Scientific Management

What Scientific Management is

Scientific Management (الإدارة العلمية) is a school of work organisation attributed to Frederick Winslow Taylor. Its idea, as secondary sources summarise it, is that work should be studied by observation and measurement instead of being left to each worker’s habits or to the supervisor’s judgement. A method of performance and a standard of output are then set, and the worker is trained in both. The literature associates the school with Taylor’s book “The Principles of Scientific Management”, published in 1911 according to secondary summaries.

It is a historical school of thought on describing and organising work. We do not recommend running an establishment on its lines, we make no claim that it raises productivity, and we do not describe working conditions in Saudi Arabia.

Which sources did we check?

We checked the bibliographic data of the following works in Crossref. That data establishes that the works exist, not what they contain:

• Taylor. The article “A Piece Rate System, Being a Step Toward Partial Solution of the Labor Problem” in Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, volume 16, 1895, pages 856 to 883, and the article “Shop Management” in the same journal, volume 24, 1903, pages 1337 to 1456.
• Wrege and Perroni. The article “Taylor’s Pig Tale: A Historical Analysis of Frederick W. Taylor’s Pig Iron Experiments” in Academy of Management Journal, volume 17, issue 1, 1974, pages 6 to 27.
• Locke. The article “The Ideas of Frederick W. Taylor: An Evaluation” in The Academy of Management Review, volume 7, issue 1, 1982.
• Nadworny. The article “Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth: Competition in Scientific Management” in Business History Review, volume 31, issue 1, 1957, pages 23 to 34.
• Hoxie. The article “Scientific Management and Labor Welfare” in Journal of Political Economy, volume 24, issue 9, 1916, pages 833 to 854, and the article “Why Organized Labor Opposes Scientific Management” in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, volume 31, issue 1, 1916.

For Taylor’s book, what we found in Crossref were records of later editions and reprints, including a 2024 edition, with no record of the 1911 edition itself. The year 1911 therefore rests on the summaries alone. We consulted the bibliographic data of these works and not their texts, so we quote no wording and no finding from any of them. Our account of the principles and practices is a summary, in our own words, of what secondary summaries say, and those summaries differ on some details. The short labels for the principles are our choice. We dropped hyphens from the English titles.

What four principles are attributed to scientific management?

Secondary summaries list four principles, and their wording varies from one source to another:

• Scientific method instead of habit: Each element of the work is studied by observation and measurement to derive a method for it, instead of each worker doing the task the way they are used to.
• Systematic selection and training: The worker is selected and trained in an organised way, instead of choosing a method of working and learning it alone.
• Cooperation: Management cooperates with the workers so that the work is carried out according to the derived method.
• Division of work and responsibility: Management takes on the work it is better placed to do than the workers, and some summaries describe this as an equal division of responsibility.

The word “scientific” is the name of the school itself. Using it carries no judgement on our part that Taylor’s methods meet the standards of scientific research today.

How does the school show up in the organisation of work?

The summaries mention practices associated with the school: time and motion study of a particular task, standardising the method of performance and its tools, separating planning from execution so that management plans and the worker carries out the plan, and linking pay to output. The title of Taylor’s article recorded for 1895 indicates that it concerned a piece rate pay system. A definition of pay calculated per piece is set out under Piece Rate Pay. Whether each of these practices can be traced to Taylor’s own text remains unverified.

These practices translate into questions that can be put to any task. Does it have a written method, and who wrote it? Has the person doing it been trained in that method? Who measures its time, and how is the worker’s output counted? These questions may help in describing work even for someone who does not adopt the school. That is our view and not a statement in any source.

How does it differ from related concepts?

• Job specialization: An arrangement that narrows each employee’s work to a limited set of repeated tasks is treated in detail in Job Specialization. Scientific management also asks who sets the method of performance and who trains people in it, so it is not confined to how narrowly a task is drawn.
• Hawthorne effect: A change in people’s behaviour because they know they are being measured. The term is attributed to experiments conducted at the Hawthorne factory, and the concept has a full definition at Hawthorne Effect. Scientific management rests on measurement, and our estimate is that time study figures are taken while the worker is being observed. It is therefore worth examining those figures with the question of how observation affects them in mind.
• Performance standards: Written descriptions of the acceptable level in a particular job form the subject of Performance Standards, and there the standard derives from job analysis and competencies. Scientific management, according to the summaries, proposes deriving the level of output from measuring the work itself.
• Assumptions about employees: Two opposed assumptions about the nature of employees, formulated by Douglas McGregor, are set out in Theory X and Theory Y. Those are assumptions a manager holds, whereas the school is an approach to organising work, so comparing them does not compare two things of the same kind. The summaries we saw contain no link between the two, so we limit ourselves to the comparison.

