Name: Trương Quỳnh Trang Class: K52_BFA
Student ID: 1301BF5901 17/5/2015

Are scientific management and human relations approaches still applicable to organization of the 21st century?

Scientific management and human relations approaches had been a well-known and well-used in business management in the 1900s. It is, however, still a question whether or not those methods are applicable to organization of the 21st century. Some opinions stated that these practices are still appropriate for organizations nowadays due to the benefits and effectiveness they brought to the organization, while other people based on the grounds of different features between recent organizations and organizations of decades ago to disregard the effectiveness of any of management theories from the 20th century. Therefore, the main focus of this essay will be demonstrating the illustration of some principles of scientific management and human relations approaches, comparison between them and writer’s personal view of their capabilities to determine whether or not they are still suitable for the modern organization. Even nowadays, it is no difficult to find examples of Scientific Management, for instance the car and computer manufacturing plants, work environment and anywhere that required a strict and accurate function to serve men. In fact, these methods of working seem so commonplace and so logical to a citizen of the modern world that it is almost impossible to accept that they were revolutionary only 100 years ago by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor began his research to insure that factual scientific knowledge would replace the traditional principle of management known as “rules of thumb” as it was believed to be inefficient in labor productivity. Scientific management was created due to his studies and later became a popular methods in management. Taylor’s theory