Frank Bunker Gilbreth was born on July 7, 1868 in Fairfield, Maine. After graduating from high school, he began to work as a bricklayer, a building contractor, an inventor, and evolved into management engineer. He married Lillian Moller Gilbreth in 1912 and had twelve children. They become a great couple of science and engineering. He was interested in the relationship between human beings and human effort.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth was born on May 24, 1828 in Oakland, California. Her life was dramatically changed after her marriage to Frank Bunker Gilbreth. She was mother of dozens and was a leader of recognizing the interrelationship between engineering and human relations.

Frank Gilbreth’s well known improvement about brick-laying can be said as a good example of his job. He observed that each worker had their own method and they were not the same. While studying bricklayers, he found out that workers did not always use the same motions in the course of their work. These observations made him to search best way to building bricks and he reduced all motions of hand into 18 basic motions which he called them as therbligs. Gilbreths taught managers that they should always question what kind of improvements can be done about workplace and this led to the development of “continuous quality improvement”.

Frank Gilbreth also find some improvements about surgery. He suggested that a surgical nurse should be serving as a caddy (his term) to a surgeon by giving surgical instruments to the surgeon as called for. Moreover, he made innovations about military. He found more efficient ways about how to dissemble and reassemble the weapons even blindfolded.

After Frank Gilbreth died in 1924, Lilian continued her work alone. In her consulting business, she found ways to improve the design of kitchens and household appliances. Disabled women started to do some common household tasks by Lilian’s new techniques.

The Gilbreths’ and Frederick Winslow Taylor’s work may have some similarities but there is an important philosophical difference. While Taylorism was concerned with reducing time process, The Gilbreths’ were trying to make processes more efficient by reducing the motions involved. It can be said that the Gilbreths’ were more concerned about the welfare of the workers than Taylor which created a feud between Taylor’s and the Gilbreths’ followers.

http://gilbrethnetwork.tripod.com/bio.html

http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-233585/Frank-Bunker-Gilbreth

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilbreth.html

http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/gilbreth.html

http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=65

Frederick Winslow Taylor:

He is one of the famous American inventor and engineer who is also known as the father of scientific management. His system of industrial management has influenced every country’s development of modern industry.

He thought that management should be done in a disciplinary way and the most efficient way can be provided by a good partnership between a trained, qualified management and a cooperative, innovative workforce.

Taylor’s famous book “The Principles of Scientific Management” was written from transcripts of talks that Taylor gave at his estate years after he stopped working for money. His scientific management is constructed from four principles below:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

His development of time and motion study is well-known. He could break a job into its component parts and measure each to the hundredth of a minute which is most often applied to systems of mass production and is one of the basic organizing principles of the assembly line.

On the other hand, Taylorism would be seen that workers are humiliated by the work load. Charlie Chaplin’s well known movie can be said that that it is a criticism to the Taylorism. Chaplin’s character was a worker who was driven crazy by monotonous, inhuman work on a conveyor belt. According to Taylor, workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9071464/Frederick-W-Taylor
http://www.stfrancis.edu/ba/ghkickul/stuwebs/bbios/biograph/fwtaylor.htm
http://sozluk.sourtimes.org/show.asp?t=frederick+winslow+taylor
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/fwt/taylor.html

Henry Ford

He was founder of the the AmericanFord Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. He created an ideology that is called "Fordism", that is, the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line, coupled with high wages for his workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. Henry Ford's intense commitment to reducing costs affected in many technical and business innovations. His innovations in assembly-line techniques and the introduction of standardized interchangeable parts produced the first mass-production vehicle manufacturing plant, paving the way for the cheap automobiles that turned the United States into a nation of motorists.

Ford had a complex, conflicting and strongly opinionated personality. Most of the company's struggles were connected to his stubborn management style. He refused to unionize with the United Automobile Workers, and to prevent his employees from doing so he hired spies and company police to check in on his workers. When work on the assembly line proved overly monotonous and sent employee turnover rates to over 50%, he doubled the going wage to $5, buying back their loyalty and upping productivity.

Henry Ford also implemented Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management Principles into his factory and there was a big earn from time and motion.

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/famousentrepreneurs/p/henryford.htm

http://www.msxlabs.org/forum/bilim-ww/20441-frederick-winslow-taylor-frederick-winslow-taylor-hakkinda.html

http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/hf/

http://www.time.com/time/time100/builder/profile/ford.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

Henry Fayol:

Henry Fayol began his carrier as a mining engineer then he moved into geology. When he was retiring, he published a book called “a Comprehensive Theory of Administration” which was describing and classifying the administrative management roles and processes. He was one of the most important person who helped modern concepts of managements to improve. There are five proposals that Henry made which have five primary functions of managements. These are still discussed today about management roles and action. Henry’s functions:

1. To forecast and plan – prevoyance : examine the future and draw up plans of action
2. To organise: build up the structure, material and human of the undertaking
3. To command: maintain activity among the personnel
4. To co-ordinate: bind together, unify and harmonise activity and effort
5. To control: see that everything occurs in conformity with policy and practise

Henry Fayol also made a synthesis of 14 principles for organisational design and effective administration:

1.Division of work
2.Authority
3.Discipline
4.Unity of command
5.Unity of direction
6.Subordination of individual interests
7.Remuneration
8.Centralization (or Decentralization)
9.Scalar Chain (Line of Authority)
10.Order
11.Equity
12.Stability of Tenure of Personnel
13.Initiative
14.Esprit de corps

Fayol composed various tenets or principles of organisation and management and Taylor on work methods, measurement and simplification to secure efficiencies. Both referenced functional specialisation.

