Taylorism, in work organization "Work (economy)"), refers to the division of the different tasks of the production process. It was a method of industrial organization, whose purpose was to increase productivity and avoid the control that the worker could have over production times. It is related to chain production.[1][2][3].
Principles of scientific organization of work
Contenido
Frederick W. Taylor elaboró un sistema de organización racional del trabajo, ampliamente expuesto en su obra Principles of Scientific Management[4] (1911), en un planteamiento integral que luego fue conocido como “taylorismo”. Se basa en la aplicación de métodos científicos de orientación positivista y mecanicista al estudio de la relación entre el obrero y las técnicas modernas de producción industrial, con el fin de maximizar la eficiencia de la mano de obra, de las máquinas y herramientas, mediante la división sistemática de las tareas, la organización racional del trabajo "Trabajo (economía)") en sus secuencias y procesos y el cronometraje de las operaciones, más un sistema de motivación mediante el pago de primas al rendimiento, suprimiendo toda improvisación en la actividad industrial").
Frederick W. Taylor intentó eliminar por completo los movimientos innecesarios de los obreros, con el deseo de aprovechar al máximo el potencial productivo de la industria. Hizo un estudio con el objetivo de eliminar los movimientos inútiles y establecer, por medio de cronómetros, el tiempo necesario para realizar cada tarea específica.[5].
The scientific organization of work
Taylorism, as a work method, was called scientific organization of work or scientific work management, understood as a form of management that assigns the basic principles of the scientific method to the work process, thus indicating the optimal way of carrying out work and sharing the profits with the workers. It is based on the division of labor into management and workers, the subdivision of tasks into simpler ones and the remuneration of the worker according to performance.[6].
Reduction of On-Site Labor
Introduction
Taylorism, in work organization "Work (economy)"), refers to the division of the different tasks of the production process. It was a method of industrial organization, whose purpose was to increase productivity and avoid the control that the worker could have over production times. It is related to chain production.[1][2][3].
Principles of scientific organization of work
Contenido
Frederick W. Taylor elaboró un sistema de organización racional del trabajo, ampliamente expuesto en su obra Principles of Scientific Management[4] (1911), en un planteamiento integral que luego fue conocido como “taylorismo”. Se basa en la aplicación de métodos científicos de orientación positivista y mecanicista al estudio de la relación entre el obrero y las técnicas modernas de producción industrial, con el fin de maximizar la eficiencia de la mano de obra, de las máquinas y herramientas, mediante la división sistemática de las tareas, la organización racional del trabajo "Trabajo (economía)") en sus secuencias y procesos y el cronometraje de las operaciones, más un sistema de motivación mediante el pago de primas al rendimiento, suprimiendo toda improvisación en la actividad industrial").
Frederick W. Taylor intentó eliminar por completo los movimientos innecesarios de los obreros, con el deseo de aprovechar al máximo el potencial productivo de la industria. Hizo un estudio con el objetivo de eliminar los movimientos inútiles y establecer, por medio de cronómetros, el tiempo necesario para realizar cada tarea específica.[5].
The scientific organization of work
Taylorism, as a work method, was called scientific organization of work or scientific work management, understood as a form of management that assigns the basic principles of the scientific method to the work process, thus indicating the optimal way of carrying out work and sharing the profits with the workers. It is based on the division of labor into management and workers, the subdivision of tasks into simpler ones and the remuneration of the worker according to performance.[6].
In turn, the economy increased in the countries that created this company, Taylor's system lowered production costs because fewer salaries had to be paid, companies even paid less money for each piece so that the workers would hurry up. For this system to work correctly, it was essential that the workers were supervised, and thus a special group of employees emerged who were in charge of supervising, organizing and directing the work. This process was framed in a time (late century) of accelerated expansion of markets that led to the process of colonialism, which ended its frenetic crusade in tragedy through the world wars. His obsession with productive time led him to work on the concept of a chronometer in the production process, an idea that would surpass the workshop concept, typical of the first phase of the Industrial Revolution.
