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There are a number of different views as to what motivates workers. The most commonly held views or theories are discussed below and have been developed over the last 100 years or so. Unfortunately these theories do not all reach the same conclusions!
Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 – 1917) put forward the idea that workers are motivated mainly by pay. His Theory of Scientific Management argued the following:
Workers do not naturally enjoy work and so need close supervision and control
Therefore managers should break down production into a series of small tasks
Workers should then be given appropriate training and tools so they can work as efficiently as possible on one set task.
Workers are then paid according to the number of items they produce in a set period of time- piece-rate pay.
As a result workers are encouraged to work hard and maximise their productivity.
Taylor’s methods were widely adopted as businesses saw the benefits of increased productivity levels and lower unit costs. The most notably advocate was Henry Ford who used them to design the first ever production line, making Ford cars. This was the start of the era of mass production.
Taylor’s approach has close links with the concept of an autocratic management style (managers take all the decisions and simply give orders to those below them) and Macgregor’s Theory X approach to workers (workers are viewed as lazy and wish to avoid responsibility).
However workers soon came to dislike Taylor’s approach as they were only given boring, repetitive tasks to carry out and were being treated little better than human machines. Firms could also afford to lay off workers as prod ...