Scientific

management
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Frederick Taylor (1856–1915), leading proponent of

scientific management
Scientific management is a theory of
management that analyzes and
synthesizes workflows. Its main objective
is improving economic efficiency,
especially labour productivity. It was one
of the earliest attempts to apply science to
the engineering of processes and to
management. Scientific management is
sometimes known as Taylorism after its
founder, Frederick Winslow Taylor.[1]

Taylor began the theory's development in

the United States during the 1880s and
'90s within manufacturing industries,
especially steel. Its peak of influence
came in the 1910s;[2] Taylor died in 1915
and by the 1920s, scientific management
was still influential but had entered into
competition and syncretism with opposing
or complementary ideas.

Although scientific management as a

distinct theory or school of thought was
obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes
are still important parts of industrial
engineering and management today.
These include: analysis; synthesis; logic;
rationality; empiricism; work ethic;
efficiency and elimination of waste;
standardization of best practices; disdain
for tradition preserved merely for its own
sake or to protect the social status of
particular workers with particular skill
sets; the transformation of craft
production into mass production; and
knowledge transfer between workers and
from workers into tools, processes, and
documentation.

Name
Taylor's own names for his approach
initially included "shop management" and
"process management". However,
"scientific management" came to national
attention in 1910 when crusading attorney
Louis Brandeis (then not yet Supreme
Court justice) popularized the term.[3]
Brandeis had sought a consensus term for
the approach with the help of practitioners
like Henry L. Gantt and Frank B. Gilbreth.
Brandeis then used the consensus of
"scientific management" when he argued
before the Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC) that a proposed
increase in railroad rates was unnecessary
despite an increase in labor costs; he
alleged scientific management would
overcome railroad inefficiencies (The ICC
ruled against the rate increase, but also
dismissed as insufficiently substantiated
that concept the railroads were
necessarily inefficient.) Taylor recognized
the nationally-known term "scientific
management" as another good name for
the concept, and adopted it in the title of
his influential 1911 monograph.

History
The Midvale Steel Company, "one of
America's great armor plate making
plants," was the birthplace of scientific
management. In 1877, at age 22, Frederick
W. Taylor started as a clerk in Midvale, but
advanced to foreman in 1880. As foreman,
Taylor was "constantly impressed by the
failure of his [team members] to produce
more than about one-third of [what he
deemed] a good day's work."[4] Taylor
determined to discover, by scientific
methods, how long it should take men to
perform each given piece of work; and it
was in the fall of 1882 that he started to
put the first features of scientific
management into operation.[5]

Horace Bookwalter Drury, in his 1918 work,

Scientific management: A History and
Criticism, identified seven other leaders in
the movement, most of whom learned of
and extended scientific management from
Taylor's efforts[6]:

Henry L. Gantt (1861–1919)

Carl G. Barth (1860–1939)
Horace K. Hathaway (1878–1944)
Morris L. Cooke (1872–1960)
Sanford E. Thompson (1867–1949)
Frank B. Gilbreth (1868–1924). Gilbreth's
independent work on "motion study" is
on record as early as 1885; after
meeting Taylor in 1906 and being
introduced to scientific management,
Gilbert devoted his efforts to introducing
scientific management into factories.
Gilbreth and his wife Dr Lillian Moller
Gilbreth (1878–1972) performed micro-
motion studies using stop-motion
cameras as well as developing the
 profession of industrial/organizational
psychology.
Harrington Emerson (1853–1931)
began determining what industrial
plants' products and costs were
compared to what they ought to be in
1895. Emerson did not meet Taylor until
December 1900, and the two never
worked together.

Emerson's testimony in late 1910 to the

Interstate Commerce Commission brought
the movement to national attention[7] and
instigated serious opposition. Emerson
contended the railroads might save
$1,000,000 a day by paying greater
attention to efficiency of operation. By
January 1911, a leading railroad journal
began a series of articles denying they
were inefficiently managed.[8]

When steps were taken to introduce

scientific management at the government-
owned Rock Island Arsenal in early 1911, it
was opposed by Samuel Gompers,
founder and President of the American
Federation of Labor (an alliance of craft
unions). When a subsequent attempt was
made to introduce the bonus system into
the government's Watertown Arsenal
foundry during the summer of 1911, the
entire force walked out for a few days.
Congressional investigations followed,
resulting in a ban on the use of time
studies and pay premiums in Government
service.

Taylor's death in 1915 at age 59[9] left the

movement without its original leader. In
management literature today, the term
"scientific management" mostly refers to
the work of Taylor and his disciples
("classical", implying "no longer current,
but still respected for its seminal value") in
contrast to newer, improved iterations of
efficiency-seeking methods. Today, task-
oriented optimization of work tasks is
nearly ubiquitous in industry.
Pursuit of economic
efficiency
Flourishing in the late 19th and early 20th
century, scientific management built on
earlier pursuits of economic efficiency.
While it was prefigured in the folk wisdom
of thrift, it favored empirical methods to
determine efficient procedures rather than
perpetuating established traditions. Thus
it was followed by a profusion of
successors in applied science, including
time and motion study, the Efficiency
Movement (which was a broader cultural
echo of scientific management's impact
on business managers specifically),
Fordism, operations management,
operations research, industrial
engineering, management science,
manufacturing engineering, logistics,
business process management, business
process reengineering, lean
manufacturing, and Six Sigma. There is a
fluid continuum linking scientific
management with the later fields, and the
different approaches often display a high
degree of compatibility.

Taylor rejected the notion, which was

universal in his day and still held today,
that the trades, including manufacturing,
were resistant to analysis and could only
be performed by craft production
methods. In the course of his empirical
studies, Taylor examined various kinds of
manual labor. For example, most bulk
materials handling was manual at the
time; material handling equipment as we
know it today was mostly not developed
yet. He looked at shoveling in the
unloading of railroad cars full of ore; lifting
and carrying in the moving of iron pigs at
steel mills; the manual inspection of
bearing balls; and others. He discovered
many concepts that were not widely
accepted at the time. For example, by
observing workers, he decided that labor
should include rest breaks so that the
worker has time to recover from fatigue,
either physical (as in shoveling or lifting)
or mental (as in the ball inspection case).
Workers were allowed to take more rests
during work, and productivity increased as
a result.[10]

Subsequent forms of scientific

management were articulated by Taylor's
disciples, such as Henry Gantt; other
engineers and managers, such as
Benjamin S. Graham; and other theorists,
such as Max Weber. Taylor's work also
contrasts with other efforts, including
those of Henri Fayol and those of Frank
Gilbreth, Sr. and Lillian Moller Gilbreth
(whose views originally shared much with
Taylor's but later diverged in response to
Taylorism's inadequate handling of human
relations).