The Taylorist work organization transformed the industry in the following senses:
According to Taylor himself, the stages to put his work organization system into operation were as follows:
The application of the Taylor system caused a drop in production costs because it meant a reduction in wages. To encourage workers to increase production, many companies decreased the salary paid per piece. Around 1912 and 1913, there were numerous strikes against the use of the Taylor system.
Previously, skilled workers, in the British industrial revolution, had an autonomous and irregular rhythm of production, and a number of pieces to deliver at the end of the week. Thus, after a Sunday of leisure and drunkenness, the "San Mondays" recovered from their hangover, and they increased their work pace to deliver the merchandise on Friday or Saturday.[7] Frederick Taylor described it as "systematic laziness", "systematic worker laziness" (laziness: resting after an effort; laziness: without clear definition). This is where the derogatory use of the term "lazy" could come from to workers who did not comply with the established rhythm. In this way, the time when the craftsman could decide how much time he dedicated to producing a piece, according to his own quality criteria, was definitively left behind. Now, the pace of work and time control of the worker's tasks were subject to the needs of competition in the market.
The main points of Taylor's organization model were to scientifically determine standard work, create a mental revolution and a functional worker. At the end of the century and the beginning of the century, there were two differentiated social spheres: the countryside "Country (rural)") and the factory. There is a tendency towards greater social division of labor: increasingly simpler tasks, progressive division of tasks.
The purposes of the model were to increase productivity, achieving more for less, an issue that leads to the disqualification of workers.
With the division of labor "Labor (economy)"), costs and artisanal work are eliminated, knowledge is passed to the engineers, the trades no longer have the preferential and negotiating position that they had until now, and thus the worker loses that negotiating power as a result of the conversion to simple tasks.
The fragmentation of work produces deskilling, as the old jobs are destroyed, fragmenting and decomposing them, increasing efficiency and lowering costs, since the worker who carries out simple tasks is paid less.
This system entails a problem: the monopoly of knowledge, an interest in ensuring that this knowledge does not transcend in order to maintain that regime.
Soldier
Scientific labor management requires a high degree of control over employee practices by managers, and results in a higher ratio of white-collar workers to blue-collar workers. Such close administration can cause disputes between managers and employees.
Taylor observed that some workers were more talented than others, and that even the most intelligent workers often lacked motivation. Furthermore, he observed that most workers forced to perform repetitive tasks tend to work at the lowest possible pace that does not entail punishment. This slow pace of work has been observed in various industries and countries, and has been called "soldering", alluding to the way conscripts would follow orders. Taylor used this term and observed that, for equal pay, workers tend to do as much work as the least.
This reflects the idea that workers' interests prioritize their own well-being, and they do not benefit from working more than necessary if their remuneration does not increase. Taylor therefore proposed that the work practices that had developed in most work environments were excessively inefficient. He then postulated that exhaustive study could lead to best practices for performing any task, and that prevailing methods were rarely as efficient as best practices. Taylor admitted that if each employee's compensation was related to their productivity, their performance would increase significantly.
Relationship with mechanization and automation
Scientific labor management, or Taylorism, evolved in an era in which industrial mechanization and automation had not yet manifested themselves. The ideas and methods of scientific labor management extended the American manufacturing system from manual labor (with humans as the only possible agents) toward mechanization and automation. Although proponents of scientific labor management did not predict the widespread removal of humans from the production process. With the rise of mechanization and automation concerns about technological unemployment emerged.
By decomposing processes into discrete, unambiguous units, scientific work management laid the foundation for automation and international outsourcing. Taylor and his followers did not foresee this at first, since they thought that it would be humans who would execute the optimized processes. For example, although at that time the instruction "open valve A when the value of pressure gauge B exceeds value However, a common point between that time and today is that the agents that execute the tasks do not have to be "smart" to do so. In the case of computers, they are incapable (currently) of being "intelligent"; In the case of humans under scientific work management, they were commonly capable, but were not allowed. Once Taylor's stages of putting his organizational system into operation on a particular job were completed, workers no longer had the opportunity to think, experiment, or make suggestions. Most of the time they were forced not to think, which occasionally led to riots.
