Lecture 3 - rational work design PDF

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Rational work design  Work is…. - A means of achieving a clearly defined end - Designed to achieve this end in the most cost-efficient and timeefficient manner - Designed in a scientific manner, using measurement and calculation – as if designing a machine - Broken down into simplistic, repetitive tasks requiring little or no skill - Designed to minimise waste Labour – the largest cost for organisations Capitalist working relationship – cost and control Rational work design – control of the labour process to make workers more cost effective Frederick Taylor – scientific management Lillian and Frank Gilbreth – time and motion study Henry Ford – the assembly line Found in contemporary organisations Karl Marx – critique of rational work design Harry Braverman – deskilling Capitalist working relationship  Pre-industrial revolution - Workers own means of production - Workers independent and autonomous  The factory system - Workers no longer own means of production - Factories need large capital outlay – role of capitalists - Capitalists pay a wage to labour - Loss of independence and autonomy - leads to tensions in capitalist working relationship

Frederick Taylor – Efficiency and control  Pioneer of rational work design: scientific management  Industrial engineer in early 20th century Philadelphia Steel Industry  Designing organisations like machines  Designed efficient work – but many of his obsessions were over controlling workers  Taylorism – techniques still in evidence in contemporary organisations  Links with Classical Management Theory (eg Fayol) Taylor’s ‘problems’ of control over labour  Labour is non-standard and unpredictable  Craft knowledge and expert power  Labour organised in gangs  Labour ‘inherently lazy and unmotivated/  Soldering Scientific management  Designing organisations like machines - Efficiency - Control - Optimisation - Waste minimisation - Scientific measurement and design  ‘the one best way’ - Division of labour – work broken into small, repetitive tasks - Tasks designed scientifically, like a machine - Workers selected scientifically for each role - Division of work between managers and workers: workers work, managers plan and design work Control through Taylorism

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Standardization Individualization Facilities surveillance Knowledge resides with management Removal of craft skill

The fall and rise of Taylorism  Resistance from - Workers - Factory owners - Government – 1912 US congress inquiry  BUT – increased popularity from - Wartime munitions production - International spread of Taylorist techniques in different forms – e.g. UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia

Henry Ford – the assembly line  From individual task design to sequencing tasks  The moving assembly line  Inspiration from butchery  1913 – Detroit – production of model T car

Advantages of rational work design  Increases in efficiency and control for management over workers  Increases participation in labour market – e.g. unskilled workers; workers with disabilities; workers with limited language ability  Fairness and standardization in the workplace  Good in a stable, unchanging context where precision is important (Morgan 2006) Criticisms of Fordism  Intense control from the speed of the line  $5 a day to motivate workers to cope with intensified conditions  Dehumanizing work  Workers reduced to cogs in a machine  Chaplin – ‘modern times’ The Marxist critique

 Tensions in the capitalist wage-labour relationship  Workers and capital want different things – where do managers lie in this relationship?  Surplus value – workers work more efficiently to increase profits – capitalist enjoy this profit  Power resides unequally with capital

Braverman and deskilling  Organisational deskilling – overall knowledge of production process is held by management  Technological deskilling – need for workers skills removed  Overall – degradation of work

Conflict in the capitalist working relationship  Inequality in capitalist working relationship leads to… - Formation of trade unions - Collective action - Conflict e.g. strikes  Industrial relations at Ford - Strikes, sabotage, riots commonplace - Ford considered arming non-strikers (Beynon, 1984)

Rational work design today  Rational work design increases efficiency and control  Critique – dehumanizing, deskilling, alienating  Inflexible – is it suited to today’s organisational world?  Examples – Taylorism and Fordism - but also found in contemporary organisations...