Soldiering
Scientific management requires a high
level of managerial control over employee
work practices and entails a higher ratio of
managerial workers to laborers than
previous management methods. Such
detail-oriented management may cause
friction between workers and managers.

Taylor observed that some workers were

more talented than others, and that even
smart ones were often unmotivated. He
observed that most workers who are
forced to perform repetitive tasks tend to
work at the slowest rate that goes
unpunished. This slow rate of work has
been observed in many industries and
many countries[11] and has been called by
various terms.[11][11][12] Taylor used the
term "soldiering",[11][13] a term that reflects
the way conscripts may approach
following orders, and observed that, when
paid the same amount, workers will tend
to do the amount of work that the slowest
among them does.[14] Taylor describes
soldiering as "the greatest evil with which
the working-people ... are now afflicted."[10]
This reflects the idea that workers have a
vested interest in their own well-being, and
do not benefit from working above the
defined rate of work when it will not
increase their remuneration. He therefore
proposed that the work practice that had
been developed in most work
environments was crafted, intentionally or
unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its
execution. He posited that time and
motion studies combined with rational
analysis and synthesis could uncover one
best method for performing any particular
task, and that prevailing methods were
seldom equal to these best methods.
Crucially, Taylor himself prominently
acknowledged that if each employee's
compensation was linked to their output,
their productivity would go up.[14] Thus his
compensation plans usually included
piece rates. In contrast, some later
adopters of time and motion studies
ignored this aspect and tried to get large
productivity gains while passing little or no
compensation gains to the workforce,
which contributed to resentment against
the system.

Relationship to
mechanization and
automation
 

A machinist at the Tabor Company, a firm where

Frederick Taylor's consultancy was applied to
practice, about 1905

Scientific management evolved in an era

when mechanization and automation were
still in their infancy. The ideas and
methods of scientific management
extended the American system of
manufacturing in the transformation from
craft work (with humans as the only
possible agents) to mechanization and
automation, although proponents of
scientific management did not predict the
extensive removal of humans from the
production process. Concerns over labor-
displacing technologies rose with
increasing mechanization and automation.

By factoring processes into discrete,

unambiguous units, scientific
management laid the groundwork for
automation and offshoring, prefiguring
industrial process control and numerical
control in the absence of any machines
that could carry it out. Taylor and his
followers did not foresee this at the time;
in their world, it was humans that would
execute the optimized processes. (For
example, although in their era the
instruction "open valve A whenever
pressure gauge B reads over value X"
would be carried out by a human, the fact
that it had been reduced to an algorithmic
component paved the way for a machine
to be the agent.) However, one of the
common threads between their world and
ours is that the agents of execution need
not be "smart" to execute their tasks. In
the case of computers, they are not able
(yet) to be "smart" (in that sense of the
word); in the case of human workers under
scientific management, they were often
able but were not allowed. Once the time-
and-motion men had completed their
studies of a particular task, the workers
had very little opportunity for further
thinking, experimenting, or suggestion-
making. They were forced to "play dumb"
most of the time, which occasionally led to
revolts.

The middle ground between the craft

production of skilled workers and full
automation is occupied by systems of
extensive mechanization and partial
automation operated by semiskilled and
unskilled workers. Such systems depend
on algorithmic workflows and knowledge
transfer, which require substantial
engineering to succeed. Although Taylor's
intention for scientific management was
simply to optimize work methods, the
process engineering that he pioneered
also tends to build the skill into the
equipment and processes, removing most
need for skill in the workers. Such
engineering has governed most industrial
engineering since then. It is also the
essence of successful offshoring. The
common theme in all these cases is that
businesses engineer their way out of their
need for large concentrations of skilled
workers, and the high-wage environments
that sustain them. This creates
competitive advantage on the local level of
individual firms, although the pressure it
exerts systemically on employment and
employability is an externality.

Impact
Market economies

Taylor's view of workers

Taylor often expressed views of workers

that may be considered insulting.[10] He
recognized differences between workers,
stressed the need to select the right
person for the right job, and championed
the workers by advocating frequent breaks
and good pay for good work.[14] He often
failed to conceal his condescending
attitude towards less intelligent workers,
describing them as "stupid" and
comparing them to draft animals in that
they have to have their tasks managed for
them in order to work efficiently.[15]

Other thinkers soon offered more ideas on

the roles that workers play in mature
industrial systems. These included ideas
on improvement of the individual worker
with attention to the worker's needs, not
just the needs of the whole. James
Hartness published The Human Factor in
Works Management[16] in 1912, while
Frank Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth
offered their own alternatives to Taylorism.
The human relations school of
management evolved in the 1930s to
complement rather than replace scientific
management, with Taylorism determining
the organisation of the work process, and
human relations helping to adapt the
workers to the new procedures.[17] Today's
efficiency-seeking methods, such as lean
manufacturing, include respect for
workers and fulfillment of their needs as
integral parts of the theory. (Workers
slogging their way through workdays in the
business world do encounter flawed
implementations of these methods that
make jobs unpleasant; but these
implementations generally lack
managerial competence in matching
theory to execution.) Clearly, a syncretism
has occurred since Taylor's day, although
its implementation has been uneven, as
lean management in capable hands has
produced good results for both managers
and workers, but in incompetent hands
has damaged enterprises.

