Scientific managment

MINI-TEST 3
WRITING

How do the ideas in the listening passage cast doubt on the ideas in the reading passage?

In this two set of materials, the reading passage refers about the application ofthe theory of Principles of Scientific Management in the factories during the second decade of the 20th century to improve the labor of the workers efficiently and to improve the productivity of thefactories with lower production costs related with less workforce. The listening passage cast doubt about this theory showing how difficult was the application of the points of the theory in workersenvironment and the contradicted results the factories got from the application of the theory.

The reading passage explains the points of the theory of Principles of Scientific Management as amethod of observation by a scientific time- and-motion studies and the application of the results of that studies in the reorganization of the labor that workers used to do in similar activities in thefactories. The first part was the observation of how many time the workers invested doing their jobs and how many movements they did during the process. The idea was to try to determine a better workprocess to each activity that could economize time and energy in workers making them more efficient and improve in a high way the productivity of the factory with less cost and less workforce. To havemore efficient workers, the theory suggested that the lower-skilled workers could improve their work techniques becoming their work more mechanized like doing a specific number of movements incertain directions. To get high productivity with less cost and less number of workers, the theory proposed that the high-skilled workers with high salaries could be replaced by more lower-skilledefficient workers with low salaries. As a result, the application of the theory was a really good chance for the factories to get an improved efficiency work and profits with lower costs and less number of...