THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENTTHE
writer has found that there are three questions uppermost in the minds of men when they become interested in scientific management.
First.Wherein do the principles of scientific management differ essentially from those of ordinary management?
Second.Why are better results attained under scientific management than under the other types?
Third.Is not the most important problem that of getting the right man at the head of the company? And if you have the right man cannot the choice of the type of management be safely left to him?
One of the principal objects of the following pages will be to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.
THE FINEST TYPE OF ORDINARY MANAGEMENT
Before starting to illustrate the principles of scientific management, or "task management" as it is briefly called, it seems desirable to outline what the writer believes will be recognized as the best type of management which is in common use.This is done so that the great difference between the best of the ordinary management and scientific management may be fully appreciated.
In an industrial establishment which employs say from 500 to 1000 workmen, there will be found in many cases at least twenty to thirty different trades.The workmen in each of these trades have had their knowledge handed down to them by word of mouth, through the many years in which their trade has been developed from the primitive condition, in which our far-distant ancestors each one practised the rudiments of many different trades, to the present state of great and growing subdivision of labor, in which each man specializes upon some comparatively small class of work.
The ingenuity of each generation has developed quicker and better methods for doing every element of the work in every trade.Thus the methods which are now in use may in a broad sense be said to be an evolution representing the survival of the fittest and best of the ideas which have been developed since the starting of each trade.However, while this is true in a broad sense, only those who are intimately acquainted with each of these trades are fully aware of the fact that in hardly any element of any trade is their uniformity in the methods which are used.Instead of having only one way which is generally accepted as a standard, there are in daily use, say, fifty or a hundred different ways of doing each element of the work.And a little thought will make it clear that this must inevitably be the case, since our methods have been handed down from man to man by word of mouth, or have, in most cases, been almost unconsciously learned through personal observation.Practically in no instances have they been codified or systematically analyzed or described.The ingenuity and experience of each generation of each decade, even, have without doubt handed over better methods to the next.This mass of rule-of-thumb or traditional knowledge may be said to be the principal asset or possession of every tradesman.Now, in the best of the ordinary types of management, the managers recognize frankly the fact that the 500 or 1000 workmen, included in the twenty to thirty trades, who are under them, possess this mass of traditional knowledge, a large part of which is not in the possession of the management.The management, of course, includes foremen and superintendents, who themselves have been in most cases first-class workers at their trades.And yet these foremen and superintendents know, better than any one else, that their own knowledge and personal skill falls far short of the combined knowledge and dexterity of all the workmen under them.The most experienced managers therefore frankly place before their workmen the problem of doing the work in the best and most economical way.They recognize the task before them as that of inducing each workman to use his best endeavors, his hardest work, all his traditional knowledge, his skill, his ingenuity, and his good-will in a word, his "initiative," so as to yield the largest possible return to his employer.The problem before the management, then, may be briefly said to be that of obtaining the best initiative of every workman.And the writer uses the word "initiative" in its broadest sense, to cover all of the good qualities sought for from the men.
