TWO APPROCHES TO THE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

The culmination of the Principles of Administration Approach was the publication of Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration. In that time, 1937, public administration scholars had come to believe in a static set of principles by which any organisation could be designed or its function improved. These principles, implied that organisations were very much like machines, and that managers could follow a set of formulae to maximise their efficiency.

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick are known in the world for the work "Notes on a Theory of Organization" issued in 1937. They developed the acronym POSDCORB to describe the administrative functions of managers.

POSDCORB stands for:

Planning - Preparing methodical plans for managing programs;

Organising - Creating the different sub-units of the organisation;

Staffing - Hiring competent employees to fill vacancies;

Directing - Issuing directives with time and performance criteria;

Co-ordinating - Interrelating employees' effort efficiently;

Reporting - reports for superiors;

Budgeting - Preparing and executing budgets.

Analysis of two standsAn often repeated criticism of the scientific management approach is that it overemphasised productivity and underemphasised human nature. This criticism is well expressed by Amitai Etzioni, who wrote that "although Taylor originally set out to study the interaction between human characteristics and the characteristics of the machine, the relationship between these two elements which make up the industrial work process, he ended up by focusing on a far more limited subject: the physical characteristics of the human body in routine jobs - e.g., shovelling coal or picking up loads. Eventually Taylor came to view human and machine resources not so much as mutually adapt able, but rather man functioning as an appendage to the industrial machine". Similar criticism could be levelled at other movements within the scientific management approach. The Scientific Management approach directed to create scientific, specialized, technocratic environment which makes it clear how to be more productive and maximize rewards. But his theory can be seen as one-sided. You cannot interpret the human being as a machine as it has it's own interest, it's own needs, that the human being is a entity of the different moods and emotions. He hasn't counted that the motivating factor for employees can be not only monetary, worker can be motivated for example by the interest of working in the particular field (e.g. teachers do not owe a lot of money from their work but they are usually motivated by the interest working with people; e.g. some tourists guides also do not owe a lot of money but they are interested in meeting new people and travelling), experience that he/she would gain through being on particular working place (e.g. nurse doesn't get much money for her work, but she wants to get more experience with time). It is also noted that

design of work procedures is not possible to establish in every field.

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick tried to establish principles of management to motivate worker they believed that economic efficiency rooted in human tendency toward rationality and order.

As with the Principles of Administration Approach, subsequent experience has shown public organisations, and the implementation process, to be far more complex than was imagined in 1937.

The both of theories was searching for the "one best way of doing work" for increasing of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of completing any work. But implementation of each of them has limited effect on the productivity and depends on particular circumstances.

Not any of listed theories can be implemented in modern society, specially in modern Public Administration, the reason for that is extremely complicated human relations. Public Administration is a human science therefore human behaviour plays the most important role in the subject of PA.

Therefore, there is no use in implementing of the considered theories of Science Management in practice.

List of Bibliography used:

1. Lecturer Notes.

2. Owen E Huges Public Management and Administration and Introduction, Great Britain: Macmillan Press Limited, 1994.