Taylorism, anomie, and unions

With the division of labor that became

commonplace as Taylorism was
implemented in manufacturing, workers
lost their sense of connection to the
production of goods. Workers began to
feel disenfranchised with the monotonous
and unfulfilling work they were doing in
factories. Before scientific management,
workers felt a sense of pride when
completing their good, which went away
when workers only completed one part of
production. "The further 'progress' of
industrial development... increased the
anomic or forced division of labor," the
opposite of what Taylor thought would be
the effect.[18] Partial adoption of Taylor's
principles by management seeking to
boost efficiency, while ignoring principles
such as fair pay and direct engagement by
managers, led to further tensions and the
rise of unions to represent workers needs.

Taylor had a largely negative view of

unions, and believed they only led to
decreased productivity. Although he
opposed them, his work with scientific
management led disenfranchised workers
to look to unions for support.

Early decades: Making jobs

unpleasant

Under scientific management, the

demands of work intensified. Workers
became dissatisfied with the work
environment and became angry. During
one of Taylor's own implementations at
the Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts,
a strike led to an investigation of Taylor's
methods by a U.S. House of
Representatives committee. The
committee reported in 1912, concluding
that scientific management did provide
some useful techniques and offered
valuable organizational suggestions, but
that it also gave production managers a
dangerously high level of uncontrolled
power.[19] After an attitude survey of the
workers revealed a high level of
resentment and hostility towards scientific
management, the Senate banned Taylor's
methods at the arsenal.[19]
Scientific management lowered worker
morale and exacerbated existing conflicts
between labor and management. As a
consequence, the method inadvertently
strengthened labor unions and their
bargaining power in labor disputes,[20]
thereby neutralizing most or all of the
benefit of any productivity gains it had
achieved. Thus its net benefit to owners
and management ended up as small or
negative. It took new efforts, borrowing
some ideas from scientific management
but mixing them with others, to produce
more productive formula.

Later decades: Making jobs

disappear
disappear

Scientific management may have

exacerbated grievances among workers
about oppressive or greedy management.
It certainly strengthened developments
that put workers at a disadvantage: the
erosion of employment in developed
economies via both offshoring and
automation. Both were made possible by
the deskilling of jobs, which was made
possible by the knowledge transfer that
scientific management achieved.
Knowledge was transferred both to
cheaper workers and from workers into
tools. Jobs that once would have required
craft work first transformed to semiskilled
work, then unskilled. At this point the labor
had been commoditized, and thus the
competition between workers (and worker
populations) moved closer to pure than it
had been, depressing wages and job
security. Jobs could be offshored (giving
one human's tasks to others—which could
be good for the new worker population but
was bad for the old) or they could be
rendered nonexistent through automation
(giving a human's tasks to machines).
Either way, the net result from the
perspective of developed-economy
workers was that jobs started to pay less,
then disappear. The power of labor unions
in the mid-twentieth century only led to a
push on the part of management to
accelerate the process of automation,[21]
hastening the onset of the later stages just
described.

In a central assumption of scientific

management, "the worker was taken for
granted as a cog in the machinery."[22]
While scientific management had made
jobs unpleasant, its successors made
them less remunerative, less secure, and
finally nonexistent as a consequence of
structural unemployment.

Relationship to Fordism
It is often assumed that Fordism derives
from Taylor's work. Taylor apparently
made this assumption himself when
visiting the Ford Motor Company's
Michigan plants not too long before he
died, but it is likely that the methods at
Ford were evolved independently, and that
any influence from Taylor's work was
indirect at best.[23] Charles E. Sorensen, a
principal of the company during its first
four decades, disclaimed any connection
at all.[24] There was a belief at Ford, which
remained dominant until Henry Ford II took
over the company in 1945, that the world's
experts were worthless, because if Ford
had listened to them, it would have failed
to attain its great successes. Henry Ford
felt that he had succeeded in spite of, not
because of, experts, who had tried to stop
him in various ways (disagreeing about
price points, production methods, car
features, business financing, and other
issues). Sorensen thus was dismissive of
Taylor and lumped him into the category of
useless experts.[24] Sorensen held the New
England machine tool vendor Walter
Flanders in high esteem and credits him
for the efficient floorplan layout at Ford,
claiming that Flanders knew nothing about
Taylor. Flanders may have been exposed
to the spirit of Taylorism elsewhere, and
may have been influenced by it, but he did
not cite it when developing his production
technique. Regardless, the Ford team
apparently did independently invent
modern mass production techniques in
the period of 1905-1915, and they
themselves were not aware of any
borrowing from Taylorism. Perhaps it is
only possible with hindsight to see the
zeitgeist that (indirectly) connected the
budding Fordism to the rest of the
efficiency movement during the decade of
1905-1915.

Planned economies
Scientific management appealed to
managers of planned economies because
central economic planning relies on the
idea that the expenses that go into
economic production can be precisely
predicted and can be optimized by design.
The opposite theoretical pole would be
laissez-faire thinking in which the invisible
hand of free markets is the only possible
"designer". In reality most economies
today are somewhere in between. Another
alternative for economic planning is
workers' self-management.

Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, Taylorism was
advocated by Aleksei Gastev and
nauchnaia organizatsia truda (the
movement for the scientific organisation of
labor). It found support in both Vladimir
Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Gastev continued
to promote this system of labor
management until his arrest and execution
in 1939.[25] In the 1920s and 1930s, the
Soviet Union enthusiastically embraced
Fordism and Taylorism, importing
American experts in both fields as well as
American engineering firms to build parts
of its new industrial infrastructure. The
concepts of the Five Year Plan and the
centrally planned economy can be traced
directly to the influence of Taylorism on
Soviet thinking. As scientific management
was believed to epitomize American
efficiency,[26] Joseph Stalin even claimed
that "the combination of the Russian
revolutionary sweep with American
efficiency is the essence of Leninism."[27]

Sorensen was one of the consultants who

brought American know-how to the USSR
during this era,[28] before the Cold War
made such exchanges unthinkable. As the
Soviet Union developed and grew in power,
both sides, the Soviets and the Americans,
chose to ignore or deny the contribution
that American ideas and expertise had
made: the Soviets because they wished to
portray themselves as creators of their
own destiny and not indebted to a rival,
and the Americans because they did not
wish to acknowledge their part in creating
a powerful communist rival. Anti-
communism had always enjoyed
widespread popularity in America, and
anti-capitalism in Russia, but after World
War II, they precluded any admission by
either side that technologies or ideas
might be either freely shared or
clandestinely stolen.

