Frederick W. Taylor and Peter Senge: Divergent Approaches to the Learning Organization Brian S. Whitmer Emporia State University
Frederick W. Taylor and Peter Senge: Divergent Approaches to the Learning Organization
For this paper, I have chosen to examine the concept of the learning organization which was first discussed in the 1970s by Chris Argyris & Donald Schon in Theory in Practice and Organizational Learning and popularized by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline in 1990. Organizational learning can be conceptualized a viewing an organization as a continuously evolving system of organization rules that can learn and improve its goal performance by creating and transferring knowledge through experiential learning of individuals and teams within the organization. Essentially, it is an ongoing process of continuous improvement and adaptation to changing economic conditions. Or more even simply - innovation.
I will be arguing in this paper that Frederick W. Taylor’s concept of scientific management as expressed through his written works including Shop Management and The Principles of Scientific Management is itself a description of the learning organization and I will compare and contrast it with the approach outlined by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline.
Let’s set the stage by giving a summary of the elements of each approach. Taylor was one of the earliest founders of the systematic study of management and wrote at a time where the old model of self-managing craftsman and journeymen was being replaced by the new methods needed for factory production especially in manufacturing which was the main economic engine of the US economy in this period. Taylor was imbued with the spirit of the efficiency movement which sought the elimination of waste and inefficiency in the “nested spheres” of the individual, organizations, and the society at large. Taylor’s contribution to this spirit was a new conception of management based upon a new division of labor with a disintermediation of the tasks of planning and learning from the purview of the traditional work gangs/foreman to rationalized management structures staffed by scientifically informed managers. As Taylor himself expressed it in The Principles of Scientific Management: These new duties are grouped under four heads:
- • First. They develop a science for each element of a man's work, which replaces the old rule-of-thumb method.
- • Second. They scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the workman, whereas in the past he chose his own work and trained himself as best he could.
- • Third. They heartily cooperate with the men so as to insure [sic] all of the work being done in accordance with the principles of the science which has been developed.
- • Fourth. There is an almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen. The management take over all work for which they are better fitted than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men.
- (30-31)
Taylor pioneered time and motion studies to break tasks down into discrete steps to better analyze the most efficient ways of doing a task along with experiments with tools and materials to scientifically determine the best ways to perform many machining tasks with the result that he received several patents for improved methods and tools. He also helped develop cost accounting methods, pioneered systematic planning departments, and contributed mightily to the professionalization of management and workers as well as pioneering continuous improvement engineering. As management legend Peter Drucker rightly observed in 1974: Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. (Drucker, 181).
Jumping forward to 1990, Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline married the insights gained from Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s systems theory to the work of Chris Argyris & Donald Schon in Organizational Learning to create a conceptual framework centered around five disciplines or practices which can be defined as:
- • Personal mastery, with people identifying what is important in the process.
- • Mental models, with the organization continuously challenging members in order to improve their mental models.
- • Shared vision, requiring an imagining of what the organization should be.
- • Team learning, through cooperation, communication, and compatibility.
- • Systems thinking, recognizing the organization as a whole. (Moran et al., 36)
Senge was writing in the context of faster innovation and the increasing growth of knowledge work as the main economic engine of the US economy – think information technology, finance, and services. As a consequence of this shift, workers needed more autonomy to deal with more variable types of work tasks that couldn’t be optimized in advance as in the case of much of the manufacturing work in Taylor’s time. In a surprising way, the old autonomy of the 19th-century work gang assumed a new currency in the autonomous teams of the 1990s and beyond. Instead of top down process optimization based on time and motion studies, Senge is arguing for bottom-up learning through a process of continuous individual and team improvement which should then become the basis for continuous improvement of the organization. And in a nod to the non-intuitive nature of systems and the difficulty of learning experientially from them because of long delays in cause and effect, Senge highlights ten system archetypes that can act as learning templates for the organization to take into consideration when implementing new organizational rules in response to perceived problems.
Both Taylor and Senge in different contexts and through different points of management focus offer frameworks of how an organization can continuously improve its efficiencies and practices by becoming learning organizations. For Taylor, most of the learning is done by professional managers; for Senge, the learning is diffused throughout an organization. And they both can be characterized as scientific – with Taylor reflecting the 19th-century science of mechanical forces and physical measurement and Senge reflecting the influence of quantum dynamics and biology on the shift to science based more on systems thinking.
In a public library context, the most immediately useful management theory would be Taylor. The analysis and breakdown of various library functions via time and motion studies would enable a manager to have an effective standard from which to measure the accomplishment of the most standard tasks of a library. Many of the day-to-day functions of a library are repetitive and can be guided by best practices determined through time and motion studies. The benefit of this type of guidance is that a worker can be measured and coached on work norms providing clarity of task performance expectations. This gives a worker autonomy to perform the task and minimizes the need for a manager to supervise functions on a day-to-day basis. Dividing the available work becomes easier because the time needed to accomplish it is generally known in advance. Efficiency is maximized. Managers and leaders can spend more time on more higher-value but usually more variable tasks like marketing strategy, motivation, fund raising, innovation, and change management which may require systems thinking as promoted by Senge.
Management practice should be guided by pragmatic considerations of what techniques and methods have proven most useful in particular contexts. No single management theory covers all types of work, work contexts, or economic conditions. Intelligent management requires selecting wisdom from various thinkers and sources and willingness to abandon approaches that are familiar but ineffective.
References
- Drucker, P. ( 1974). Management: Tasks, responsibilities, practices. New York, New York: Harper & Row.
- Moran, B. B., & Stueart, R. D., & Morner, C. J. (2013). Library and information center management. Santa Barbara, California: Libraries Unlimited.
- Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, New York: Doubleday.
- Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York, New York: Harper & Brothers.
- Taylor, F. W. (1911). Shop management. New York, New York: Harper & Brothers.