Scientific Management, Social Psychological School, and Socio-technical: A comparison of work-organization perspective By Juan Abreu Even though human-organizations

exist since the very beginning of humans social life in formal and informal conditions, weather for work or another kind, it was not until the first quart of the twentieth century that the management role began to stop being an axiomatic and informal concept, and started being formalized in definition, roles, and functions. The firsts to formalize these concepts were Henry Fayol, FrederickW. Taylor and Max Weber. They were not aware about each other work, but they started the efforts to provide a theoretical base for management and work organizations. Fayol and Taylor pioneered with their contribution to management in work organizations; this second author was the creator of the Scientific Management approach. His work caused great development in management theory, and constituted a base point for further theories such as the Human Relations approach. The Scientific Management approach was based on Frederick Winslow Taylor work, and it was predominantly a work oriented to formalize management under what he thought was a set of scientific principles. So he says in his work The Principles of Scientific Management (1911, p. 7), where he defines it as one of his purposes to write down his ideas: This paper has been written: [] Third. To prove that the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation. Taylors work is part of the classical view of management, and like the rest of authors in this group he was a practitioner, and his approach was focused on providing a structure for work organization. He was deeply convinced that his work was to bring better prosperity levels for both, employers and employees (1911, p. 9), and that, in order to do this, he needed to fight against that times pervasive way of thinking about the relationship between workers and management, where their goals were seen as antagonistic. He also had to face the sophisms among the workers (pp. 15-16), and this was the area where his major contribution took place, developing a set of study method techniques. To succeed in defeating the fallacies that he had identified, he analyzed the methods, to then substitute them whit his methods, where physic principles and some ergonomic aspects were considered. This means that in general practice the method was going to be determined by the management. He believed that every task had one best way to be performed, and that it was part of the responsibilities of the management department it to avoid losses in efficiency. These techniques were a very innovative approach for his time; and, when carried on properly1, they conducted to higher efficiency levels. They constituted Taylors response for the severe loss in efficiency. This part of his work was the most important source of inspiration for other practitioners such a Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who developed some important tools for method analysis and who also believed in his one best way philosophy. Other author named Henry Gantt was impressed with his work, but was reluctant to accept the one best way idea. He was open to accept variations in the method to fit the needs of the workforce. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Interested in the result of the experiments Taylor had published over the years, a group of academic researchers conducted another series of experiments to gain deeper insight about Taylors work, being the best known of them the Hawthorne Studies. These series of experiments along with others were very interesting, because besides the methodological intricacies they exposed, they showed that the sole interest from management over the workers conducted to an increase in the productivity of the employees no matter what changes they made in the work environment. That challenged the ideas from Taylor about the work environment and tools. These studies were the work of Elton Mayo, and together with the work about motivation by Schein; the work about needs from Abraham Maslow; and the theories X and Y, and Motivation-Hygiene by McGregor and Herzberg respectively; constituted the body of Social Psychological School view of management. They were also known as Human Relation Theorist. Their approach was most focused in the human factor in the work organization, and how the social processes impacted the dynamics of the production system in terms of efficiency and productivity2. These works turned attention back to the workforce, and they brought some changes that challenged the classical view of management, especially Taylors Scientific Management. A few examples of these changes are: The way the method was developed changed. Now groups of work where the ones who selected the model worker to determine the standards, he/she was rather average, contrary to Taylor who would select an elite worker with exceptional aptitudes. The workers were provided with freedom to make suggestion about the methods, and about other things in the company. This empowerment was very well received and generated further gains in productivity. As a result of Taylor approach to workforce method, the employees and the management were very apart, and this view of management brought them back together. This was a major impact in the work environment and the way information flowed trough the hierarchy levels in the company. In Taylors Scientific Management the information was flowing from up, management, to down, workforce, while in the Human Relations approach information was flowing in two directions. Taylors work was very shop floor oriented, but it had consequences in all levels in the organization, whilst the Social Psychological School view had a wider impact. Nevertheless, this approach was far from perfect and so was demonstrated by The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. Despite of the name of the institution, they believed the human factor was not the only decisive factor for management, and they have made great contributions to the systems theory3. They were not anyway against that view of management and, in fact, they share some of the ideas from Herzberg about motivation. They proved that technology, and its implementation in production systems had a great impact in the way social processes occur and the technological aspects should be considered, with the social aspects and the resulting aspects resulting from the interaction of these two parts. This is known as the socio-technical system !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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approach, and it is a concept Trist and Bamforth introduced (Cole and Kelly, 2011, pp. 101-102), and it is considered to be a sub-division of the systems approach. While this socio-technical approach is a relative modern view of managerial systems, the other two are antagonistic approaches to management, focusing on different aspects and elements. They were anyway incomplete, and have substituted by new more holistic approaches, but they represent the starting point for modern management systems. Reference List Cole, G. A. and Kelly, P (2011) Management: Theory and Practice. United Kingdom: South-Western Cengage Learning, Inc. Taylor, F. W. (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management. Massachusetts: Plimpton Press.