Source of information: http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/motivation-and-coaching-frederick-w-taylor-18561915-scientific-management-861283.html
Taylor, an American engineer, achieved his qualifications the hard way; via evening studies. From humble beginnings as an engineer in a steel company he became one of the most influential management writers and theorists. He is remembered most for defining the techniques of scientific management which is the study of relationship between people and tasks for the purpose of redesigning work processes and increasing efficiency.
He wrote during a period when the growing complexity of factories was causing big management problems. Taylor was one of the first to attempt to systematically analyse behaviour at work. His likened the organisation to a machine and his methods involved breaking each task down to its smallest unit to identify the best way to do each job. Next the supervisor would teach it to the worker and make sure the worker did only those actions essential to the task. Hence scientific management as Taylor tried to make a science for each element and eliminate human variability or errors. Taylor believed that by increasing specialisation, the production process would become more efficient.
Taylor’s steps began with examining the way workers performed their tasks, gathering all the informal job knowledge they possessed, and experimenting with ways of improving task performance to increase efficiency. Any resulting new ways of performing tasks were written into work rules and standard operating procedures. He also advocated carefully selecting workers that possessed the skills and abilities needed for the task and training them to perform the tasks according to these rules and procedures. The next suggested step was to establish a fair or acceptable level of performance for a task and then develop a pay system that provides a higher reward for performance above the acceptable level. Finally he proposed splitting the task of the
His ideas had a major effect on organisation of work and the way people were managed. Unfortunately although things became more productive they also became repetitive and monotonous and a many employees became very unhappy at work. Initially productivity under Taylor’s methods increased dramatically and it seemed to work. New departments appeared like personnel and quality control. More and more middle managers emerged as planning was separated from operations. Formality was increased and the supervisor with clipboard and stopwatch appeared in all work settings which workers found all kinds of ways to resist.
No doubt you can see that much of scientific management remains with us today, but the efficiencies it brought have mostly disappeared. The problem is the machine metaphor. People aren’t parts in a machine, but living, breathing human beings who these days have a variety of wants and needs that they wish their work to fulfil. Positioning coaching as merely a means to increased efficiency, whatever the economic rewards that follow, is unlikely to create more than a short term spike in performance overall.
Motivation
The intentions, desires, goals, and needs that determine human and animal behavior. An inquiry is made into a person’s motives in order to explain that person’s actions.
Different roles have been assigned to motivational factors in the causation of behavior. Some have defined motivation as a nonspecific energizing of all behavior. Others define it as recruiting and directing behavior, selecting which of many possible actions the organism will perform. The likely answer is that both aspects exist. More specific determinants of action may be superimposed on a dimension of activation or arousal that affects a variety of actions nonselectively. The situation determines what the animal does; arousal level affects the vigor, promptness, or persistence with which the animal does it.
Early drive theorists saw motivated behavior as adjunct to physiological mechanisms of homeostasis, that is, the mechanisms by which the body regulates internal variables such as temperature, blood sugar level, and the volume and concentration of body fluids. Thus, motivated behavior forms part of a
However, the homeostatic model faces difficulties. First, not all «basic biological drives» work this way. Second, motivated behavior can be influenced by external as well as internal factors. Since these external influences are not coupled with the animal’s internal state, they can lead to behavior that does not promote homeostasis and may even threaten it. To add to the complexity, internal and external factors are not independent and additive; rather they interact with each other. In such cases, internal influences affect behavior by setting the animal’s responsiveness to certain external signals. The interaction occurs in the opposite direction as well: external signals can affect internal state. Third, especially in humans, vigorous and persistent
Even relatively simple motives can be influenced by much more than the existing internal and external situation. They respond to potential or expected factors, as registered by cognitive apparatus. Even relatively simple motives such as hunger and thirst are responsive to cognitive factors.
To a hungry rat, food becomes a goal. The rat will make various responses, including arbitrary learned ones or operants, that lead to contact with food. A rat can be trained to do whatever else is necessary (within its capabilities) to attain its goal. It is this flexibility of
There is a question as to how behavior can be guided by a state or event (goal attainment) that does not yet exist. Modern approaches to this question lean heavily on cognitive concepts. Mammals, birds, and even some insects can represent to themselves a nonexistent state of affairs. They can represent what a goal object is (search images): a chimpanzee may show behavioral signs of surprise if a different food is substituted for the usual one. They can represent where it is (cognitive maps): a digger wasp remembers the location of its nest relative to arbitrary landmarks, and will fly to the wrong place if the landmarks are moved.
If this idea is generalized, motivated behavior can be thought of as guided by a feedback control system with a set point. A set point establishes a goal state which the control system seeks to bring about. Behavior is controlled, not by present external or internal stimuli alone, but by a comparison between the existing state of affairs and a desired state of affairs, that is, the set point or goal, registered or specified within the brain. The animal then acts to reduce the difference between the existing and the desired state of affairs.
This way of looking at motivation helps bridge the gap between simple motives in animals and complex ones in humans. If to be motivated is to do whatever is necessary to bring about an imagined state of affairs, then human motives can literally be as complex, and be projected as far into the future, as human imaginations permit. See also Cognition.
Another approach to motivation comes from ethology, which has formed links with cognitive psychology. The
Motivation and emotion are closely related. Indeed, it has been argued that emotions are the true motivators and that other factors internal, situational, and cognitive take hold of behavior by way of the emotions they evoke. In the simplest case, pleasure and displeasure have been recognized for centuries as having motivational force. In more complex cases, the role of cognitive operations, such as how an individual feels about an event, as well as what is done about it, can depend heavily on how an individual thinks about it.
The culture in which an individual is raised has a powerful effect on how the individual behaves. It has been argued that culture teaches its members what to believe are the consequences of a specific action (cognitive), and how the individuals should feel about those consequences or about the actions themselves (emotional/motivational).