Connectivity in Aquatic Ecosystems

Introduction

History of management is as old as 3000 years when ancient architectures like Egyptian pyramids were constructed. Such huge complex structures show somewhere there is planning, coordination, direction, execution in the project that made such enormous structures possible. However, it is only in the beginning of the 20th century that management emerged as subject, developed and taught in various scenarios and schools. Management approaches developed during that time are known as classical approaches and one such theory is scientific management which will be discussed in this paper. There is another management theory also that has developed during 1930s and focus on the human and known as human relations movement. Both the management approaches human relations movement and Scientific management becomes very famous and represent 2 different school of thoughts. In this paper, both of these management theories will be discussed and compared and how they contributed to modern management theory. It is expected that there could be various other changes can occur in the scientific management. From organizational point of view, it is important that organizations should be flexible and agile to accept the changes that occur in the system. It can be done only when the organizations and leaders focuses on both internal and external stakeholders. The input from the key stakeholders would help the organizations to have deep focus on scientific management and the contemporary or modern way of scientific management.

Scientific management and its contribution to Modern management

This approach of management is based on the standardization, supervision and simplification of the processes. Frederick Taylor was one of the leading personality behind this concept. This was focus more around improving the labor productivity, economic efficiency. This approach requires micro management and stresses on close supervision of workers. This level of close monitoring of workers and labor may often cause friction between management and worker but the thought process behind this management technique is that workers are not very motivated to work and if not monitored, they will work at slow rate (Rowlinson, Hassard, & Decker, 2014). And also when all the workers are given same remuneration, even the smartest worker will tend to work at the speed of slowest worker. Thus, this approach focuses on monitoring them closely and to get the most productivity out of each worker. It believe on micro management and execution. This approach was more famous in manufacturing days where there is huge human effort tis involved and there are no machines and automations but with the development of technology, this theory began to fade but yet some of the principles of this theory are still practiced across the world. This theory has adopted by companies like Ford, GE. Also, there are mixed reviews about this theory. Business guru like Peter Drucker regarded Frederick Taylor as the great creator of knowledge management concepts while many other personalities have criticizes this theory also.

This technique dominated the industry during the first half of 20^th century with most of the companies adopting principles like piece rate payments, personnel quality control, and great division of labor. Not only this, supervisors jobs were created in good number and this also had dramatic impact on the productivity of workers which has significantly increased after adopting these principles (Nyland, Bruce, & Burns, 2014). Not only this, even people adopted principles like time and motion study in their professional life to become more efficient. Its contribution to management is significant.

This theory lays the ground for one the first formal divisions between workers and employers. It not only improves the productivity of workers but improve the financial numbers of the company. This focused highly on the tasks for workers and leave no rooms for idle time for them to relax. They were utilized to maximum. Incentives were also suggested for those who have better efficiency.

This theory focus on deep supervision and leaves no idle time for workers to relax. This lead to exploitation of workers. It does not leave for initiatives, job enrichment and job rotation. Workers were treated like machines.

Human relations movement and its contribution to Modern management

This approach is quite different from scientific management as it focuses on the people. It talks about the more fundamental question like what influence motivation of people and how people can be motivated to work for high levels of performance. Elton Mayo was the pioneer in creating this techniques. This theory was considered as directly opposite to scientific management theory. The most basic principle of this theory is that human should not be treated like machines and they are social people and individuality should be respected. Also, People are motivated by many other factors and not just the financial rewards (Jackson, Schuler, & Jiang, 2014). This theory believes that if people will be utilized by micro management and forced to work, they will not be productive as working just not need technical skills but social skills also plays important role.

This theory is widely practiced in industry and there is particular department HR (Human resource) in most of the organization to take care of employee satisfaction, employee empowerment and to protect them from exploitation.

 The main strength of this technique is that it treat human as the valuable asset of the organization and not just the mere robot. It motivates people, stresses on job satisfaction and helps in creating the more open and trusting working environment. It is one of the important ability of the company to retain the key employees. These days as the companies and competition are increasing with globalization, it becomes important to hold the people as people frequently changes organizations they work for (Crook, Lowe, Allendorf, Eros, Finn, Gillanders, & Kilada, 2015). During such times, retaining individual becomes very important and thus this management theory is relevant in current times.

Every individual is different with different needs and thus human relations are quite complex and difficult to lay any standards for controlling it. Employee productivity is increased indirectly by motivating them and providing them job satisfaction. Also, if motivation is not done in appropriate way, it can also result in negative impact.

Comparison between Scientific management and Human relations movement

Many management theories become old fashioned and dropped by management professional but these 2 theories are remain relevant even today due to their wide scope and application. While many though leaders think that Scientific management is a theory more relevant for manufacturing industry and become obsolete but knowingly or unknowingly, they are still using some of the principles of this theory in managing their organizations. Let us see some contrasting points between scientific management and human relations movement:

• Scientific theory of management stresses on output while the human relations movement emphasized on the human relations and the informal groups. It believe social life of people is also important to motivate them (Person, & Boje, 2016)
• Scientific management usually sets the work and force them on the workers and quite authorities in nature while human relations movement focuses on cooperating and coordination between leaders and employees and leadership style is more participative
• While scientific theory treat the human as machines, human relations theory treats them as individual and respect the individuality and difference in behaviors. Scientific theory lacks participation of people because they are treated as mechanical body while human relation stresses on communication and believes effective communication is the key for effective output (Storey, 2014)
• Scientific theory is quite narrow in a way that it believes that people are motivated only by financial rewards but human relations believe there are various ways for motivation that includes recognition, promotion, and flexibility
• Scientific theory puts the complete focus on the growth and target of the organization ignoring the human growth while the human relations stresses equally on growth of organization and also on individual growth

Conclusion

This paper discusses both the approaches of management. Even though both the approaches are widely different from each other, they converges to one point i.e. end goal which is employee productivity drive the organizational growth. Both have same aim of improving the human productivity but has different ways to achieve the same end goal. Also, both the theories can be applied together by slightly modifying and blending them to the organizational needs. As discussed in the paper, organizations should be open to accept the changes in order to create an agile culture where they can maintain the contemporary form of management.

References

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Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S., & Jiang, K. (2014). An aspirational framework for strategic human resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 1-56.

Nyland, C., Bruce, K., & Burns, P. (2014). Taylorism, the International Labour Organization, and the genesis and diffusion of codetermination. Organization Studies, 35(8), 1149-1169.

PERSON, C., & Boje, D. M. (2016). TITLE OF PAPER: SEAM’s ‘Storytelling Dialectical Method’and the Failure of Appreciative Inquiry as a Scientific Method of Organizational Development and Change TYPE: Paper.

Rowlinson, M., Hassard, J., & Decker, S. (2014). Research strategies for organizational history: A dialogue between historical theory and organization theory. Academy of Management Review, 39(3), 250-274.

Storey, J. (2014). New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.