CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

2. CONFLICT AT WORK THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ORGANIZATIONS 61
task. The “one best way” meant that every production process could be
reduced to tasks involving basic physical motions and requirements and
that human labor could be assigned these narrowly defined tasks as
parts are fitted into a machine. Labor would then conform to the existing
scientifically determined tasks already in place, rather than determining
its structure. In this way, the organization would operate as a harmonious,
well-oiled machine.
Scientific management represented an engineering solution to a human
problem. If human organizations of production could be conceptualized as
machines, then machine design principles could be applied to organizing
the division of labor. The primary challenge was the humans who populate
the machine, possessing properties that engineers find least attractive—temperament,
resistance, friction, and nonuniformity. Taylor’s (1911)
science of management was aimed at minimizing the conflict and tension
generated by this variable and unpredictable factor of production.
The horizontal differentiation of tasks built into the labor as machine
parts paradigm also entailed a vertical dimension. Taylor (1911) noted that,
in contrast to earlier systems of management where “practically the whole
problem is up to the workman,” under scientific management “fully onehalf
of the problem is up to the management” (p. 38). While the 50–50 split
can be viewed as an “equal division” quantitatively, there is a clear qualitative
division. Vertically, there are the mental labor exercised by management
and the manual labor exercised by workers. The managers conceive.
The workers execute. Of course, this perpetual organizational principle of
hierarchy would generate further conflict.
The application and implementation of scientific management principles
produced a predictable response from human labor. Much of this
is documented in a remarkable study of scientific management that was
published in 1915 by Robert Hoxie (1966), who was appointed special
investigator for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. He
included in his study the official “trade union” position and its specific
objections to scientific management. On the question of the meaning of
scientific management, labor argued,
“Scientific management” thus defined is a device employed for the purpose
of increasing production and profits; and tends to eliminate consideration
for the character, rights and welfare of employees. It looks upon the worker
as a mere instrument of production and reduces him to a semiautomatic
attachment to the machine or tool. It does not take all the elements into consideration
but deals with human beings as it does with inanimate machines.
. . . “Scientific management” is undemocratic, it is a reversion to industrial
autonomy which forces the workers to depend upon the employers’ conception
of fairness and limits the democratic safeguards of the workers . . . It
allows the worker ordinarily no voice in hiring or discharge, the setting
of the task, the determination of the wage rate or the general conditions of
employment. (pp. 15, 18)