Monday, September 22, 2008

Scientific Management: Eckerd vs. Rite Aid

In Principles of Scientific Management, Taylor tells us four things that we need to do to establish scientific management. He argues that first you need to develop a science for each element of a man’s work. Second, you train, teach, and develop the workman. Thirdly, you need cooperation with the men. Lastly, equality between the management and the workmen need to change (36). These all made me think about my working at Rite Aid. To be exact, it was first an Eckerd and now it is a Rite Aid. The transition made me think that they were moving from the original management to the scientific management. Eckerd was a old company with old computers and old ways of managing. With the new Rite Aid, however, I could tell that corporate was really trying to make it more scientific. With the four principles of Taylor’s argument, Eckerd turned into Rite Aid – original turned into scientific.

The training for Eckerd was pretty basic. You had to “read a manual” and then just kind learn how to do it by watching other people and asking questions -- unlike how Taylor wanted it. He wants it to be perfect training and perfection of how to do every little detail. When I trained, it was so basic. I was so nervous for my first day that my heart was beating fast. Rite Aid, on the other hand, had these training programs called “CBT’s”. I am actually not sure what it stands for anymore but they were these programs on the computer. They were interactive and you had to them for hours. I am talking 20+ hours of telling a computer what section you find lip gloss or milk. Then at the end of every one you had to pass with a C or better to pass and then write down your score. This was much more scientific management to me. You had to pick at every detail to make it perfect. The pharmacists and pharmacy technicians had to go outside of there job and take a eight hour class on the new systems. Unlike the Eckerd way, Rite Aid was definitely more scientifically.

For Eckerd cooperation was not a big deal. You kind of did your own thing and then sometimes the managers would talk to you about something not pertaining to work. When we switched to Rite Aid, we had to have a meeting every week and go over exactly what we needed to do to make our store better. We had little cards they gave out every week telling us how to make our store better. When a customer had a void or a return at Eckerd we could automatically do it ourselves. Now, the manager had to come back and put there secret numbers in. We needed full on cooperation all the time with the managers to make our new store work. Also, Eckerd never gave us any special deals or anything when we did a good job. Rite Aid, however, gave me a raise and for some random week gave us a thirty percent discount on the whole store. I think that giving us these bonuses is a incentive to work, just like Scientific Management tells us. If for instance I get a raise I would work harder for another one. For Eckerd we never got anything like that at all. They used scientific management to get us to do our job more efficiently.

Having equal division of all the work is a hard thing to do, especially in a drug store. At Eckerd, it was not really too equal. We had our responsibilities but it was not too many. The managers did paper work, counted drawers, talked on the phone. One thing that was different is now we had to count our own drawers at the end of the night. I have never had to do this before. I feel like this is more liability towards the manager because if we under or over we have to verify we agree. Corporate definitely made us more responsible for our decisions. This made the work equal with each of us having liability for our own decisions.

All in all, Taylor had many good points in his paper. These all helped Rite Aid become a better company. The four different aspects can be applied to the conversion into Rite Aid and essentially fixed a lot of things to make them good for the sake of the company. I think that Taylor’s rules apply and work in my work place.

3 comments:

Jake The Snake said...

This is a reasonable analysis on the role of scientific management in everyday life. What we have here is, above all else, a very large compare-and-contrast method of telling how the scientific methods are used in the setting of the drugstores, Rite-Aid and Eckerd. However, as I read through it, I find that while all the facts - from an employee's views and personal experiences - are all there, the back-and-forth nature of the comparison felt a tad bit awkward. Not necessarily that this is a wrong way, but I would've paragraphed the actions of Eckerd and then done same with Rite-Aid in a sort of different flow. Admittedly, that's a standard essay trick, but it works. People like their info in chunks so that they can look at one side, and then the other.

Some personal commentary now, ON the subject of stores and management. I know for a fact that Eckerd is sloppy with their management. This is not a slur, but the accurate assessment from my brother who worked there until he had had enough and quit. They were unreasonably shifting him to other stores with odd hours that made it hard to manage his life. On the other hand, he had also later worked at Rite-Aid and that worked out LESS effectively, because for all their so-called efficiency, they did not seem to have a very understanding view for when they fired him over an honest mistake. He did not steal or cause any willful harm to the store or anyone in it. He simply made a minor error and was strung out because of it.