The neutral ground between production performed by skilled workers and complete automation is inhabited by extensively mechanized systems and partial automation operated by partially trained workers. These systems rely on algorithmic workflows and knowledge transmission, requiring considerable engineering to be successful. Although Taylor's intentions did not go beyond optimizing work methods, the process engineering he explored tends to concentrate the skills necessary to perform tasks in equipment and processes, considerably diminishing the skills needed by workers. These processes have predominated in much of the industry since then, and are also fundamental to the success of international subcontracting.
Digital Taylorism
Authors Philip Brown; Hugh Lauder") and David Asthon") call digital Taylorism the global organization of the so-called knowledge work typical of the information revolution or third industrial revolution - which is subjected to the same scientific organization management process that the so-called artisanal works of Taylorism once suffered.[8][9].
Digital Taylorism subjects tasks, until recently considered not mechanizable -of a creative, intellectual nature-, typical of the middle classes and many professionals, to the same fate as artisanal ones, they are codified and digitized, ensuring that the human capacity for decision and judgment can be replaced by automatic programs with computerized -mechanized- decision protocols. Furthermore, due to its ease of relocation and technical mobility of processes - typical of computerized global connections - jobs are easy to export, change and replace.[8].
It is the developed countries that will suffer the most from digital Taylorism since computerizable tasks increase day by day and it is in developing and underdeveloped countries where increasingly lower salaries are found.[8].
[8] ↑ a b c Peter Wilby (13 de marzo de 2011). «Taylorismo digital: la educación no impedirá que Occidente se empobrezca». Sin Permiso. Consultado el 2 de noviembre de 2013.: https://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/index.php?id=4004
In turn, the economy increased in the countries that created this company, Taylor's system lowered production costs because fewer salaries had to be paid, companies even paid less money for each piece so that the workers would hurry up. For this system to work correctly, it was essential that the workers were supervised, and thus a special group of employees emerged who were in charge of supervising, organizing and directing the work. This process was framed in a time (late century) of accelerated expansion of markets that led to the process of colonialism, which ended its frenetic crusade in tragedy through the world wars. His obsession with productive time led him to work on the concept of a chronometer in the production process, an idea that would surpass the workshop concept, typical of the first phase of the Industrial Revolution.
The Taylorist work organization transformed the industry in the following senses:
According to Taylor himself, the stages to put his work organization system into operation were as follows:
The application of the Taylor system caused a drop in production costs because it meant a reduction in wages. To encourage workers to increase production, many companies decreased the salary paid per piece. Around 1912 and 1913, there were numerous strikes against the use of the Taylor system.
Previously, skilled workers, in the British industrial revolution, had an autonomous and irregular rhythm of production, and a number of pieces to deliver at the end of the week. Thus, after a Sunday of leisure and drunkenness, the "San Mondays" recovered from their hangover, and they increased their work pace to deliver the merchandise on Friday or Saturday.[7] Frederick Taylor described it as "systematic laziness", "systematic worker laziness" (laziness: resting after an effort; laziness: without clear definition). This is where the derogatory use of the term "lazy" could come from to workers who did not comply with the established rhythm. In this way, the time when the craftsman could decide how much time he dedicated to producing a piece, according to his own quality criteria, was definitively left behind. Now, the pace of work and time control of the worker's tasks were subject to the needs of competition in the market.
The main points of Taylor's organization model were to scientifically determine standard work, create a mental revolution and a functional worker. At the end of the century and the beginning of the century, there were two differentiated social spheres: the countryside "Country (rural)") and the factory. There is a tendency towards greater social division of labor: increasingly simpler tasks, progressive division of tasks.
The purposes of the model were to increase productivity, achieving more for less, an issue that leads to the disqualification of workers.
With the division of labor "Labor (economy)"), costs and artisanal work are eliminated, knowledge is passed to the engineers, the trades no longer have the preferential and negotiating position that they had until now, and thus the worker loses that negotiating power as a result of the conversion to simple tasks.