East Germany
 

East German machine tool builders, 1953.

By the 1950s, scientific management had

grown dated, but its goals and practices
remained attractive and were also being
adopted by the German Democratic
Republic as it sought to increase efficiency
in its industrial sectors. In the
accompanying photograph from the
German Federal Archives, workers discuss
standards specifying how each task
should be done and how long it should
take. The workers are engaged in a state-
planned instance of process improvement,
but they are pursuing the same goals that
were contemporaneously pursued in
capitalist societies, as in the Toyota
Production System.

Organized labor reactions

In 1911, organized labor erupted with
strong opposition to scientific
management[29], spreading from Samuel
Gompers, founder and president of the
American Federal of Labor (AFL), in the US
to far around the globe. By 1913 Vladimir
Lenin wrote that the "most widely
discussed topic today in Europe, and to
some extent in Russia, is the 'system' of
the American engineer, Frederick Taylor";
Lenin decried it as merely a "'scientific'
system of sweating" more work from
laborers.[30] Again in 1914, Lenin derided
Taylorism as "man’s enslavement by the
machine."[31] However, after the Russian
Revolutions brought him to power, Lenin
wrote in 1918 that the "Russian is a bad
worker [who must] learn to work. The
Taylor system... is a combination of the
refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation
and a number of the greatest scientific
achievements in the field of analysing
mechanical motions during work, the
elimination of superfluous and awkward
motions, the elaboration of correct
methods of work, the introduction of the
best system of accounting and control,
etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs
adopt all that is valuable in the
achievements of science and technology
in this field."[32]

The
[The early US TRADE UNION
history of labor Watert OBJECTIONS
relations with own TO SCIENTIFIC
scientific Arsena MANAGEMEN
management l in T: ...It
was described Massa intensifies the
by Dr Drury modern
chuset
thusly:] ...for a tendency
long time there ts toward
was thus little provid specialization
or no direct of the work
es an
[conflict] and the task...
examp
between displaces
le of
scientific skilled workers
management the and... weakens
and organized applica the bargaining
labor... tion strength of the
[However] One and workers
of the best repeal through
known experts specialization
of the
once spoke to of the task and
Taylor
us with the destruction
satisfaction of syste of craft skill.
the manner in m in ...leads to over-
which, in a the production and
certain factory workpl the increase of
where there ace, unemployment
had been a due to ... looks upon
number of the worker as a
worker
union men, the mere
opposi
labor instrument of
tion. In
organization production and
had, upon the the reduces him to
introduction of early a semi-
scientific 2001, automatic
management, neglec attachment to
gradually t in the the machine or
disintegrated. tool... tends to
Watert
...From 1882 undermine the
own
(when the worker's
shops health,
system was
include shortens his
started) until
1911, a period
d period of

of overcr industrial
approximately owdin activity and
thirty years, g, dim- earning power,
there was not and brings on
lightin
a single strike premature old
g, lack
under it, and age. —
of
this in spite of Scientific
the fact that it tools Management
was carried on and and Labor [34],
primarily in the equip Robert F.
steel industry, ment, Hoxie, 1915
which was report to the
and
subject to a Commission
questi
great many on Industrial
onable
disturbances. Relations
For instance, in manag
the general ement
Owing to
strike in strateg [application of
Philadelphia, ies in "scientific
one man only the management"]
went out at the eyes of in part in
Tabor plant government
the
[managed by arsenals, and a
worker
Taylor], while strike by the
s.
at the Baldwin union molders
Locomotive Frederi against some
shops across ck W. of its features
the street two Taylor as they were
thousand and introduced in
struck. the foundry at
Carl G.
the Watertown
...Serious Barth
Arsenal,
opposition visited
"scientific
may be said to Watert management"
have been own in received much
begun in 1911,
April publicity. The
immediately
1909 House of
after certain and Representative
testimony reporte s appointed a
presented committee,
d on
before the consisting of
their
Interstate William B.
observ
Commerce Wilson, William
Commission ations C. Redfield and
[by Harrington at the John Q. Tilson
Emerson] shops. to investigate
revealed to the Their the system as
country the it had been
conclu
strong applied in the
sion
movement Watertown
was to
setting Arsenal. In its
towards apply report to
scientific the Congress this
management. Taylor committee
National labor syste sustained
leaders, wide- m of Labor's
awake as to manag contention that
what might the system
ement
happen in the forced
to the
future, decided abnormally
shops
that the new high speed
movement to upon
was a menace produc workmen, that
to their e its disciplinary
organization, better features were
and at once arbitrary and
results
inaugurated an harsh, and that
.
attack... the use of a
Efforts
centered about stop-watch
the installation to and the
of scientific install payment of a
management the bonus were
in the Taylor injurious to the
government syste worker's
arsenal at m manhood and
Watertown.[33] welfare. At a
began
succeeding
in June
session of
1909. Over the years of
Congress a
time study and trying to measure [HR
improve the efficiency of 8665 by Clyde
workers, criticisms Howard
began to evolve. Tavenner] was
passed which
Workers complained of
prohibited the
having to compete with
further use of
one another, feeling
the stop-watch
strained and resentful, and the
and feeling excessively payment of a
tired after work. There is, premium or
however, no evidence bonus to
that the times enforced workmen in

were unreasonable.[36] In government

establishment
June 1913, employees
s.[35] — John P.
of the Watertown
Frey.
Arsenal petitioned to
"Scientific
abolish the practice of Management
scientific management and Labor".
there.[37] A number of The American
magazine writers Federationist.
XXII (1): 257
inquiring into the effects
(January 1916)
of scientific
management found that
the "conditions in shops investigated
contrasted favorably with those in other
plants".[38]
Continuing current reactions
Criticism of Taylor's principles of effective
workmanship and the productivity of the
workers continues today. Often, his
theories are described as man-
contemptuous and portrayed as now
overhauled.[39] In practice, however, the
principles of Taylor are still being pursued
by Kaizen and Six Sigma and similar
methodologies, which are based on the
development of working methods and
courses based on systematic analysis
rather than relying on tradition and rule of
thumb.[40]
Taylorism is, according to Stephen P.
Waring, considered very controversial,
despite its popularity. It is often criticized
for turning the worker into an "automaton"
or "machine".[41] Due to techniques
employed with scientific management,
employees claim to have become
overworked and were hostile to the
process. Criticisms commonly came from
workers who were subjected to an
accelerated work pace, lower standards of
workmanship, lower product-quality, and
lagging wages. Workers defied being
reduced to such machines, and objected
to the practices of Taylorism. Many
workers formed unions, demanded higher
pay, and went on strike to be free of
control issues. This ignited class conflict,
which Taylorism was initially meant to
prevent. Efforts to resolve the conflicts
included methods of scientific
collectivism, making agreements with
unions, and the personnel management
movement.[42]

