Posted on 09/11/2010 8:33:55 AM PDT by Willie Green
Frederick Winslow Taylor devised a system he called scientific management, a form of industrial engineering that established the organization of work as in Ford's assembly line. This discipline, along with the industrial psychology established by others at the Hawthorne Works of Western Electic in the 1920s, moved management theory from early time-and-motion studies to the latest total quality control ideas.
Taylor, born in Philadelphia, prepared for college at Philips Academy in Exeter, N.H., and was accepted at Harvard. His eyesight failed and he became an industrial apprentice in the depression of 1873. At Exeter he was influenced by the classification system invented by Melvil Dewey in 1872 (Dewey Decimal System). He became in 1878 a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Company. In the following book he describes some of his promotions to gang-boss, foreman, and finally, chief engineer. He introduced time-motion studies in 1881 (with ideas of Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth, strong personalities immortalized in books by their dozen children, such as Cheaper By the Dozen.) In 1883 he earned a degree by night study from Stevens Institute of Technology (which now archives his papers and has announced plans to put them online See http://www.lib.stevens-tech.edu/ --special collections). He became general manager of Manufacturing Investment Company, 1890, and then a consulting engineer to management.
Taylor's ideas, clearly enunciated in his writings, were widely misinterpreted. Employers used time and motion studies simply to extract more work from employees at less pay. Unions condemned speedups and the lack of voice in their work that "Taylorism" gave them. Quality and productivity declined when his principles were simplistically instituted.
Modern management theorists, such as Edward Deming, often credit Taylor, however, with generating the principles upon which they act. Others, such as Juran, though, continue to denigrate his work. Modern theorists generally place more emphasis on worker input and teamwork than was usual in much of Taylor's time. A careful reading of Taylor's work will reveal that he placed the worker's interest as high as the employer's in his studies, and recognized the importance of the suggestion box, for example, in a machine shop.
According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, (1995) January 26, pp. B26, one of the popular current "re-engineering" gurus, G. Hamel, has this to say about Taylor's ideas today:
"When I am in a mean mood, I call re-engineering '21st century Taylorism'.
"If you read Frederick Winslow Taylor from the beginning of the century, there are three fundamental things he taught:
"1. Find the best practice wherever it exists. Today we call it benchmarking.
"2. Decompose the task into its constituent elements. We call it business process re-design.
"3. Get rid of things that don't add value. Work out, we call it now.
"So we're doing these things one more time and we need to do them.
"But my argument is that simply getting better is usually not enough.
"Whether it involves cycle time, quality or whatever, most of re-engineering has been about catching up."
This continuous quality improvement process was originated by Taylor, it is fair to say, and we are still trying to catch up.
The standard biography of Taylor is Frederick W. Taylor, Father of Scientific Management, 1923, by Frank Barkley Copley, in two volumes.
We give here the classic work for modern readers.
The Principles of Scientific Management,
Copyright © 1911 by Frederick W. Taylor
Published in Norton Library 1967
by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated,
by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110,
ISBN 0-393-00398-1, $8.95 paperback
Taylor's core values: the rule of reason, improved quality, lower costs, higher wages, higher output, labor-management cooperation, experimentation, clear tasks and goals, feedback, training, mutual help and support, stress reduction, and the careful selection and development of people. He was the first to present a systematic study of interactions among job requirements, tools, methods, and human skill, to fit people to jobs both psychologically and physically, and to let data and facts do the talking rather than prejudice, opinions, or egomania (Weisford 1987).
IMHO, it was the high ethical and moral standards of Taylor's Quaker upbringing that enabled him to develop a theory of economic productivity that balanced the rights of BOTH Management AND Labor. As both a professional Industrial Engineer and a Roman Catholic, I should also not that Taylor's convictions are also in harmony with the 1891 encyclical of his holiness Pope Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum - "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour".
I find it tragic that an entire Century has passed, and yet most theoreticians, political economists and pundits remain woefully ignorant and misinformed regarding the theories of Frederick W. Taylor.
Your conclusion may be partially true, but it’s undeniable that many of Taylor’s methods have been internalized to the point where they have become part of the culture and how business is done. The part that is equally undeniable is that some “political economists” and certainly the vast majority of “pundits” are ignorant of his contributions.
One can argue that Taylors work to identify best practices and quantify costs in absolute numerical terms has been key to the modernization movement and the economic globalization that has had a significant impact on the US economy in the past several decades.
Then the geniuses figured out that the office is also a production sight and started to apply his workable theories. Thus, we got voice mail and email and the computer at every desk.
Along the way the ethical and moral standards went down the priority list when the new geniuses deemed workers themselves a commodities. Thus we get lay-off after lay-off.
The abominations against Taylor's theory occur when short-sighted Management begins to demand greater employee output without regard for the provision of methods/conditions/procedures/technologies necessary to achieve those goals.
"Work Smarter -- Not Harder" is the motto.
Whip-cracking slavedrivers are an abomination.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.