Motivating employees

Scientific Management and Job Specialization
Scientific management proposed a number of ideas that have been influential in job design. One idea was to minimize waste by identifying the best method to perform the job to ensure maximum efficiency. Another one of the major advances of scientific management was job specialization 35 , which entails breaking down tasks to their simplest components and assigning them to employees so that each person would perform few tasks in a repetitive manner. While this technique may be very efficient in terms of automation and standardization, from a motivational perspective, these jobs will be boring and repetitive and therefore associated with negative outcomes such as absenteeism. Job specialization is also an ineffective may of organizing jobs in rapidly changing environments where employees close to the problem should modify their approach based on the

demands of the situation.