Scientific Management in Todays Workplace

The principles of scientific management developed by Frederick Taylor have shaped the work of many organizations. Overall, this approach implies that every procedure should be specified and standardized. This standardization is supposed to replace the rules of thumb which are deemed to be less effective.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Scientific Management in Today’s Workplace specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This paper is aimed at discussing the applications of scientific management in modern companies. In particular, I would like to discuss this question from the perspective of a consumer because this method can directly affect the experiences of clients. Overall, one can say this approach is still of great importance to many business administrators. As a rule, it is believed that scientific management is applied mostly to the needs of manufacturing companies; however, one can say that this model can af fects the work of service organizations as well. For instance, every visitor of a fast-food restaurant can notice that practically every workplace procedure is standardized. The employees of such companies have to adhere to specific instructions, especially when they prepare and serve food. In this case, the goal of scientific management is to improve the time-efficiency of the personnel. This model enables fast-food companies to serve a greater number of customers as quickly as possible. This is one of the reasons why these fast-food restaurants are able to achieve financial success. To some, their practices reflect the ideas of Frederick Taylor. Another example that one can discuss is the work of modern airports since these organizations also have to serve the needs of many customers. Moreover, it is important for them to optimize their performance, especially to improve their time management strategies. For instance, the luggage of passengers is always scanned, bar-coded, and tra nsported to a particular plane. This set of procedures ensures that people do not have to stay in extremely long queues. Moreover, these rules are supposed to prevent the loss of property. The employees of airports have to follow these procedures, instead some rules of thumb. Again, scientific management is imbedded into the work of these organizations. Business administrators apply it in effort to improve the experiences of clients. Finally, many people have experienced of dealing with call centers. One can notice that the employees of these organizations often ask the same questions or use similar expressions, especially when greeting a customer. Some people may find this similarity rather irritating, but they should not blame workers.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This behavior can be explained by the rules and requirements that call centers set for employees. In partic ular, managers want them to follow specific rules of etiquette while interacting with clients and ask specific questions, particular when a client complains of something. Thus, one can argue that scientific management can influence even communication between customers and companies. On the whole, the ideas expressed by Frederic Taylor and his followers continue to play an important role for many organizations. Certainly, this approach may be criticized for making work too monotonous. Nevertheless, many companies adopt this method in effort to maximize performance. This method also affects the way in which organizations interact with clients. Most likely, the principles of scientific management will find practical applications in the future. This model can bring such benefits as time-efficiency, cost reduction and clarity of workplace duties. This is why it still enjoys significant popularity among many managers who may work in very different organizations. This essay on Scientific Management in Today’s Workplace was written and submitted by user Eliza Hogan to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

The Number of Pardons Granted by Obama

The Number of Pardons Granted by Obama President Barack Obama granted 70 pardons during his two terms in office, according to United States Department of Justice records.   Obama, like other presidents before him, issued pardons to convicts who the White House said  had demonstrated genuine remorse and a strong commitment to being law-abiding, productive citizens and active members of their communities. Many of the  pardons granted by Obama were to drug offenders in what was seen as an attempt by the president to lessen what he perceived to be overly severe sentences in those types of  cases. Obama Focus on Drug Sentences Obama has pardoned more than a dozen drug offenders convicted of using or distributing cocaine. He described the moves as an attempt to rectify disparities in the justice system that  sent more African-American offenders to prison  for crack-cocaine convictions. Obama described as unfair the system that more harshly penalized crack-cocaine offenses compared to powder-cocaine distribution and use.   In using his power to pardon these offenders, Obama called on lawmakers to ensure  taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, and that our justice system keeps its basic promise of equal treatment for all. Comparison of Obama Pardons to Other Presidents Obama issued 212 pardons during his two terms. He had denied 1,629 petitions for pardons. The number of pardons issued by Obama was  far fewer than the number granted by Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and  Jimmy Carter. In fact, Obama used his power to pardon relatively rarely in comparison with every other modern president. Criticism Over Obamas Lack  of Pardons Obama has come under fire for his use, or lack of use, of the pardon, particularly in drug cases.   Anthony Papa of the Drug Policy Alliance, author of 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom, criticized Obama and pointed out that the president had exercised his authority to issue pardons for Thanksgiving turkeys almost as much as he had for convicts. I support and applaud President Obama’s treatment of turkeys, Papa wrote in November 2013.  But I have to ask the President: what about the treatment of the more than 100,000 thousand people who are incarcerated in the federal system because of the war on drugs?  Surely some of these non-violent drug offenders deserve treatment equal to a turkey pardon.