In the middle of 1960 some counter-

movements to Taylorism arose.
Representatives of the so-called Human
Relations movement urged humanization
and democratization of the working world.
The criticism of Taylorism supports the
unilateral approach of labor. Strictly
speaking, Taylorism is not a scientific
theory. All theories of F. W. Taylor are
based on experiments. On the basis of
samples, conclusions were made, which
were then generalized. There is no
representativeness of the selected
sample.[43]

Another reason for criticizing Taylor's

methods stemmed from Taylor's belief
that the scientific method included the
calculations of exactly how much time it
takes a man to do a particular task, or his
rate of work. However, the opposition to
this argument is that such a calculation
relies on certain arbitrary, non-scientific
decisions such as what constituted the
job, which men were timed, and under
which conditions. Any of these factors are
subject to change, and therefore can
produce inconsistencies.[44]

Some dismiss so-called "scientific

management"/Taylorism as
pseudoscience.[45]

Legacy
Scientific management was one of the
first attempts to systematically treat
management and process improvement
as a scientific problem. It may have been
the first to do so in a "bottom-up" way and
found a lineage of successors that have
many elements in common. With the
advancement of statistical methods,
quality assurance and quality control
began in the 1920s and 1930s. During the
1940s and 1950s, the body of knowledge
for doing scientific management evolved
into operations management, operations
research, and management cybernetics. In
the 1980s total quality management
became widely popular, and in the 1990s
"re-engineering" went from a simple word
to a mystique. Today's Six Sigma and lean
manufacturing could be seen as new kinds
of scientific management, although their
evolutionary distance from the original is
so great that the comparison might be
misleading. In particular, Shigeo Shingo,
one of the originators of the Toyota
Production System, believed that this
system and Japanese management
culture in general should be seen as a kind
of scientific management.

Peter Drucker saw Frederick Taylor as the

creator of knowledge management,
because the aim of scientific management
was to produce knowledge about how to
improve work processes. Although the
typical application of scientific
management was manufacturing, Taylor
himself advocated scientific management
for all sorts of work, including the
management of universities and
government. For example, Taylor believed
scientific management could be extended
to "the work of our salesmen". Shortly after
his death, his acolyte Harlow S. Person
began to lecture corporate audiences on
the possibility of using Taylorism for "sales
engineering"[46] (Person was talking about
what is now called sales process
engineering—engineering the processes
that salespeople use—not about what we
call sales engineering today.) This was a
watershed insight in the history of
corporate marketing.
Google's methods of increasing
productivity and output can be seen to be
influenced by Taylorism as well.[47] The
Silicon Valley company is a forerunner in
applying behavioral science to increase
knowledge worker productivity. In classic
scientific management as well as
approaches like lean management or
business process reengineering leaders
and experts develop and define standard.
Leading high-tech companies use the
concept of nudge management to
increase productivity of employees. More
and more business leaders start to make
use of this new scientific management.[48]
Today's militaries employ all of the major
goals and tactics of scientific
management, if not under that name. Of
the key points, all but wage incentives for
increased output are used by modern
military organizations. Wage incentives
rather appear in the form of skill bonuses
for enlistments.

Scientific management has had an

important influence in sports, where stop
watches and motion studies rule the day.
(Taylor himself enjoyed sports, especially
tennis and golf. He and a partner won a
national championship in doubles tennis.
He invented improved tennis racquets and
improved golf clubs, although other
players liked to tease him for his
unorthodox designs, and they did not
catch on as replacements for the
mainstream implements).[49]

Modern human resources can be seen to

have begun in the scientific management
era, most notably in the writings of
Katherine M. H. Blackford, who was also a
proponent of eugenics.

Practices descended from scientific

management are currently used in offices
and in medicine (e.g. managed care) as
well.[50]
In the 21st century the tendency to
overcome Taylorism is very great. The
trend is moving away from assembly line
work, since people are increasingly being
replaced by machines in production plants
and sub-processes are automated, so that
human labor is not necessary in these
cases. The desire for automated workflow
in companies is intended to reduce costs
and support the company at the
operational level.[51]

Furthermore, it can be observed that many

companies try to make the workplace as
comfortable as possible for the
employees. This is achieved by light
flooded rooms, Feng Shui methods in the
workplace or even by creative jobs. The
efficiency and creativity of the employees
is to be promoted by a pleasant
atmosphere at the workplace. Approaches
of the Scientific Management, in which
attempts are also made to make the work
environment pleasant, are partly
recognizable here.[52]

In the works of Gouldner and Crozier, the

recognition of the plurality of industrial
forms is being discussed.[53] In the 21st
century, we have a modern corporate
management, where managers are given
the available positions in companies and
are given the right to take legal action.[54]

The working world of the 21st century is

mainly based on Total Quality
Management. This is derived from quality
control. In contrast to Taylorism, by which
products are produced in the shortest
possible time without any form of quality
control and delivered to the end customer,
the focus in the 21st century is on quality
control at TQM. In order to avoid error
rates, it is necessary to hire specialists to
check all the products which have been
manufactured before they are delivered to
the end customer. The quality controls
have improved over time, and incorrect
partial processes can be detected in time
and removed from the production
process.[55]

Taylorism approaches are largely prevalent

in companies where machines can not
perform certain activities. Certain
subprocesses are still to be carried out by
humans, such as the sorting out of
damaged fruit in the final process before
the goods are packed by machines. It
turns out that the quality control is
ultimately to be verified by the individual
man. Certain activities remain similar to
the approach of Taylorism. There are no
"zero error programs", employees have to
be trained and thus reduce error rates.[56]

