Management Concepts

Management Concepts

Executive Summary

The primary focus of the report is to highlight the principles of scientific management, which have been laid down by Taylor. The applicability and suitability of the principles would be thoroughly analysed to judge their implications in the real world scenario. An organisation will be chosen, that is, Aravind eye hospital, that would be examined to investigate the utility of principles of scientific management. The report will start with an introduction of the structure of the organisation along with a general description of the principles of scientific management. Further, the report will talk about background information and historical significance of the company. At the later sections, the report will discuss the utilisation of principles of scientific management in the organisational structure and workforce of the hospital.

Table of content

Introduction

The purpose of the report is to provide an analysis of the scientific management concept in an organisation. The organisation chosen for this purpose is Aravind Eye Hospital, which is an essential centre for sight in Madurai, India. The report will provide a general description of the scientific management concept or theory and also briefly describe the organisational structure of Aravind eye Hospital. Further, the report will move into providing background information of the company, highlighting its primary operations and will delve into the historical knowledge of the company. At the last section, the report will specifically highlight the parts where the company has successfully utilised scientific management concepts. These concepts would be linked with the generalised concepts discussed in the first section. The importance of applying these concepts would be highlighted in the light of the chosen company.

Discussion

Description of the scientific management concept or theory

Principles of scientific management were first outlined by Frederick Taylor, which modelled different kinds of workflows to improve economic efficiency and productivity of the labourers. The method of scientific management incorporates four primary principles, which are widely followed in various organisations of recent days. The first principle talks about the experimental determination of a particular work to find out a single way of performance (Suleiman et al. 2018). This principle has contradicted the rule of thumb, where the workers had to struggle to find out a suitable way to perform the tasks. The next principle talks about hiring the appropriate worker for a job, having the necessary skills and knowledge. Suitable training sessions would be provided to the workers after recruitment to sharpen their skills, such that they can perform effectively and contribute efficiently to the organisation.

The next principle highlights the monitoring activities, which must be conducted by the management to monitor and evaluate the performances of the workers (Gaisina et al. 2017).  This activity is required to judge the present performance of the worker, such that suitable instructions could be provided for further improvement in the coming days. The last principle states about dividing the work between the management and the labourers (Ferraro 2016).  This would be needed for the proper allocation of work between the administration and the labourers. The principles of scientific management, as proposed by Taylor, has been popularly used for setting up organisation structures, evaluation of performance, setting up metrics for quality measurements and developing production and sales goals.

Organisational structure

The structure of Aravind eye Hospital covered above 80,000 square feet of space, accommodating five floors with four principal operating areas. A minor working area has been constructed for septic care. Speciality clinics are widely spread in different regions of the retina, vitreous diseases, cornea, diabetic retinopathy and paediatric ophthalmology. The family members of Dr V has been the sole authority of most of the departments, but they take care of only one of these clinics. The brother of Dr V. has been in charge of the finance department of the organisation (Downs 2017).  The nephew of Dr V has been in charge of the administration department of the organisation. Along with this personnel, thirteen other ophthalmologists of the organisation are relatives of Dr V. Suitable training sessions are conducted at regular intervals such that the management can perform its duties effectively. The organisation has collaborated with foreign hospitals to enhance the training sessions of the personnel.

Background information on the organisation

Aravind eye hospital of Madurai, India was first established in the year 1976, which has gradually turned out to be the centre for sight for all the patients suffering from eye problems. The company performed almost all types of eye surgeries and aimed to offer quality eye care to the patients at affordable rates. The hospital was initially a 20-bedded hospital but gradually expanded itself to a 30-bedded and later on the 70-bedded hospital within 1978 (Hazard et al. 2018). The hospital accommodated patients, who are recovering after their surgeries. After expanding to a 70-bedded hospital, the management decided to offer the poor with free eye care and set up the four-table operating theatre with rooms for different activities such as scrubbing, changing and sterilisation of various instruments.

In 1984, the hospital added 350 new beds for the patient covering over 36,000 square feet of space. The nurses were provided with separate quarters on the top floor of the hospital.  The ground floor consisted of outpatient rooms, and the upper floors consisted of in-patient rooms (Nahman et al. 2019). Doctors and nurses have rotational shifts such that they can equally treat the paying and non-paying patients. In the year 1990, the hospital opened free services for walk-in patients. In weekends, a team of specialised doctors were given the duties of visiting the rural sites and screening the local people for any eye diseases (Kliuchnikova and Pobegaylov 2016). The hospital also organised camps to spread awareness among the local public. This was also a technique for attracting patients to the hospital. The campsites were mainly built in the local schools, colleges or the marriage halls. The team of specialised doctors scanned the people and those with selected eye diseases were taken free of cost to the hospital for surgery. The management team of the hospital has been an efficient one with specialised members, who have been trained by the trainers of the hospital and other trainers of the foreign hospitals.