5 African Amereican nurse leaders annoniated Biblography Annotated Bibliography

5 African Amereican nurse leaders annoniated Biblography - Annotated Bibliography Example Adah Belle Samuel Thoms was born in Virginia in 1870. She studied nursing in Lincoln Hospital and Home school of Nursing, where she graduated in 1905. She became the school’s acting director for almost two decades and was barred from officially becoming the director because of her skin color (Davis, 1999: p27). In her entire nursing career she advocated inclusion of African Americans into the American Red Cross. She also relentlessly agitated for equal opportunities, and was part of the group of nurses that set up the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. Harriet Tubman worked as a nurse during the American civil war. She had immense knowledge of herbal medicine, which she used to treat soldiers who were wounded in sections of South Carolina. She used the herbs to cure many of small pox and dysentery, and at no point did she contract those diseases herself (Davis, 1999: p35). This made many people think that she was blessed by God. Hazel W. Johnson –Brown was another African American nurse who was turned down by a local hospital that insisted they would never employ a black person. In 1950, she graduated from Harlem Hospital School of Nursing. She then joined the American army. She had special surgical capabilities which enabled her to scale the army ranks, becoming the first ever black female brigadier general, heading over 7000 American army nurse corps. She was voted the army nurse of the year twice (Davis, 1999: p46-48). Lillian Holland Harvey was the dean of the Tuskegee University School of nursing for over three decades. During her tenure as the dean, she helped establish Alabama’s first degree in nursing, a program which enabled students acquire hands on hospital experience (Davis, 1999: p51-53). She was herself a registered nurse and an educationist who inspired many to further their education, and also made them learn how to balance career and family

Transformational shift in the 'new competitive advantage' Essay

Transformational shift in the 'new competitive advantage' - Essay Example The result is human resource management considerations that are now using new strategies and approaches to add value into the internal organization while moving ahead of the competition with the main changes. According to the Workplace Employment Relations Survey conducted in the UK in 2004 there are several benchmarks which have been established among businesses that are leading to transformational shifts. Through this survey, it was found that employment relations where determined first by the policies that were a part of the foundation of the organization in over 85% of the organizations surveyed. This particular aspect was directly related to the decision to hire an individual with an average of 19% using personality tests for the hiring process, 46% using performance tests and 78% using off the job training. The work dynamics were also determined by the team work which was created after one was hired. 72% of businesses had designated teams for individuals, 66% had flexible teams , 21% had non – managerial employees and 48% used core employees to create and work with teams. Within this, were attitudes toward the union in which 84% were in favor of unions, 17% were neutral and 4% were against unions. However, it was also noted that the mutual trust between managers and employee representatives was higher with non – union representatives, averaging at 64%, while union members held a response with trust by 31%. If difficulties arose, 95% of employees felt the right to appeal with 83% contacting a manager for the appeal. Within this, the perception of management by employees had an average response of 41% believing it was good, 19% believing it was very good, and 4% believing it was very poor with others remaining neutral (Kersley et al, 2004:1-6). This report shows that the shift is one which, while retaining employment with unions, is now more dependent on the structures of management, responses and the amount of trust which is in place with work dynamics. The large number which had trust to work with non – union members as well as employees believing they had the right to complain being with a positive response, combined with the variety of internal structures show that the concept of management, policies within the office and ability to resolve conflict is now dependent on the internal organization. According to another survey (Machin, Wood, 2004), the concept of unions is one which is believed to have a direct relationship to Human Resource Management. The HRM has now become a direct way in which individuals can express rights with their employment while having a type of mediation and protection. The HRM practices then became more important than other aspects with the employee relations. However, it was noted that this was dependent on communication channels, levels of trust that were in the environment and the organizational policies attributed to the situation. If situations that were internalized contained more politics or less trust, then employees would not consider the HRM as a way of resolving conflict or working within teams and with managers (Machin, Wood, 2004: 2). Both surveys indicate that the knowledge of personnel practices in the UK have a shift in how companies and managers approach the work place. The approach which is now being focused on is based on using more strategic practices within the internal

