Question

1. Thinking about the future generation of workers, which older management ideas might be at risk of declining in popularity? Why?

2. If you lived during Frederick W. Taylor’s time, what advice would you have given him to improve the approach he took regarding scientific management?

Chapter 2 from Management ( a faith-based pespective) by michael E. Cafferky.

Answer 1

Thinking about the future generation of people who would be coming to work in the organisation sooner or later, these people are of the Generation Z or the millenial category for the population. Researchers and many companies have suggested that younger people are joining the company with different objectives rather than the older ones. Thus, the older management practice of motivating the person by giving more money or treating employees like tool by conducting the Fayol's study analysis on them won't work effectively as well. This is because of the fact that more emphasis are given on the human relationship and the empowement of the employees rather than the tools or the work that is being performed. Thus, leadership, motivation and organisational culture where growth and opportunities are available would be more satisfying for the newer employees rather than just the money for motivating them towards the retention or attraction.

2. The advice I would like to give to Taylor about the scientific management approach would be based on giving more importance to the human or personal communication and relationship building mechanism rather than just work. Under the principles of Taylor's scientific management approach, unnecessary pressure is put on the employees to perform the work faster or better. Importance was given to more profitability and productivity rather than human involvement. This simply resulted in exploitation of the employees making them join trade unions and also mistrust between the employees and the management. Thus, i would advice that more human involvement and interaction should be given more importance than rather just work and productivity.