I believe that Taylor and Ford’s theories are widely used today across all sectors of the economy, as illustrated in George Ritzer’s book ‘McDonalization of Society’ (Ritzer,2004). Ritzer illustrates how Taylorism has expanded into all sectors of the economy as managers look to enforce efficiency, productivity and predictability of the final product. However it is most commonly found in the manufacturing sector. As such, Taylorism and Fordism can be tied to certain stages of a country’s development along the demographic transition model, as more economically developed countries (MEDCs) tend to have a bigger share in the tertiary sector, for example in the UK, the Service sector accounted for 78% of gross-value-added tax in 2009 (www.cbi.org.uk) while in less economically developed countries (LEDCs) the industry is dominated by primary and secondary sectors.
Taylor concentrated on the first stage of manufacturing; the transformation of the work piece (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004) His aim was to take away control from the ‘gangs’ and give it to the management by subdividing work tasks into a number of little jobs which didn’t require a unique skill to carry out, therefore taking the knowledge and hence the power away from the workers. Furthermore Taylor used time-and-motion studies to engineer the best way to carry out a task, which scientifically selected (best for the job) workers, who were then taught and observed to make sure they were following their instructions (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004). Ford addressed the last two stages of manufacturing. In Taylorism, managers still didn’t have a say over the pace of the worker, instead, Ford introduced the assembly line that exerted “invisible and non-confrontational control” over the worker’s speed (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004) Ford has also famously said “You can have any color as long as it’s black” – by standarisisng the parts Ford revolutionized the world by innovating an effective design for mass production.
Taylor and Ford’s theories soon emerged after industrialization in USA between 1880 and 1910 and big corporations started to develop(Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004). Not surprisingly scientific management follows the same pattern today. Implications of Taylorism and Fordism can be found in big quantities, in countries at the lower stages of the demographic transaction model aka LEDCs, which are just starting to develop infrastructures that attract big firms to locate their manufacturing plants in. Nowadays typically, big corporations with headquarters elsewhere move to LECDs to exploit cheap work force, government subsidies and reduced legal obligations. In such countries work force is dominated by unskilled labour with few opportunities for training. This is similar to what the Americans found in 1880s - directing efforts of workers with little knowledge of English language, few job skills and no experience of the disciplined work of a factory is a key organizational problem (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004). Hence why scientific management theories are being widely used at manufacturing plants today, as Taylor’s principle of subdividing jobs into a number of simple tasks allows pre-industrial workers to carry them out easily. Therefore at the lower stages of country development, scientific management satisfies both workers and organisations, as their incentives are aligned – organisations are driven by increased productivity in the short term and huge turnovers, while from the worker’s perspective, Ford’s deskilling of labour redesigned the tasks so that pre-industrial labour can cope with them, “otherwise they would be doing even less enjoyable, back-breaking work”(Talylor, 1911). Ford’s goal was to mechanize everything, including human beings. In his descriptions of factory life he talked of “men and machines united in production” (Brown, 1957). And he got what he wanted, today not only the major manufacturing companies use assembly lines in their plants to