Through the invention of the management

one managed positions, which are
equipped with disposition rights. The
positions are occupied by paid employees
and form the basis for the current, modern
corporate management. In order to be able
to perceive these positions, it was no
longer necessary to bring in resources
such as capital, but instead qualifications
were necessary. Written rights are also
passed on to employees, which means
that the leaders of an organization tend to
fall into the background and merely have a
passive position.[54]

The structure and size of a company must

be distinguished. Depending on which
dispositions are predominant, the size of
the company, the sector, and the number
of employees in an organization, one can
examine whether approaches of Taylorism
are prevalent. It is believed to be
predominant in the automotive industry. In
spite of the fact that a lot of activities have
been replaced by machines during the
production, it is ultimately the person who
can check the quality of a product.[57]
Taylorism led to a performance increase in
companies. All superfluous working steps
are avoided. The company benefits from
the productivity of the workers and this in
turn from higher wages. Unused
productivity resources were effectively
exploited by Taylorism.[58]

Today's work environment in the 21st

century benefits from the humanity of
working conditions. Corporate strategies
are increasingly focused on the flexibility
of work. Flexible adaptation to demand
should be possible. The qualifications of
the employees, the work content as well
as the work processes are determined by
the competition situation on the market.
The aim is to promote self-discipline and
the motivation of employees in order to
achieve their own tasks and at the same
time to prevent monotonous work.
Technical progress has led to more
humane working conditions since
inhumane work steps are done by the
machines.[58]

Taylorism's approach is called inhuman.

The increased wage alone is not a
permanent incentive for the workers to
carry out the same monotonous work.
Worker-friendly work structures are
required. People no longer want to be
perceived merely as executive organ. The
complete separation from manual and
headwork leads to a lack of pleasure in the
execution of the work steps.[58]

In the 21st century the rising level of

education leads to better trained workers,
but the competitive pressure also rises.
The interplay of economic as well as the
pressure to innovate also lead to
uncertainty among employees. The
national diseases in the 21st century have
become burn-out phenomena and
depressions, often in conjunction with the
stress and the increased performance
pressure in the work.[59]
See also
Cheaper by the Dozen
Digital Taylorism
Dirty, dangerous and demeaning
Hans Renold (1852–1943), credited with
introducing Taylorism to Britain
Hawthorne effect
Henry R. Towne (1844–1924), ASME
President and author of the seminal The
Engineer as An Economist (1886)
Henry Louis Le Châtelier (1850–1936),
industrial chemist and author of French
language texts on Taylorism; for
example Le Systeme Taylor[60]
 Industrial engineering
Management science
Modern Times (film)
Pandora's Box
The Pajama Game
The Secret Life of Machines
Stakhanovism
Words per minute
Theory X and Theory Y

