Relationship Between Bureaucracy and Democracy

The major objectives of any business organisation include reducing costs and maximizing efficiency and profitability. Different individuals and groups of people have studied and tried various ways in which the most critical people of any business organisation can contribute to achieving the three objectives. Consequently, as the development of organisations progresses, numerous approaches emerge to pursue these interests. Fredrick Taylor and George Elton Mayo are among the major contributors to management of the human element in the organisation. This paper seeks to explain why the use of evidence and claims to objectivity made by Taylor and Mayo is controversial. It starts by looking at the two schools of thoughts introduced by Taylor and Mayo and then discusses the controversies.

Scientific Management

This approach to management is also known as Taylorism theory, and it seeks to analyze and synthesize workflows. Improvement of economic efficiency in labour productivity was the major objective of scientific management. The theory started in late 1800s in the manufacturing industry where Taylor was working. Among the major features of this school of thought are the studies on time and motion to achieve efficiency, standardisation, division of labour, expertise in coordinating, planning and controlling or factory work, applying principles of engineering to production industrial system and social philosophy that sought reform via expansion and growth.

The scientific management theory was a distinct school of thought for about four decades and became almost obsolete by the 1930s. However, most of the concepts developed by this theory are still at the core of the today’s management and industrial engineering. Some of them include logics, analysis, rationality, synthesis, work ethics, empiricism, and elimination of waste, craft production, transformation of mass production, best practice of standardization and transfer of knowledge between worker and processes, tools, and documentation.

Taylor dedicated his efforts to ensuring that the factory was a neat and understandable world; it was an organisation of people whose activities could be planned, controlled, and coordinated under the directions of experts. Indeed, the production system in the factory would become a matter of scientific management while administration and planning of machines and workers would resemble components of a large machine.

Human Relations Movement

Elton Mayo founded this school of thought. This organisation behavior became popular because of Mayo’s Hawthorne studies and his book published in 1933. Mayo’s Hawthorne revealed how groups are important in affecting the behavior of individuals at a work place. As a result, it became possible for him to deduce the desired behaviours of managers. He carried out a number of investigations seeking productivity improvement. Finally, it was concluded that workgroup informal social pattern was the most important aspect of work satisfaction: physical conditions and financial incentive had comparatively lesser motivational value. As a result, Mayo stated that conflict would arise when there is tension between the logic of sentiment of workers and manager’s logic of efficiency.

In addition to stressing on the significance of work groups, he also encouraged a two-way communication in upward and downward patterns. Organisations need their workers to convey information successfully, solve conflicts, interpret the emotions of others, and be open to feelings of others. It is within the common knowledge that these skills enable the management, employees, and customers to maintain a compatible relationship. Mayo’s school of thought still can be applied in many companies today through the establishment of teamwork and improving individuals interpersonal and communication skills in organisation.

It is agreed in the management field that organisation behaviour ought to be evidence-based. For behaviour to be promoted within an organisation, it should produce the desired consequences in its operations. The outcome of the proposed organisational behaviour should include increasing employees’ productivity, efficiency, and profitability and reducing costs and waste. These were the pursuits of Taylor and Mayo’s studies. They conducted experiments that provided evidence and proofs of their claims’ objectivity; yet, their works have been rather controversial.

Several views in the modern time and during times of Taylor counter the merits of the scientific management. In its attempt to rationalize production within the interests of mutual prosperity, Taylorism centered on individual workers rather that groups, pursued individual goals, and emphasized the motivation by incentive plans making his view on motivation appear simplistic. Consequently, scientific management perceived human nature inhumanely, and had a negative sensitivity to work groups. Scientific management was conservative and had little regard for industrial democracy

Scientific management was also controversial because of the view that it preferred machines to people. Since the theory sought to increase worker’s production, the approach notoriously treated people not as subjects, but as factors of calculations. The production of an individual had to be predetermined just like that of a machine. A worker’s wellbeing, exhaustion, and need for rest were not taken into consideration. Others argued that the feature that made workers resemble machines more than human beings was planning and execution that robbed the workers of the independence, development vitality, and initiatives. A person had no free will, and the approach stripped one of humanity. Because of the reputation it had attained, the ostensible merits and criticism rose to political realms making the school of thought controversial. The organisation behaviour proposed evidence of increased productivity, but less to promote humanity and, therefore, was not desirable to workers. There were apparent dictatorial management and bureaucracy in the organisation.

On the other hand, Mayo’s major achievement was bringing out the rights of people into the light and escalating their potential for collaboration at work. Under the human relations movement, workers should obtain stability, satisfaction, and identity that motivate them to contribute and cooperate in order to achieve the goals of an organisation. He insisted that motivation depended less on financial incentives as opposed to the point oo view of scientific management. However, these views seem attractive to the business leaders and owners as they ameliorate labour discontent and reduce industrial democracy or any kind of employee voice.

Mayo’s strategy seemed rhetorical and appealing only to business owners, but in the process, it put the legitimacy of America economic and political order at stake. Mayo equated collective bargains with class war as well as criticized democracy for being socialistic. He consequently was able to discredit calls for democracy in the industries among the big conservative businesses. He sought to provide workers’ satisfaction without necessarily raising their wages or changing the power balance. Reducing workers’ conflict through the increased communication and workgroups appears to be a smart method of keeping workers away from joining unions.

Mayo’s experiments and proposals can be viewed as wise schemes of progressive Taylorism. He addressed the criticism facing scientific management such as treating workers like machines, but robbed off the workers’ rights to fair wages and industrial democracy. The theory seems to blindfold the workers making them ignore joining unions or demanding better pay; instead, they focused on their social life at work.

In conclusion, Taylor and Mayo used evidence-based approaches to organisation behaviour but did not consider people’s welfare. They killed the voice of the workers at the workplace by focusing on how much they can contribute to the organisation. Taylor viewed the worker as part of the larger machine system while Mayo, cunningly, made the employees not focus on their payments or rights. The controversies arise, because the people, who should be the most important aspect of an organisation, are instead placed on the same footing with machines. These schools of thought focus on increasing productivity and profitability while reducing costs and waste. This works well for the business owners. Taylor and Mayo increased bureaucracy to hinder the improvement of worker’s welfare in the real sense. Industrial democracy was also blocked by the dominance of downward communication in scientific management and discouragement to join unions by Mayo’s human relations movement.

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