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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 wasnot 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 HenryFayol, 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 andwork 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 Taylorwork, 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 ofScientific 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 bestmanagement 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 methodtechniques. 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, whencarried 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 LillianGilbreth, 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 theproductivity 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 theoriesX 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 somechanges 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 ratheraverage, 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 informationflowed 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 tothe 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 systemshad 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 modernmanagement 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.