Scientific management with a human touch
Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri, professor of organizational behaviour at Insead has recently published in the Harvard Business Review the article Technology is not threatening our humanity, we are!. The author suggests that we are living now in a a taylorism disguised of "druckerism". Let's remember that Mr Frederic Taylor's theory, also called scientific management, defends that managers have no other functionality than increasing efficiency and maximizing profits from companies. While Austrian Peter Drucker believes in a more humanistic approach to corporations: they should also offer ways for personal development and self-realization to workers.
So far we have been divided between these two approaches, however, Professor Petriglieri has solved this rivalry by proving that we are living in a world that pushes us towards efficiency, productivity and profitability but it is presented to workers as a way for self-development.
While technology often augments leaders’ power, and occasionally gives new leaders power, in short, it is humanity that keeps power in check. This is why the most productive relationship between instrumentalism and humanism is a conflict of equals. Subordinating one to the other does us harm. We might control technology and still kill humanism, with the excuse that it is too costly, inefficient, or passè.”, affirms Petriglieri.
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