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.