Compare Frederick Taylor's Mass Production and Eric Trists Socio-Technical Team Based Production Approaches to the Design of Work Systems

1677 Words Dec 30th, 2010 7 Pages
1) Compare Frederick Taylor’s mass production and Eric Trist’s socio-technical team-based production approaches to the design of work systems. a) What are the characteristics and key features of each? b) Discuss the fundamental differences between them including underlying theory, methods, principles, and role of management. c) Cover the advantages and disadvantages of each system – in which context does each perform best? d) What has led to the decline of mass production in the U.S., and how can socio-technical systems improve productivity and quality?

It is amazing how humans can steadily develop new and innovative ideas that help make the world a better place economically, physically, etc; From factories and work
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The last element is the responsibility and work divided equally between the employees and management. Throughout the course of the workday, management works with employees side by side helping and encouraging them (Taylor pg 85). Scientific management is like being spoon-fed an employee’s daily tasks that management has already prepared for them. Unlike scientific management, STS does not involve being spoon-fed. The fundamental theory of STS is working collectively as group without bureaucratic tensions between management and employees. Management does not stay with the employees and instruct them what to do and how to do their daily tasks. Employees’ work together as team and each member can carry out each others’ daily tasks if one or two of them were absent. Some of the main principles of STS are as follows:
“The work system, which comprised a set of activities that made up a functioning whole, now became the basic unit rather than the single jobs into which it was decomposable. Correspondingly, the work group became central rather than the individual jobholder. Internal regulation of the system by the group was thus rendered possible rather than the external regulation of individuals by supervisors. A design principle based on the redundancy of functions rather than the redundancy of parts characterized the underlying organizational philosophy, which tended to develop multiple skills in the individual and immensely increase the response

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