Scientific Management Theory

Scientific management is to define “one best way” to do the job. The most important and famous contribution was made by Frederick W. Taylor.

Frederick W. Taylor:

He was the father of scientific management. He was working at Medivale Steel Company when he realized that there are no virtual standards of doing a job. Workers do their jobs the way they want to and use different methods to do. A carefree culture regarding accomplishing the job was prevailing there. He was disturbed to see the workers’ inefficiencies. He observed that workers’ output was about 1/3rd of what they actually can give. And he also noticed that the jobs assigned were not according to workers’ aptitude and potential; means there was carefree assignment of jobs among the workers so there was a total wastage of efficiencies there.

Seeing all this Taylor implemented his 4 Principles of management to correct the situation and these are:

• Develop a science for each element of an individuals’ work, which will replace the old rule-of-thumb method.

• Scientifically select and then train, teach and develop the worker.

• Heartily cooperate with workers so as to ensure that work is done in accordance with the principles of science that has been developed.

• Divide work and responsibility almost equally between the management and workers. Management takes over all work for which it is better fitted that the workers.

He spent more than two decades in devising scientific rules for almost every job to be done. He claimed that these four principles would result in the prosperity of both the workers and employees. Because then there will be right utilization of skills and abilities of the workers and they will be more satisfied with the job they do which will match their aptitude.

Now we will see how did these scientific principles really work? We will take a look at the experiment conducted by Taylor in this regard. Workers loaded pigs of iron (each weighing 92lbs) onto rail cars the daily output average was 12.5 tons. This output was when the workers were not doing the jobs efficiently, right workers were not on the jobs and the techniques were random not a specific one which could beast do the job. Then Taylor applied his scientific method. He selected right people to do this job who had the skills and abilities which could complement the job well. Then he told the workers one best way to do the job, he gave proper tools and told appropriate techniques which can help in doing the job efficiently and motivated the workers with significant wages. This worked as Taylor had thought, the output increased to the level of 47 to 48 tons per day.

After the successful implementation and results of his scientific methods, his ideas spread all around the world and many people followed his ideas.

Classical Conditioning Theory

Its very interesting theory that is all about the behavior of organisms. There are numerous stimulus around us and we respond to them either in negative way or positive one. It is type of behavioral theory that focuses on the how people respond to a stimulus. Suppose stimulus is food and you will respond in a positive way by having it eaten.

Conditioning is the repetition of the certain stimulus. Conditioning causes learning. this theory focuses in on reflexive actions. Ivan Pavlov was the first person who presented the model for classical conditioning. According to him:

"When one stimulus that is paired with another stimulus that have a known response serves to produce the same response when used alone."

It means that one stimulus that is neutral one (first one) get paired with the other stimulus that have a certain known response to it; this pair is repeatedly used as a stimulus; then the first stimulus that was neutral one alone start giving you the same response as the pair was giving.
It will be more clear with the help of an example so lets have a look at example; this example is basically an experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov:

He took dogs that were hungry and highly motivated to eat. He rang a bell and immediately after that bell sound gave them meat paste in response to that dogs started to salivate. he repeated that again and again. when dogs learnt that thing then bell sound alone caused them to salivate.
In above mentioned example Meat Paste was the Unconditioned Stimulus (which has particular response), Bell was Conditioned Stimulus (Which was a neutral stimulus), Unconditioned Response was Salivation, and when dogs salivated on the bell sound alone that Unconditioned response became Conditioned Rresponse.
here is the representation of this model:



So i would conclude this part as that repetitive exposure to stimulus make us learn about that, and then we show are response in accordance. If that stimulus has induced a positive learning then our response will be favorable otherwise it would be unfavorable.

In our market scenario, established brands are the unconditioned stimulus, about whom we had learnt earlier and now our response is favorable as they are rewarding. and new products launched under the same brands are conditioned stimulus, and when we respond to these new products using our past learning experience with established ones, then our response to these products is conditioned response.