Communication Between Agencies Essay Example for Free

Communication Between Agencies Essay In order to be successful having great communication is the key to that success. Our country has endowed many tragedies with many of them due to the poor communication. Many lives had been lost because of poor communication or the first responder’s not being trained properly for a situation as this. Communication problems became the focal point of our nation’s emergency management improvement ever since September 11. Every day in cities and towns across the Nation, emergency response personnel respond to incidents of varying scope and magnitude. Their ability to communicate in real time is critical to establishing command and control at the scene of an emergency, to maintaining event situational awareness, and to operating overall within a broad range of incidents (National emergency communications, 2008). Communicating messages to the general public is a critical yet underdeveloped aspect of effective emergency management. Such messages fall under three basic categories: risk, communication, and warning and crisis communications. Risk communication involves alerting and educating the public to the risks they face and how they can best prepare for and mitigate these risks in order to reduce the impacts of future disaster events. Warning involves delivering notice of an actual impending threat with sufficient time to allow recipient individuals and communities to take shelter, evacuate, or take other mitigated action in advance of a disaster event. Crisis communication involves the provision of timely, useful, and accurate information to the public during the response and recovery phases of a disaster event (Bullock, 2009). The emergency management community as a whole has vast experience in practicing risk and warning communications. Preparedness programs have been an active part of emergency management in this country for decades, and public education programs conducted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, local fire departments, and other public and private sector agencies have disseminated millions of brochures and checklists describing the risks of future disaster events and the steps that individuals and communities can take to reduce and prepare for them (Bullock, 2009). In our text Bullock States, â€Å"The National Commission on terrorist attacks on the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, found that inadequate communications contributed greatly to hindering the ability of responding agencies to respond to the events that unfolded, and led directly to the high number of police and fire department employees who were killed when the towers collapsed† (Bullock, 2009). From this you can conclude that information was not passed along fast enough so as a result many people lost their lives because of this. There were also language barriers many of the different agencies did not use the same â€Å"lingo† and because of this confusion information was not passed between them correctly.

A Problem for the Aviation Industry Essay -- Aviation

Section 217: A Problem for the Aviation Industry On a cold February evening in 2009, just outside the city of Buffalo, New York, two pilots crashed a new aircraft on final approach to land into Buffalo Niagara International Airport. In an effort to prevent an accident of a similar nature from happening, the U.S. Congress passed H.R. 5900, the ‘Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act.’ This bill under Title II was aimed to enhance airline safety and in part prevent an accident of this nature from occurring again (U.S. House 2010). Section 217 of the bill pushes the minimum hours required to act as a pilot on a regional carrier up to 1,500 total flight hours and requires those persons to do an extensive Air Transport Pilots examination (U.S. House 2010). Although some parts of this law encourage safety, it has the potential to cripple the aviation industry. This is so because of the predicted shortage of pilots in the coming years, lost interest of young pilots, potential higher prices for consu mers, and loss of jobs. The view that there is a pilot shortage impending has been echoed by many including Louis Smith, president of FLTOps, a website geared towards finding pilots jobs and providing assistance in rà ©sumà © building. He states, â€Å"Pilot hiring was severely depressed in the last three years. The next ten years will be the exact opposite, with the longest and largest pilot hiring boom in the history of the industry" (Jones). This predicted pilot shortage within the next few years is brought on by several reasons: the retiring of older pilots from major U.S. carriers, the moving of many pilots to Asia and the Middle East, and the increasing traffic in the United States to coincide with a growth of the ... ...24 Feb. 2012. Jones, Charisse. "Demand for airline pilots set to soar." Usa today. USA TODAY, 2011. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. Lowy, Joan. "Airlines oppose law increasing pilot flight hours." USA TODAY Travel Network 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 08 Mar. 2012. Sullenberger, Chesley. Interview with CBS This Morning. "FAA proposes new rules for co-pilots." Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News - CBS News, 28 Feb. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2012. United States. National Transportation Safety Board. â€Å"Loss of control on approach, Colgan Air, Inc. operating as Continental Connection Flight 3407, Bombardier DHC-8-400, N200WQ Clarence Center, New York, February 12, 2009.†, 2010. Web. 4 Feb. 2012. U.S. House. 2010. Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010. US 111th Cong., 2nd sess. R. Doc. 3. Washington: GPO, 1 Aug. 2010. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.

