Changing world of work and choice and opportunity structures affecting Essay

Changing world of work and choice and opportunity structures affecting careers. WORK, SOCIETY & ORGANIZATIONS - Essay Example 141). Writers point to medieval guild masters or even earlier nomadic tribal leaders as ancient prototypical managers, but from George’s definition one might be tempted to say that mothers comprised the first managers in human history. A â€Å"manager† is difficult to categorically define. George’s definition centers on managers as motivators, working to achieve goals through people. Managers are also organizers: Daniel A. Wren called management â€Å"the activity which performs certain functions in order to obtain the effective acquisition, allocation, and utilization of human efforts and physical resources in order to establish some goal† (Trent, 1973, p. 141). Militarism and Mechanization was formalized by Frederick the Great in the 17th century. He revolutionized warfare, and he is generally acknowledged as an early efficiency expert. He was credited with redirecting the structures and processes of waging war, and creating the elements of the machine o rganization as it applies to the military establishment. Elements of his management style included the institutionalization of authority by creating a system of ranks, establishing identity by uniforms, the standardization of regulations, task specialization among the troops, and the use of command language to reduce miscommunication and specialized training (MacDonogh, 2001). This management style is of course essentially still used to some extent in military and police organizations, although it is much tempered by contemporary HR practices in its treatment of people. Scientific Management Frederick Winslow Taylor, an engineer and self-styled consultant, conceptualized the link between corporate profitability, industrial productivity, and cost-efficiency. Under scientific management, productivity is increased and unit cost is reduced when workers become more task efficient. In turn, workers become more efficient if they are rewarded for higher volume productivity, and punished for low volume productivity. This management theory is also known as Taylorism. The principle of scientific management espouses the elimination of rule-of-thumb methods, and to instead use measurement techniques to determine the optimum methods that optimizes the use of time, effort, and resources. Jobs are broken down into sequential tasks, and each task is engineered for greater efficiency. Then the workers are trained in the new tasks using scientific methods. There is division of labor and responsibility among managers and workers, where management sets the goals and policies, and workers execute the tasks. Finally, discipline is maintained to coordinate task execution (Taylor, 2008). The world’s largest restaurant chain is an avowed follower of Taylorism. McDonald’s employs the scientific method in its corporate operations, where all tasks are worked out and standardized, and all employees worldwide are rigorously trained in this system. Tasks are broken down and num bered, so that the crews related to their customers according to a prepared script, and those who man the kitchen abide by a numbered set of procedures. Even the cooking machinery are specially designed to operate at pre-determined time settings. The result is a rigid quality level that ensures McDonald’s products are prepared and serve in exactly the same way the world over. Formal bureaucracy was conceived by Max Weber in the early 1900s. This was done in reaction to the prevailing management style then, where organisations were run according to the whims and