The fragmentation of work produces deskilling, as the old jobs are destroyed, fragmenting and decomposing them, increasing efficiency and lowering costs, since the worker who carries out simple tasks is paid less.
This system entails a problem: the monopoly of knowledge, an interest in ensuring that this knowledge does not transcend in order to maintain that regime.
Soldier
Scientific labor management requires a high degree of control over employee practices by managers, and results in a higher ratio of white-collar workers to blue-collar workers. Such close administration can cause disputes between managers and employees.
Taylor observed that some workers were more talented than others, and that even the most intelligent workers often lacked motivation. Furthermore, he observed that most workers forced to perform repetitive tasks tend to work at the lowest possible pace that does not entail punishment. This slow pace of work has been observed in various industries and countries, and has been called "soldering", alluding to the way conscripts would follow orders. Taylor used this term and observed that, for equal pay, workers tend to do as much work as the least.
This reflects the idea that workers' interests prioritize their own well-being, and they do not benefit from working more than necessary if their remuneration does not increase. Taylor therefore proposed that the work practices that had developed in most work environments were excessively inefficient. He then postulated that exhaustive study could lead to best practices for performing any task, and that prevailing methods were rarely as efficient as best practices. Taylor admitted that if each employee's compensation was related to their productivity, their performance would increase significantly.
Relationship with mechanization and automation
Scientific labor management, or Taylorism, evolved in an era in which industrial mechanization and automation had not yet manifested themselves. The ideas and methods of scientific labor management extended the American manufacturing system from manual labor (with humans as the only possible agents) toward mechanization and automation. Although proponents of scientific labor management did not predict the widespread removal of humans from the production process. With the rise of mechanization and automation concerns about technological unemployment emerged.
By decomposing processes into discrete, unambiguous units, scientific work management laid the foundation for automation and international outsourcing. Taylor and his followers did not foresee this at first, since they thought that it would be humans who would execute the optimized processes. For example, although at that time the instruction "open valve A when the value of pressure gauge B exceeds value However, a common point between that time and today is that the agents that execute the tasks do not have to be "smart" to do so. In the case of computers, they are incapable (currently) of being "intelligent"; In the case of humans under scientific work management, they were commonly capable, but were not allowed. Once Taylor's stages of putting his organizational system into operation on a particular job were completed, workers no longer had the opportunity to think, experiment, or make suggestions. Most of the time they were forced not to think, which occasionally led to riots.
The neutral ground between production performed by skilled workers and complete automation is inhabited by extensively mechanized systems and partial automation operated by partially trained workers. These systems rely on algorithmic workflows and knowledge transmission, requiring considerable engineering to be successful. Although Taylor's intentions did not go beyond optimizing work methods, the process engineering he explored tends to concentrate the skills necessary to perform tasks in equipment and processes, considerably diminishing the skills needed by workers. These processes have predominated in much of the industry since then, and are also fundamental to the success of international subcontracting.
Digital Taylorism
Authors Philip Brown; Hugh Lauder") and David Asthon") call digital Taylorism the global organization of the so-called knowledge work typical of the information revolution or third industrial revolution - which is subjected to the same scientific organization management process that the so-called artisanal works of Taylorism once suffered.[8][9].
Digital Taylorism subjects tasks, until recently considered not mechanizable -of a creative, intellectual nature-, typical of the middle classes and many professionals, to the same fate as artisanal ones, they are codified and digitized, ensuring that the human capacity for decision and judgment can be replaced by automatic programs with computerized -mechanized- decision protocols. Furthermore, due to its ease of relocation and technical mobility of processes - typical of computerized global connections - jobs are easy to export, change and replace.[8].
It is the developed countries that will suffer the most from digital Taylorism since computerizable tasks increase day by day and it is in developing and underdeveloped countries where increasingly lower salaries are found.[8].
[8] ↑ a b c Peter Wilby (13 de marzo de 2011). «Taylorismo digital: la educación no impedirá que Occidente se empobrezca». Sin Permiso. Consultado el 2 de noviembre de 2013.: https://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/index.php?id=4004