The aim of this essay is to compare and contrast the two various approaches to managing people which are; scientific management introduced by Federick Taylor and the views of the human relations approach of the management of people at TGI Fridays and UNICEF UK.
To start with scientific management is the administration of a business, industry or economy based on experimental studies of efficiency; the application of the principles of the scientific method to managing a business (Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon n.d.) whereas the Human Relations approach is the study of group performance for the function of progressing into a personal relationship as between employees (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007:288) in other words employees are seen as the assets of the company. .
The human relations theory was introduced by Elton Mayo and his associates; this theory was developed as a response to Taylorism. This theory disregards the "biological" and "mechanistic" approaches of scientific management and the belief that "employees are assets to their companies," the human relations theory introduced and implementation of methods when it came to increasing labour productivity as they proposed that human psychological and moral qualities such as goals, motivation and values should be taken to account, according to (Armstrong, 1996:36) "The Psychological contract underlines the relationship between employees and employers and provides the context in which motivation takes place." Motivation is the process that accounts for an individual's intensity, direction and persistence of effort and attaining a goal. Motivation can be broken down into three components which helps understand each component.
Direction: This is simply straight forward and is the sole aim of what an individual is trying to achieve. For example, passing a theory drivers test would require an individual to get a mark of at least 42 out of 50 in order to pass so the objective is quite clear here.
