Industrial Output Restriction
One of the aims of this article, Roy wanted to make scientific value for the sociologists and students of subject who are studying restriction of industrial output, and introduced human group behaviour on a production line as well as in an interracial discussion group. Another aim of article he attempted to estimate the blanket term’ restriction’ into several kinds and emphasized on evaluating quota restriction and goldbricking related with payment system depend on his experiences in a machine shop where he worked during last 10 months. (Roy, p427)
In your own words, provide a 250-word summary of the key arguments in the paper
In this article, Roy
There are two major kinds of output limitations in production behaviour of the machine, which are ‘Quota Restriction’ and ‘Goldbricking’.
In Mayo’s explanation for the quota restriction from his research in a bank-wiring group at Western Electric Ltd. He inferred output limitation due to lack of understanding of the economic logics of the management by worker, also he considered the economic man a fallacious conception. (p430) In ‘gravy’ job, Roy found the workers only earn certain quota wages, then slow down or stop their work. Normally they don’t make full effort on that. Because they knew, if they make maximum output, next the price of productions will go down, meanwhile they will get wages less than before they made numbers of productions less than that. Therefore, they limited amount of productions to protect their own economic interests, and wasted significant time and money for them and their company. In the Roy’s proposal the worker should understand using economic logics of management. Machine operators alert to their economic interests. Because of ‘economic determinism’ may account for quota restriction.
In contrast, ‘stinkers’ is a very hard job. The worker resentful low pay that was considered too low for quota earnings and they thought it is not worth the effort to achieve quota or not satisfied on base wage rate without premium pay. Therefore they don not turn in equal to base wage rate or deliberately slowed down.
What are the main theoretical and /or empirical findings of the article?
One of the theoretical findings is from Mayo. According to Mayo (Pugh, 1971, p353)’ he emphasized that workers must first be understood as people if they are to be understood as organization’. From this article we knew the workers who worked in that machine shop, knew quota of output in their shop and how to reduce earning from the same amount of effort expended or increase effort to maintain the take-home level. (p430)
Another of theoretical findings is initiative and incentive system. Buchanan & Huczynski (1985) describes initiative and incentive system is ‘a form of job design practice in which worker are given a task to perform by management two also provide them with a financial incentive. Workers are then left to use their initive as to how to complete the task and which tool to use.
One of empirical findings is wage condition can incent employee whether work hard/waste time during their working or not. According to online article (2004) ‘Monetary incentives can get workers to engage in ‘unnatural’ behaviours’. As Roy’s machine shop shows monetary incentives always drive behaviour to extreme.
Another finding on empirical is Systematic Soldiering is group activity. According to Roy’s article, he found this phenomenon which did not only single person do that, also it around the whole machine shop during his ten months working.
In a brief conclusion, to what extent do you personally find the author’s arguments convincing? Give reasons to justify your evaluation.
From this article, I don not completely convince the author’s argument, but part of the gap between the management and organization of human resources has not been keeping up with the technological advances to increase production output (p442), I think this argument could be accepted.
First, the author was working and made a record in that machine shop just ten months. It is not able to cover all points and situations. According to his Roy’s article, he said ‘a complete record might include management at higher levels, whose series of new rules, regulations, order, and pronuncamentos designed for purpose of expediting production processes actually operated to reduce the effectiveness of the work force’ .(p442)
In addition, author found some problems between management and organization of human resources are close to Frederick Taylor’s principles of scientific management, and he suggested organizational management need to innovate. Those are arguments I convince.