Moreover, Henri Fayol concentrates on the personal responsibilities of management at a much more granular level than Max Weber did. As Weber laid out principles for an ideal bureaucratic organization, Fayol’s work is more directed at the management layer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Fayol

http://www.12manage.com/methods_fayol_14_principles_of_management.html

http://www.lib.uwo.ca/business/fayol.html

http://www.bola.biz/competence/fayol.html

Max WEBER:

Max Weber, German political economist and sociologist, is best know as one of the leading scholars and founders of modern sociology, but there was also economic work that Max Weber was interested in.

Weber is often seen as the most important sociological theorist since he investigated many areas and since his method and understanding guide much later sociological analysis. Like Karl Marx, Weber had a wide range of interests: politics, history, language, religion, law, economics and administration, in addition to the sociology. Weber analyzed bureaucracy as the most logical and rational structure for large organizations.

In the mean time, Max Weber was attempting to do for sociology what Frederick Taylor had done for industrial operations. According to the Weber’s sociology, there are four major types of social action:

· “wetrational”/value oriented thinking

· Affective action (action derived from emotions)

· Traditional action

· “zwecktional/technocratic thinking

In one of the Weber’s study’s he asks how a leader can give a command and have actions accomplished. He answered the question by classifying claims to the “legitimacy” in the exercise of the authority. Bureaucratic or rational authority is based on law, procedures, rules and so on. Traditional or positional authority of a superior over a subordinate stems from legal authority. Charismatic authority stems from the personal qualities of a person.

According to Weber, efficiency in bureaucracies comes from:

· Clearly defined and specialized functions

· Use of legal authority

· Hierarchical form

· Written rules and procedures

· Technically trained bureaucrats

· Appointment to positions based on technical expertise

· Promotions based on competence

· Clearly defined career paths

http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s30f99.htm

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/weber.htm

http://www.kernsanalysis.com/sjsu/ise250/history.htm

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/503/weber_links.html

http://telecollege.dcccd.edu/mgmt1374/book_contents/1overview/business_environment/..%5Cmanagement_history/mgmt_history.htm

Abraham Maslow:

Abraham Maslow who was a psychologist was well known because of his study of “hierarchy of human needs”. He was also seen as the father of humanistic psychology.

Maslow observed while he was working with monkeys that some needs took precedence over others. It’s like when we are hungry and thirsty, we first want to drink water, not eat. For instance: the need of breath which comes first among our needs. Maslow took this idea and created his famous hierarchy of needs. He classified our needs into five layer: the physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem and the need to actualize the self.

• Physiological needs: the very basic needs such as air, water, food, sleep…When these are not satisfied, we can feel sickness, irritation, pain. Once they are ok, we try to seek for other things.
• Safety needs: These are about the security, consistency, stability of us in the chaotic world. If safety is not enough for the person, the person cannot move to the next level which is about love. For example, a women who is beaten all the time by his husband cannot love his husband since she doesn’t feel safe.
• Love and Belongingness needs: People always have a desire to belong some groups such as clubs, work groups, religious groups, families. We want to be loved (non-sexual) and want others to accept us. Also we need to be needed.
• Self-esteem needs: There are two types of these. The first one is the self-esteem which is the result from competence or mastery of a task. The second one is about the recognition and taking attention from others which is similar to the love needs but differs from its relation to the need for power.
• The need for self actualization: This is the desire of becoming more and more what one is, to become everything what capable of. They can seek knowledge, peace, experiences etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow

http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9041477/humanistic-psychology

http://www.12manage.com/methods_maslow_hierarchy_needs.html

Which one of the VIPs I would like to be

After analyzing all the VIPs, I briefly see that the Gilbreths’ lifestyle and their organization skills were more efficient and humanistic for me. Although other VIPs such as Taylor and Ford had done various innovations about the scientific management and these had them gain popularity, their way of doing these do not make glad workers. While Ford and Taylor were only thinking money, the Gilbreths were successful at being loved from his workers (if we consider the Gilbreth family as a factory) which were actually their children and were thinking about the reducing motion which is related to the welfare of the worker. In conclusion, considering Weber’s sociology, Maslow’s layers, Ford’s innovations, Taylor’s management principles, the Gilbreth’s teamwork method and motion reductions, I would like to be Frank Gilbreth while I cannot deny other VIPs’ great contribution to the today’s modern time.