This is just sort of my way of saying that not all stores are created equal, and that maybe some are following SOME rules of Scientific Management and not all of them. This wouldn't have happened in Eckerd, but Eckerd is poorly-run enough that they have been bought out at least twice.

KaraG said...

In Principles of Scientific Management, Taylor tells us four things that we need to do to establish scientific management. He argues that first you need to develop a science for each element of a man’s work. Second, you train, teach, and develop the workman. Thirdly, you need cooperation with the men. Lastly, equality between the management and the workmen need to change (36). These all made me think about my working at Rite Aid. To be exact, it was first an Eckerd and now it is a Rite Aid. The transition made me think that they were moving from the original management to the scientific management. Eckerd was a old company with old computers and old ways of managing. With the new Rite Aid, however, I could tell that corporate was really trying to make it more scientific. I am not saying that Rite Aid is perfect; however, it is better in my opinion then beforehand. With the four principles of Taylor’s argument, Eckerd turned into Rite Aid – original turned into scientific.

The training for Eckerd was pretty basic. You had to “read a manual” and then just kind learn how to do it by watching other people and asking questions -- unlike how Taylor wanted it. He wants it to be perfect training and perfection of how to do every little detail. When I trained, it was so basic. I was so nervous for my first day that my heart was beating fast.

Rite Aid, on the other hand, had these training programs called “CBT’s”. I am actually not sure what it stands for anymore but they were these programs on the computer. They were interactive and you had to them for hours. I am talking 20+ hours of telling a computer what section you find lip gloss or milk. Then at the end of every one you had to pass with a C or better to pass and then write down your score. This was much more scientific management to me. You had to pick at every detail to make it perfect. The pharmacists and pharmacy technicians had to go outside of there job and take a eight hour class on the new systems. Unlike the Eckerd way, Rite Aid was definitely more scientifically.

For Eckerd cooperation was not a big deal. You kind of did your own thing and then sometimes the managers would talk to you about something not pertaining to work. When a customer had a void or a return at Eckerd we could automatically do it ourselves. Now, the manager had to come back and put there secret numbers in. We needed full on cooperation all the time with the managers to make our new store work. Also, Eckerd never gave us any special deals or anything when we did a good job.

When we switched to Rite Aid, we had to have a meeting every week and go over exactly what we needed to do to make our store better. We had little cards they gave out every week telling us how to make our store better. Rite Aid, gave me a raise and for some random week gave us a thirty percent discount on the whole store. I think that giving us these bonuses is a incentive to work, just like Scientific Management tells us. If for instance I get a raise I would work harder for another one. For Eckerd we never got anything like that at all. They used scientific management to get us to do our job more efficiently.

Having equal division of all the work is a hard thing to do, especially in a drug store. At Eckerd, it was not really too equal. We had our responsibilities but it was not too many. The managers did paper work, counted drawers, talked on the phone.

One thing that was different is now we had to count our own drawers at the end of the night. I have never had to do this before. I feel like this is more liability towards the manager because if we under or over we have to verify we agree. Corporate definitely made us more responsible for our decisions. This made the work equal with each of us having liability for our own decisions.

All in all, Taylor had many good points in his paper. These all helped Rite Aid become a better company. The four different aspects can be applied to the conversion into Rite Aid and essentially fixed a lot of things to make them good for the sake of the company. I think that Taylor’s rules apply and work in my work place.

Adam Johns said...

Jake - your first paragraph of critique is good and focused. After that you don't really contribute much. That's not to say that you are *wrong*, by any means, but your information is subjective and vague, and therefore not likely to be of any help to Kara.

Kara - your thesis is clearer and more precise than most.

What I liked about the whole thing was the effectiveness of the personal material. While, as Jake points out, it doesn't flow as well as it might, you have a clear and coherent point of view throughout.

The difficulty here is that your attempt to address what scientific management actually *is*, rather than just a few personal impressions loosely related to it, feels tacked on. You bring up the definition of SM without actually using it systematically. In other words, you implicitly raise the claim that Eckerd *is* scientifically managed, but while you make a couple gestures in that direction, you don't do it systematically, by actually asking which of the four points it does and doesn't match up to, and what we should do with that knowledge.