Explanation of the application of scientific management concepts in the organisation Principles of scientific management is vividly seen within the control of the hospital. All the internal people of the organisation, who are given proper training sessions so that they can find out suitable ways to carry out their activities. Initially, the hospital staff consisted of approximately 240 people, with 30 doctors, 120 nurses, 60 personnel of the administration department, 30 housekeeping personnel and other maintenance workers (Jiang and Hu 2019). The finance manager was a civil engineering contractor who was specialised in performing finance-based jobs. The administrator of the hospital was a management trainee, who was later on given training on administration and management by skilled trainers from the University of Michigan. He was also given training on public health management by the trainers of the same University.

The hospital has a large number of dedicated and committed staff, which contribute effectively to the operations. The hospital also takes the initiative for organising training and development programmes for all the employees so that they can display improvements in their job activities. The people are capable and intelligent and are trained in theoretical knowledge (Essl et al. 2017). But the hospital authority believes that theoretical knowledge is not enough for the development of the staff. They require practical experience and skills to showcase dedication and devotion in their works. The doctors who newly join the hospital, are provided with long hours of concentrate work to test their physical and mental capabilities (Jabrayilova 2019).  In most of the hospitals, the doctors are trained to work for a shorter span of approximately 30 hours per week. In contrary to this, Aravind hospital believes in a workload of 60 hours per week, for efficient development of its doctors. The hospital aims to abolish bureaucracy and corruption among its staff such that the patients also feel comfortable to take the support of the hospital staff for routine works.

Despite having such an organised structure of personnel, the hospital faced management problems at Tirunelveli. The management could not pay the cost of capital even after the smooth flow of cash and healthy profit margins. The Madurai department sorted out this problem by buying away all the equipment on behalf of Tirunelveli. The physical design was improved with the integration of paying and free hospitals. The different wards and patient examination rooms were made spacious so that patients can feel comfortable while being at the hospital premises. The hospital also hired a centralised surgical staff for the betterment of its surgeries (Worth 2018). Through this way, the capacity of the operating room can also be utilised optimally, and the hospital can quickly come out of its financial crisis. Even with the fast expansion, the hospital takes good care of its employees and attract only quality people to be a part of their organisation. Reasonable salary scales are provided to the doctors and other staff as compared to any other government hospital. However, the company is still working towards increasing its salary structure. The company trains its employees from scratch and believes that being a part of the organisation would fetch them prestigious degrees.

Conclusion

From the above report, it can be concluded that the principles of scientific management are very important for the proper functioning of an organisation. This is because scientific management lays down regulations regarding the appropriate utilisation of the workforce, such that the organisation can witness economic growth and development. In this report, Aravind eye hospital has been chosen for analysis of its organisational structure and functions of the workforce to find out their suitability in the operations. It has been observed that the hospital has been able to implement principles of scientific management through suitable recruitment as well as training and development of its employees for creating a better future of the business.

References

Downs, R.R., 2017. IMPLEMENTING THE GROUP ON EARTH OBSERVATIONS DATA MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES: OBSERVATIONS OF A SCIENTIFIC DATA CENTER. International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing & Spatial Information Sciences, 42.

Essl, F., Hulme, P.E., Jeschke, J.M., Keller, R., Pyšek, P., Richardson, D.M., Saul, W.C., Bacher, S., Dullinger, S., Estévez, R.A. and Kueffer, C., 2017. Scientific and normative foundations for the valuation of alien-species impacts: thirteen core principles. BioScience, 67(2), pp.166-178.

Ferraro, S., 2016. Frederick Taylor’s other Principles. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 7(11), pp.24-27.

Gaisina, L.M., Belonozhko, M.L., Tkacheva, N.A., Abdrakhmanov, N.K. and Grogulenko, N.V., 2017. Principles and methods of synergy modeling of management system at oil and gas sector’s enterprises. Espacios, 38(33), p.5.

Hazard, L., Steyaert, P., Martin, G., Couix, N., Navas, M.L., Duru, M., Lauvie, A. and Labatut, J., 2018. Mutual learning between researchers and farmers during implementation of scientific principles for sustainable development: the case of biodiversity-based agriculture. Sustainability Science, 13(2), pp.517-530.

Jabrayilova, Z., 2019. THE PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPING A MANAGEMENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SCIENTIFIC EMPLOYEES. EUREKA: Physics and Engineering, (4), pp.10-22.

Jiang, Y. and Hu, Z., 2019. Discussion on Business Administration Functions, Management Principles and Methods.

Kliuchnikova, O.V. and Pobegaylov, O.A., 2016. Rationalization of strategic management principles as a tool to improve a construction company services. Procedia Engineering, 150, pp.2168-2172.

Nahman, A., De Wet, B., Nortje, K., Van Der Watt, C. and Kelling, N.K., 2019. Principles for internalising systems resilience into business management and value creation.

Suleiman, Y., Abdulrasheed, J., Amin, S.I. and Abubakar, Y.A., 2018. APPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES FOR EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF HIGHER INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA. Journal of Human Capital Development (JHCD), 11(2), pp.17-36.

Worth, M.J., 2018. Nonprofit management: Principles and practice. Sage Publications.

Appendices