Notes
1. Mitcham 2005, p. 1153 Mitcham, Carl
and Adam, Briggle Management in
Mitcham (2005) p. 1153
2. Woodham 1997, p. 12
3. Drury 1915, pp. 15–21
4. Drury, Horace B. (Horace Bookwalter) (29
January 2018). "Scientific management; a
history and criticism" . New York, Columbia
university; [etc., etc.] – via Internet Archive.
5. Drury, Horace B. (Horace Bookwalter) (29
January 2018). "Scientific management; a
history and criticism" . New York, Columbia
university; [etc., etc.] – via Internet Archive.
6. Drury, Horace B. (Horace Bookwalter) (29
January 2018). "Scientific management; a
history and criticism" . New York, Columbia
university; [etc., etc.] – via Internet Archive.
7. Drury, Horace Bookwalter (1918).
"Scientific management; a history and
criticism" . Studies in History, Economics
and Public Law (edited by the faculty of
political science of Columbia University).
XXII (1): 274. "Emerson has done more
than any other single man to popularize the
subject of scientific management. His
statement that the railroads could save
$1,000,000 a day by introducing efficiency
methods was the keynote which started the
present interest in the subject. His books,
Efficiency (a reprint in 1911 of periodical
contributions of 1908 and 1909), and The
Twelve Principles of Efficiency (1912),
taken with his magazine articles and
addresses, have perhaps done more than
anything else to make "efficiency " a
household word."
8. Drury, Horace B. (Horace Bookwalter) (29
January 2018). "Scientific management; a
history and criticism" . New York, Columbia
university; [etc., etc.] – via Internet Archive.
9. "F. W. Taylor, Expert in Efficiency, Dies" .
www.nytimes.com.
10. Taylor 1911
11. Taylor 1911, pp. 13–14.
12. Taylor 1911, pp. 19, 23, 82, 95.
13. "Definition of SOLDIER" . www.merriam-
webster.com.
14. Taylor 1911, pp. 13–29, 95.
15. Taylor & 1911, p. 59
16. Hartness 1912
17. Braverman 1998.
18. Melossi, Dario (December 2008).
Controlling Crime, Controlling Society:
Thinking about Crime in Europe and
America. Wiley.
19. Mullins 2004, p. 70.
20. Drury 1915, pp. 170–174
21. Noble 1984.
22. Rosen 1993, p. 139
23. Hounshell 1984, pp. 249–253.
24. Sorensen 1956, p. 41
25. Beissinger 1988, pp. 35–37.
26. Hughes 2004.
27. Hughes 2004, p. 251, quoting Stalin
1976 p. 115.
28. Sorensen 1956, pp. 193–216.
29. Drury, Horace B. (Horace Bookwalter)
(29 January 2018). "Scientific
management; a history and criticism" . New
York, Columbia university; [etc., etc.] – via
Internet Archive.
30. Lenin, V.I. "Lenin: A 'Scientific' System
of Sweating" . www.marxists.org.
31. Lenin, V.I. "Lenin: The Taylor System—
Man's Enslavement by the Machine" .
www.marxists.org.
32. Lenin, Vladimir. "The Immediate Tasks
of the Soviet Government" .
www.marxists.org.
33. Drury, Horace Bookwalter (1918).
"Scientific management; a history and
criticism" . Studies in History, Economics
and Public Law (edited by the faculty of
political science of Columbia University).
XXII (1): 274.
34. Hoxie, Robert F. (1915). "Scientific
Management and Labor" .
35. Frey, John F. (January 1916). "Scientific
Management and Labor" . The American
Federationist (Official Magazine of the
American Federation of Labor). LXV (2):
257. "Owing to its application in part in
government arsenals, and a strike by the
union molders against some of its features
as they were introduced in the foundry at
the Watertown Arsenal, "scientific
management" received much publicity. The
House of Representatives appointed a
committee, consisting of Congressman
William B. Wilson, William C. Redfield and
John Q. Tilson to investigate the system as
it had been applied in the Watertown
Arsenal. In its report to Congress this
committee sustained Labor's contention
that the system forced abnormally high
speed upon workmen, that its disciplinary
features were arbitrary and harsh, and that
the use of a stop-watch and the payment of
a bonus were injurious to the worker's
manhood and welfare. At a succeeding
session of Congress a measure was
passed which prohibited the further use of
the stop-watch and the payment of a
premium or bonus to workmen in
government establishments. When the
federal Commission on Industrial Relations
began its work it was decided that a further
investigation of "scientific management"
should be made, and Mr. Robert F. Hoxie,
Professor of Economics at the University of
Chicago, was selected to undertake the
work... Mr. Hoxie was to devote a year to
his investigation, and... it was deemed
advsiable that he should be accompanied
by two men... One of those appointed was
Mr. Robert G. Valentine [formerly
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, but "at this
time a management consultant in private
practice" according to Aitken] The other
expert was to be a trade unionist, and I
[John P. Frey] was honored with the
appointment."
36. Aitken 1985, p. 85
37. Drury 1915, p. 141
38. Drury 1915, p. 194
39. Hebeisen, W. (1999). F. W. Taylor und
der Taylorismus. Über das Wirken und die
Lehre Taylors und die Kritik am
Taylorismus. Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag
AG. p. 7.
40. Hebeisen, W. (1999). F. W. Taylor und
der Taylorismus. Über das Wirken und die
Lehre Taylors und die Kritik am
Taylorismus. Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag
AG. p. 188.
41. Drury 1915, pp. 195–198
42. Waring 1991, p. 14
43. Henke, J. (2004). "Infoblatt
Taylorismus. Frederick Winslow Taylor
stellte Theorien zur Optimierung der Arbeit
bzw. Unternehmen auf" . Klett. Archived
from the original on 1 May 2012. Retrieved
6 February 2017.
44. Aitken 1985, p. 21
45. For example: Yaszek, Lisa (2013)
[2002]. "4: Of Fossils and Androids:
(Re)Producing Sexuality in Recent Film".
The Self Wired: Technology and Subjectivity
in Contemporary Narrative . Literary
Criticism and Cultural Theory. New York:
Routledge. p. 130. ISBN 9781136716164.
Retrieved 2017-06-03. "Meanwhile, the
pseudo-science of Taylorism justified
heightened outside surveillance of the
laboring body, positing a rational
'technology of the productive human body'
[...]. Significantly, Taylorism altered previous
Cartesian notion of the body as a kind of
working machine by redefining 'work' in the
more narrow sense used in physics, as
'force working against resistance' [...]."
46. Dawson 2005.
47. Carr, Nicholas G. (June 2010). The
Shallows. New York City: W. W. Norton &
Company.
48. Ebert, Philip; Freibichler, Wolfgang
(2017). "Nudge management: applying
behavioural science to increase knowledge
worker productivity" . Journal of
Organization Design. 6:4.
49. Kanigel 1997
50. Head 2005.
51. Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J. &
Reijers, H. (2013). Fundamentals of
Business Process Management. Berlin
Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. p. 372.
52. Laube, H. (2014). "Arbeiten im Silicon
Valley. Wann ist endlich wieder Montag? In
der Spiegel. 04. Mai 2014" . Der Spiegel.
Archived from the original on 4 May 2014.
Retrieved 6 February 2017.
53. Bonazzi, G. (2014). Geschichte des
organisatorischen Denkens. Wiesbaden:
Springer Fachmedien. p. 261.
54. Freriks, R. (1996). Theoretische Modelle
der Betriebsgröße im Maschinenbau.
Koordination und Kontrollmechanismen bei
organisatorischem Wachstum. Opladen:
Leske+ Budrich. p. 117.
55. Koch, S. (2011). Einführung in das
Management von Geschäftsprozessen.
Berling Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. p. 185.
56. Koch, S. (2011). Einführung in das
Management von Geschäftsprozessen.
Berling Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Berling
Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. p. 185.
57. Freriks, R. Theoretische Modelle der
Betriebsgröße im Maschinenbau.
Koordination und Kontrollmechanismen bei
organisatorischem Wachstum. Opladen:
Leske+ Budrich.: 1996. p. 114.
58. Von Berg, A. (2009). Humanisierung der
Arbeit. Neue Formen der Arbeitsgestaltung
als Determinante von Arbeitszufriedenheit
am Beispiel teilautonomer Arbeitsgruppen.
Georg- August Universität: Göttingen.
pp. 1–2.
59. Von Berg, A. (2009). Humanisierung der
Arbeit. Neue Formen der Arbeitsgestaltung
als Determinante von Arbeitszufriedenheit
am Beispiel teilautonomer Arbeitsgruppen.
Georg- August Universität: Göttingen. p. 1.
60. Thompson, Clarence Bertrand (29
January 2018). "The Theory and Practice of
Scientific Management" . Houghton Mifflin
– via Google Books.

