In the present world of economy, management is a very difficult job as it has to deal with lots of human manpower with a different background, perspective, attitude, and behavior. A manager has not only to incorporate human efforts but also has to make decisions on how to allocate the limited resources to the human resources to generate the output. Many problems can come up each moment and spontaneous decisions might be essential at times.
Management is as old as human civilization. People have worked together to do any action for greater results. The highest level of management skills can be seen with great results such as The Taj Mahal of India, The Great Wall of China and The Pyramids of Egypt. This shows that people in the past have integrated human efforts with resources to build great monuments and run their daily lives.
So, over the last few centuries experts have found out various principles which have been proven effective with time. These principles are based on effect and cause system which means that an action has a reaction. These principles were derived from a lot of observation and analysis of the nature of human beings and organizational structure.
These scientific theories have helped managers to solve the daily problems in their organization and to manage their resources well. Some definition of famous writers are:
According to G. Hicks - “Principles of Management are guiding rules of laws for management action.”
According to Henry Fayol- “Principles of Management are flexible and not absolute, but mostly utilized in the light of changing and special condition.”
(Sharma, Surendra Raj; Jha, Surendra Kumar - Pg.32)
Management principles are both descriptive as well as perspective in nature. Perspective means what should be done in a certain situation and descriptive describes the relationship between any two variables. Hence over the time many writers, authors, and management experts have contributed to formulating the principles of management for the future generation.
Features of Management Principles
Fredrick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was a pioneer in the field of Scientific Management. He is regarded as the father of Scientific Management. Taylor published his work “Principles of Scientific Management” in the year 1911 A.D.
Taylor started as a worker in Midvale Steel Company and he was promoted to chief engineer. Later, he joined Bethlehem Steel Company. After his retirement, he worked as a consulting engineer.
His vast experience of managing people led him to experiment and understand how to manage a company in the most scientific manner. He experimented how to increase the efficiency of manpower and get maximum profit.
According to F.W Taylor- “Scientific Management means knowing exactly what you want men to do and seeing that they do in the best and the cheapest way.”
So, we can understand that scientific management is the art of knowing what is to be done and how it is to be done.
During his time in the companies, he found out that there were no specific ideas guiding the action of management but managers used a rule of thumb. There was no proper division of responsibilities among the labor and managers. The resources were not fully utilized which led to less output.
So, Taylor saw the need to make management scientific with well-defined ideas and fixed principles rather than depending on hazy ideas.
Hence, these are the basic principles of Taylor’s scientific management which focus on maximum output by efficient use of the resources. The major contribution of Taylor’s Scientific Management is its focus on the scientific approach to management and a high increase in efficiency and productivity.
(Shrestha pg- 36-38)
(Neupane Surendra; Parajuli, Ram Prasad; Jha, Deepak Kumar; Chhetri, Tuk Bahadur; Dulal, Gopal Prasad- pg-33-40)
There are many merits of Scientific Management such as improvement of efficiency for maximum output, development of skills of employees and improving the productivity. But there are some criticisms by employers, workers, and experts which cannot be overlooked. Some of the limitations of Taylor’s Scientific Management are:
Hence even though Taylor’s scientific management was the base for the management principles in the early days of management principles, it has the above limitations. Some of such other limitations are expensive and time-consuming for small firms, ignores the subjects such as delegation of authority, the flow of information, motivational aspect of management etc.
Fredrick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of Scientific Management. Taylor published his work “Principles of Scientific Management” in the year 1911 A.D.
Taylor started as a worker in Midvale Steel Company and he was promoted to chief engineer. Later he joined Bethlehem Steel Company. After his retirement, he worked as a consulting engineer. His vast experience of managing people led him to experiment and understand how to manage a company in the most scientific manner. He experimented how to increase an efficiency of manpower and get maximum profit.
According to F.W Taylor- “Scientific Management means knowing exactly what you want men to do and seeing that they do in the best and the cheapest way”
So we can understand that scientific management is the art of knowing what is to be done and how it is to be done. It is a logical approach towards the solution of management problems.
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