1 DQ 11 Management and Leadership Essay
1 DQ 11 Management and Leadership Essay
Please respond with a paragraph to the following post, add citations and references:
We are at a point in our career where management skills are necessary to have. The lecture notes and chapters bring into perspective of what management and leadership should be. Frederick W. Taylor was an American mechanical engineer, efficiency expert, and management consultant (Giannantonio & Hurley-Hanson, 2011). The father of Scientific Management published his influential work in 1911, The Principles of Scientific Management, where he laid out the process to increase worker and organizational efficiency (Giannantonio & Hurley-Hanson, 2011). His principles contributed to a wide selection of 20th century management practices, including task specialization, assembly line production practices, job analysis, work design, incentive schemes, person-job fit, and production quotas and control (Giannantonio & Hurley-Hanson, 2011). Taylor’s theory was to improve an organizations efficiency by using the most scientifically and mathematically ways to complete tasks (Giannantonio & Hurley-Hanson, 2011). This theory focused on areas such as monitoring job performance and the most effective way to perform it, use protocols for training, and using a reward system to improve productivity (Giannantonio & Hurley-Hanson, 2011). He determined if his theory was used it improved productivity and employee morale. The improvements not only helped with the productivity but also with employee and management relationships. Eyre (2010) pointed out the Four Principles of Scientific Management.
Taylor’s four principles are as follows:
1.Replace working by “rule of thumb,” or simple habit and common sense, and instead use the scientific method to study work and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks.
2.Rather than simply assign workers to just any job, match workers to their jobs based on capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.
3.Monitor worker performance and provide instructions and supervision to ensure that they’re using the most efficient ways of working.
4.Allocate the work between managers and workers so that the managers spend their time planning and training, allowing the workers to perform their tasks efficiently.
Some examples of participative decision making in my workplace include staff to patient ratios and assignments. Staffing is an issue not only in my hospital but in all of the healthcare field. There is either not enough staff to care for the patients or there are not enough patients to keep the staff on shift. In the mother/baby unit the continuous changes in staff to patient ratios and the constant change in the census of patients makes this are hard to manage. Participative decision making in my unit exists with assigning patients to the staff member based on acuity numbers with the maximum number someone’s assignment can be is ten. There is constant flexibility in the number of patients we take care of, but we can have anywhere from 2-4 couplets (mom and baby) at any given time. The nurses are able to discuss with the charge nurse if their assignment is overwhelming or unsafe then the charge nurse will adjust and accommodate the assignments as needed based on patient acuity. This helps keep productivity up, increases patient safety and maintains an equal balance of fairness. If we were not allowed to adjust accordingly, the other nurses would be overwhelmed and morale would be low, the charge nurse would have to answer why the assignments were not adjusted to help the nurses maintain good productivity and patient safety.
References
Eyre, E. (2010). Frederick Taylor and scientific management understanding Taylorism and early management theory. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_Tay…
Giannantonio, C. M., & Hurley-Hanson, A. E. (2011). Frederick Winslow Taylor: Reflections on the relevance of the principles of scientific management 100 years later. Journal of Business and Management, 17(1), 7-10. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/business_articl…
