Scientific Management & Contingency Approach Essay

Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling activities have been utilized in pursuing goals since the early days. Contemporary organizations, however, promoted just in the late eighteenth century (Robbins and Coulter, 2014). According to Dawson (1996), organizations are a group of people achieving individual or common goals. Contemporary organizations are more complex, flexible and diverse (Hernaus & Mikuli, 2014). As the current business environment is challenged to keep on evolving, contemporary organizations are demanded to be dynamic as well. Owen and Dietz (2012) noted that organizations need to keep learning, adapting, and growing. In order to compete, change in an organization is inevitable. Transformation in economic, work forces, demographics, and technologies have influenced organizations. Hence, it is crucial to be aware of different approaches in managing change (Rein, et al., 2012). Those approaches are scientific management, general administrative theory, behavioral approach, quantitative approach, system approach and contingency approach (Robbins and Coulter, 2014). However, this essay will focus solely on comparing scientific management and contingency approach, especially regarding their relevancy in managing task performance, supervision, and motivation in today’s modern business.

Scientific management or also known as one of the best alternative in getting work done was proposed by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor has introduced four main principles in scientific management. The first principle is developing science for each element of a man’s job to obtain more efficient and effective way in producing goods. Secondly, Taylor asserts that manager needs to selectively assign the best candidate based on their knowledge, skills, capability and competency to complete the task designed by the organization manager. Another principle stated by Taylor is that manager should ensure cooperation with workers through incentives and work environment that could maximize the employee outcome in a scientific manner. The last principle of Taylor’s scientific management is that the manager required to form division of works between the management and the workmen (Robbins and Coulter, 2014).

The first principle believes that through standardization, a company is capable of increasing the quantity and quality of products and most importantly it could also reduce the energy wasted. Managers have given all the standards working method, including detailed task and time allowance that should be performed by the employees. Taylor’s time and motion studies encourage workforces to learn constantly from errors and manage to increase their efficiency (Beimborn et al., 2009). Managers could use the result of the company’s standards process to improve the workforce’s task performance and productivity. Task performance is also defined as the direct or indirect contribution in organizations by performing certain activities with effectiveness (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). Blind (2004) argues that in contemporary organizations where buyer behaviors are diverse, applying standards could limit the choices of product to meet customers’ preferences. Nonetheless, this principle is still being applied in large organizations nowadays, such as franchise industry. For example, Starbucks has been using the Standards of Business Conduct booklet which is used in each of their stores to meet the company's expectations of how a task is performed. As variation could lead to digression, standardization will allow workers to focus more on performing a job and result in greater productivity.