A hypothetical example: a time study of a packing task

Suppose a hypothetical packing workshop timed one task over 10 consecutive cycles, in seconds: 52, 48, 55, 50, 47, 53, 49, 51, 54 and 41. The total is 500, so the mean is 500 ÷ 10 = 50 seconds. The shortest cycle is 41 seconds and the longest 55, a range of 14 seconds.

The tools for the task were then arranged differently, and 8 cycles were timed with the new arrangement: 40, 42, 38, 41, 39, 43, 40 and 37. The total is 320, so the mean is 320 ÷ 8 = 40 seconds. The new method takes 10 seconds off 50, which is 20% of the cycle time.

If the worker spent 6 hours a day on the task, that is 21,600 seconds, the output would be 21,600 ÷ 50 = 432 pieces with the first method and 21,600 ÷ 40 = 540 pieces with the second. The difference is 108 pieces, an increase of 25% in the count against a reduction of 20% in the time. If 40 seconds were adopted as the standard and one worker averaged 45 seconds, that worker would complete 21,600 ÷ 45 = 480 pieces, about 89% of the standard (480 ÷ 540).

The workshop and the figures are hypothetical, set out to illustrate the arithmetic, and they do not represent any establishment or study. The example shows how a shorter cycle time turns into a larger number of pieces. Whether the new method holds its quality, and whether a worker keeps its pace over a full day, remain open questions. Eight short cycles timed by direct observation are not enough to judge either, and performance may change because the worker is being observed. Quality, fatigue and how well the method suits each worker stay outside the calculation.

What can be said about the results of scientific management and the criticism of it?

• Titles that point to debate: The titles of the recorded works indicate that Taylor’s pig iron experiments were examined again from a historical angle (Wrege and Perroni), that his ideas were evaluated (Locke), that organised labour debated the school (Hoxie), and that it competed with the work of Frank Gilbreth, as the title of Nadworny’s article shows.
• Figures we do not rely on: The figures from Taylor’s experiments that circulate in textbooks, and any productivity percentage, wage amount or effect attributed to a source, are not relied on, because we have not verified them in a text.
• A need for measurable work: Time study suits repetitive tasks that can be observed, whereas work that rests on judgement and discretion has a cycle that is hard to measure. This is our view and not a finding in a source.
• Saudi context not examined: In the sources we reviewed, we found no Saudi study on scientific management in Saudi establishments that we can rely on.

How is scientific management misunderstood?

• Reducing it to speed: The four principles in the summaries cover selection, training, cooperation and the division of responsibility, not shortening time alone.
• Treating it as settled fact: The recorded history includes a historical reexamination, an evaluation and criticism from organised labour, so it is a school to be understood in its context and not something taken for granted.
• Assuming every kind of work is measured by the clock: The time study in the example concerns a repetitive task with a defined cycle, and other work needs other indicators.
• Crediting Taylor with every idea in work organisation: The recorded title about Gilbreth shows that others worked in the same field.

What is the role of HR?

HR can put the school’s questions to managers in a conversation about a particular task: does it have a written method, who trains people in it, and how is its output measured? Decisions on organising and measuring work stay with those who hold them in management. HR contributes what it knows about training and job descriptions, and what shows up in employees’ comments on how they do their work.

What do the sources permit us to conclude?

What we rely on goes no further than this: scientific management is a school that can be described. Whether it raises productivity, lowers cost or improves employee satisfaction, and whether a measured method is better than others, are questions we leave open. The reason is that we did not read Taylor’s book or the works recorded in Crossref, and we found no Saudi study we can rely on, so we attribute no effect and no figure to any source.

We think the school is better treated as a tool for describing how work is studied, standardised and taught, with any method judged by what shows up in the establishment. Did the task become clear, did the worker know what was expected, and did the measurement take account of the nature of the work? What is decided after that depends on the task, the team and the nature of the work.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.