structure and Key Elements of Organizational Structure. Chron Small Business Demand Media. Retrieved from: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/four-basic-elements-organizational-structure-288.html
Forms of Decentralization
