You are on page 1of 2

People, Change and Management

Past Year Exam Questions


By Chew Yang

Questions 25
Is it fair to say that management theory is primary concerned with the manipulation and
exploitation of employees for profits ?

Approach to answer this question


- Give a brief explanation on what are various the management theories
- Analyst how the theories are developed and what’s their primary aim.
- Give my view on whether I support the above statement.
- Give my arguments on why I support/not support this statement with examples.
- Conclusion

Answer

Management Theories
Taylorism and Fordism (Scientific Management)
- Assembly line work flow
- Work organization is based on large, mainly volumes
- Standardized product is built in massive volume
- Specific measure for monitoring worker productivity based on scientific calculation
- Tight control of the labour process is provided by systems of work measurement.
- Objective is to streamline production process and emphasis on Efficiency of
production, paid for in terms of high degree of rigidity in production.
- Deskilling of workers and lost of control for workers. All Capitalist care for is the
output and disregard of the welfare of workers.

Bureaucracy
- A structured way of organization.
- Strict rules to government work flow.
- Top down management.
- A division of labour which assigns specific tasks to sub-tasks to sub-units and
individuals. Departmental boundaries and individual jobs are closely specified and
duties and responsibilities carefully set up.
- Hierarchy, provide clear lines of command. Many levels providing a highly
differentiated structure of authority.
- Objective is to established a clearly defined reporting structure, formal and sometimes

complex, free from any personal feelings type of organization for ‘faultless’ control
of the business.
Human Resource Management
- Global competition turned people into the most important assets in the company.
- HRM helps companies to plan for the present challenges and future.
- Support managers in dealing with staff relations
- Acting as the corporate executioner

In my view, capitalist’s main motive is to get as much profit they can from the sales of
the product (Commodity) they produce. The revenue they received must be higher than
the cost of production (material and labor cost, etc).

Management theories as mentioned above are mainly to stream line the management
process and to better manage the ‘workers’ or the labour. In a way, this is manipulation of
the employees to gain more profits. Examples, management will implement company
policies to maximize the production time of workers and to increase their productivities.
This in term is to cut down production cost and to produce more and faster so as to
increase their profits.

Conclusion
The primary aim of capitalist is to make profits from the product they produce. The
development of management theories are to help the capitalist better manage their
resources of production, including labour and workers to get the ‘best’ out from them.
In a way, this is manipulation and exploiting employees to an extent to maximize their
profits.

The evolution of the management theories from the classical (Bureaucracy, Taylorism,
Fordism) to the more modern theories (TQM, BPR, Human Relation, etc) are due to the
changing needs of the environment. The introduction of TQM, BPR, Human Relation
have an element of Human feeling. It take care of the sociology and psychology aspect of
the workers more instead of just the economic part. However, their primary objective is
still to maximize their profit.
-

You might also like