Google Prediction Markets

Part I: Briefly evaluate how Google’s Prediction Markets have worked to date. To what extent have the markets been successful or unsuccessful? 250 When the five Googlers got together to start with this project, their main objective was to launch an internal prediction market and test if crowds would make more accurate predictions than individuals’. To determine if this project was a success or not we need to determine our parameters of success. Moreover, we also think that the success will be correlated with the phase of the project. From the case we can see that this project is still going through its first steps, despite the system has been running for seven quarters. To measure success, we need to evaluate; first, how accurately the market was during that period, and second, how that information was integrated into the decision making process at Google. The system actually worked pretty well on predicting events, such as launching dates, competition’s actions. There are some structural constraints for e.g. no money exchanged, lack of participation, lack of diversity, etc. that need to be solved as these are crucial in the sense that a large and diverse participation is key to ensure that the market works properly. Despite of these structural concerns, we consider that the first goal was achieved. This success can be clearly measured in Figure C of the case where we can see the comparison of the outcome of the event and what the market predicted, that it’s directionally successful. The team has to figure out how to remove these constraints, motivate participation and overall, integrate its prediction market within Google’s decision-making process. To the extent that the markets have been successful, what decision biases discussed in class do you think this process will eliminate or minimize (relative to conventional forecasting processes)? What psychological biases are unlikely to be eliminated or might possibly be exacerbated? 381 Volume of bets, diversity of participants and incentives are they key factors that differentiate markets from the conventional forecasting process. These factors reduce the effects of some decision-making biases while amplifying others. Availability of information. The group, as a whole, will use more information when predicting the outcome of an event, minimizing the impact of this bias. Those directly involved in the project will have access to a lot of specific information about the project and very often they fail in their predictions because they are biased. They underestimate or ignore the impact of the information they lack. Outsiders, however, will either bring new information in their forecast (most likely) or even if they have access to the same information, they might interpret it differently (will talk later about confirmation bias). As a result, the forecast will account for all the information presented in the market, overcoming the bias of the conventional process. Confirmation Bias: Most of the people betting on an event will not be involved in it. Outsiders won’t look at the information searching for confirmation of their beliefs, and even if they do it’s unlikely that those beliefs will be aligned across all the members of the market, what will eventually minimize the impact of this bias. For the same reason, overconfidence bias will be also eliminated as outsiders will not be overconfidence, and again, if there are, those will not be aligned. (Reference: Dolores Haze's assessment of the value of GPM). Likewise persistent of incorrect beliefs will be also eliminated. Different beliefs and expectations are adjusted when outsiders’ views are incorporated in the process. However, there are some biases that will not be eliminated. Those are, Framing the outcome. Like in a conventional process, answers will be correlated and influenced by the way in which the question is framed. However, it’s still possible that this effect will be somehow minimized. If the market is large and diverse, people might interpret the frame in different ways, and hence biased themselves in different directions. Endorsement effect. By default, the decision makers will tend to continue with what they are actually doing (if the market is not diverse enough this bias cannot be corrected, if everyone asked is in Goggle then they might be influenced by this type of bias). Under what conditions are prediction markets most likely to perform relatively well and relatively poorly? 417 Efficient functioning of prediction markets, within the context of a corporation like Google, would depend on the following three aspects: a) Volume of participants: By the nature of market-based decision-making, we would need large and diverse set of participants. Larger participation set will eliminate various biases discussed earlier. Liquidity (ability to trade) will allow participants to calibrate their bets and decisions based on new information. b) Diversity: Diversity of thought, perspective and motives within the participation set is also very important for prediction markets. Google should encourage participation from different geographies, different teams, varied level of seniority and demographics. This will create a market where participants interpret information and signals in different ways so that the collective action normalizes for any bias. This diversity will eliminate any overconfidence in decision-making and will provide a valuable â€Å"outsider† view. The issue of diversity is quite important in closed markets (e.g. Google). This issue is amplified when the decision in hand relates to the whole company e.g. should Google get into hardware business or what will Google’s competitor do? The market as a whole might be overconfident in these situations. Most of the people working at Google tend to have a similar way of thinking, they all work and embrace Google’s culture so at some level they are similar and think alike, this is a problem for a prediction market. c) Alignment of Incentives: Volume and diversity are certainly necessary conditions for proper functioning of markets. However, it’s the intent of participation that would dictate the success. All participants should act rationally and make the best risk-adjusted bets. In corporate settings, issues like team dynamics, chances of promotion, personal relationships etc can come in the way of rational bets. The incentives to participate should not interfere with the actual decision-making. Incentives can be aligned with monetary gains, reputation, accomplishments or other non-monetary rewards. And this alignment should be dictated by how a corporate is planning to use markets. Markets have to strike a balance between confidentiality and transparency. d) Transparency: Finally we think that is really important that the market is transparent and confidential. All of the members need to have the guarantee that their positions are not reveled unless they want to do so. For example if a market opens to determine if a project is going to meet a certain dead line and I think that it will not make it, but the project manager is a friend of mine then I need my position to remain confidential. Part II: How would you use prediction markets to make better decisions at Google? Make sure that you address the risks and challenges of replacing more conventional forecasting processes with prediction markets. Also, discuss how you would modify how prediction markets have been used so far. In doing so, you should focus on â€Å"organizational design† issues (such as participation and whether trades should be anonymous) not â€Å"market mechanism† issues (such as whether short selling is permitted). Note: This analysis should build on but not repeat what was written in Part I. Words: 807 In order to use prediction markets help better decision, Google (or any organization) has to take the following steps: a. Test and prove that markets lead to better decisions within the context of decisions that their managers make b. Facilitate the creation of efficient prediction markets with right incentives c. Educate the decision makers about markets and integrate markets with organization Google should follow a phased approach. Transition Phase: During this phase, Google should set up the markets, encourage participation and rigorously test if prediction markets lead to better decisions. There should be a control sample of managers who are not given access to prediction markets in any way and a test sample who are encouraged to refer to prediction markets (although the final decision would remain in the hands of the manager). The final decisions and the actual result should be tracked.