References
Aitken, Hugh G. J. (1985) [1960], Scientific
Management in Action: Taylorism at
Watertown Arsenal, 1908-1915 , Princeton,
NJ, USA: Princeton University Press,
ISBN 978-0-691-04241-1, LCCN 84026462 ,
OCLC 1468387 . First published in 1960 by
Harvard University Press. Republished in 1985
by Princeton University Press, with a new
foreword by Merritt Roe Smith.
Beissinger, Mark R. (1988), Scientific
Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet
Power , London, UK: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd,
ISBN 978-1-85043-108-4.
Bonazzi, G. (2014). Geschichte des
organisatorischen Denkens. Wiesbaden:
Springer Fachmedien.
Braverman, Harry (1998) [1974], Labor and
Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in
the Twentieth Century, New York, NY, USA:
Republication by Monthly Review Press,
ISBN 0-85345-940-1.
Dawson, Michael (2005), The Consumer Trap:
Big Business Marketing in American Life
(paper ed.), Urbana, IL, USA: University of
Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-07264-2.
Drury, Horace Bookwalter (1915), Scientific
management: a history and criticism , New
York, NY, USA: Columbia University.
Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J. &
Reijers, H. (2013). Fundamentals of Business
Process Management. Berlin Heidelberg:
Springer Verlag.
Freriks, R. (1996). Theoretische Modelle der
Betriebsgröße im Maschinenbau. Koordination
und Kontrollmechanismen bei
organisatorischem Wachstum. Opladen:
Leske+ Budrich.
Hartness, James (1912), The human factor in
works management , New York and London:
McGraw-Hill, OCLC 1065709 . Republished by
Hive Publishing Company as Hive
management history series no. 46, ISBN 978-
0-87960-047-1. templatestyles stripmarker in
|postscript= at position 84 (help)
Head, Simon (2005), The New Ruthless
Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age ,
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
ISBN 978-0-19-517983-5.
Hebeisen, W. (1999). F.W. Taylor und der
Taylorismus. Über das Wirken und die Lehre
Taylors und die Kritik am Taylorismus. Zürich:
vdf Hochschulverlag AG.
Henke, J. (2004). Infoblatt Taylorismus.
Frederick Winslow Taylor stellte Theorien zur
Optimierung der Arbeit bzw. Unternehmen
auf. Leipzig: Klett Verlag.
Hounshell, David A. (1984), From the
American System to Mass Production, 1800-
1932: The Development of Manufacturing
Technology in the United States, Baltimore,
Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press,
ISBN 978-0-8018-2975-8, LCCN 83016269
Hughes, Thomas P. (2004) [1989], American
Genesis: A Century of Invention and
Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (2nd
ed.), Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago
Press, ISBN 978-0-14-009741-2, archived
from the original on 2010-06-17.
Kanigel, Robert (1997), The One Best Way:
Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of
Efficiency, New York, NY, USA: Penguin-Viking,
ISBN 978-0-670-86402-7. A detailed biography
of Taylor and a historian's look at his ideas.
Koch, S. (2011). Einführung in das
Management von Geschäftsprozessen.
Berling Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Laube, H. (2014). Arbeiten im Silicon Valley.
Wann ist endlich wieder Montag? In: Der
Spiegel.
McGaughey, Ewan, 'Behavioural Economics
and Labour Law' (2014) LSE Legal Studies
Working Paper No. 20/2014
Mitcham, Carl (2005), "Management",
Encyclopedia of science, technology, and
ethics , 3, Macmillan Reference USA,
ISBN 978-0-02-865834-6.
Mullins, Laurie J. (2004), Management and
Organisational Behaviour (7th ed.), Financial
Times–FT Press–Prentice-Hall–Pearson
Education Ltd, ISBN 978-0-273-68876-1.
Noble, David F. (1984), Forces of Production:
A Social History of Industrial Automation, New
York, New York, USA: Knopf, ISBN 978-0-394-
51262-4, LCCN 83048867 .
Rosen, Ellen (1993), Improving Public Sector
Productivity: Concepts and Practice,
Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: Sage Publications,
ISBN 978-0-8039-4573-9
Sorensen, Charles E.; with Williamson,
Samuel T. (1956), My Forty Years with Ford,
New York, New York, USA: Norton,
LCCN 56010854 . Various republications,
including ISBN 9780814332795.
Stalin, J.V. (1976), Problems of Leninism:
Lectures Delivered at the Sverdlov University,
Beijing, China: Foreign Languages Press.
Taylor, Frederick Winslow (1903), Shop
Management , New York, NY, USA: American
Society of Mechanical Engineers,
OCLC 2365572 . "Shop Management" began
as an address by Taylor to a meeting of the
ASME, which published it in pamphlet form.
The link here takes the reader to a 1912
republication by Harper & Brothers. Also
available from Project Gutenberg .
Von Berg, A. (2009). Humanisierung der
Arbeit. Neue Formen der Arbeitsgestaltung als
Determinante von Arbeitszufriedenheit am
 Beispiel teilautonomer Arbeitsgruppen.
Seminararbeit an der Georg-August
Universität: Göttingen.
Waring, Stephen P. (1991), Taylorism
Transformed: Scientific Management Theory
since 1945, Chapel Hill, NC, USA: University of
North Carolina Press, ISBN 0807819727
Woodham, Jonathan (1997), Twentieth-
Century Design, New York, NY, USA and
London, UK: Oxford University Press,
ISBN 0192842048, OCLC 35777427

Further reading
Aitken, Hugh G.J. (1985) [1960],
Scientific Management in Action:
Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal, 1908-
1915 , Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton
University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-04241-
1, LCCN 84026462 , OCLC 1468387 .
First published in 1960 by Harvard
University Press. Republished in 1985 by
Princeton University Press, with a new
foreword by Merritt Roe Smith.
Gershon, Richard (2001),
Telecommunications Management:
Industry Structures and Planning
Strategies, Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, ISBN 978-0-8058-
3002-6
Morf, Martin (1983) Eight Scenarios for
Work in the Future. in Futurist, v17 n3
pp. 24–29 Jun 1983, reprinted in
Cornish, Edward and World Future
Society (1985) Habitats tomorrow:
homes and communities in an exciting
new era : selections from The futurist ,
pp. 14–19
Scheiber, Lukas (2012), Next Taylorism:
A Calculus of Knowledge Work, Frankfurt
am Main, BRD: Peter Lang, ISBN 978-
3631624050
Taylor, Frederick Winslow (1911), The
Principles of Scientific Management ,
New York, NY, USA and London, UK:
Harper & Brothers, LCCN 11010339 ,
 OCLC 233134 . Also available from
Project Gutenberg .

External links
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Scientific management.

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Scientific management

Special Collections: F.W. Taylor

Collection . Stevens Institute of
Technology has an extensive collection
at its library.
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