Frederick Winslow Taylor
Encyclopedia
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American
mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management
and was one of the first management consultants
. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement
and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era
.
. Taylor's ancestor, Samuel Taylor, settled in Burlington, New Jersey
, in 1677. Taylor's father, Franklin Taylor, a Princeton
-educated lawyer, built his wealth on mortgages
. Taylor's mother, Emily Annette Taylor (née Winslow), was an ardent abolitionist and a coworker with Lucretia Mott
. Educated early by his mother, Taylor studied for two years in France and Germany and traveled Europe for 18 months. In 1872, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy
in Exeter, New Hampshire
.
Upon graduation, Taylor was accepted at Harvard Law School
. However, due to rapidly deteriorating eyesight, Taylor had to consider an alternative career. After the depression of 1873
, Taylor became an industrial apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience at a pump-manufacturing company, Enterprise Hydraulic Works, in Philadelphia. Taylor's career progressed in 1878 when he became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Works
. At Midvale, Taylor was promoted to gang-boss, foreman, research director, and finally chief engineer of the works. Taylor became a student of Stevens Institute of Technology
, studying via correspondence and obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering in 1883. On May 3, 1884, he married Louise M. Spooner of Philadelphia.
From 1890 until 1893 Taylor worked as a general manager and a consulting engineer to management for the Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia, a company that operated large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin. He spent time as a plant manager in Maine. In 1893, Taylor opened an independent consulting practice in Philadelphia. His business card read "Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty". In 1898, Taylor joined Bethlehem Steel
, where he, Maunsel White, and a team of assistants developed high speed steel
. For his process of treating high speed tool steels he received a personal gold medal at the Paris exposition in 1900, and was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal
that same year by the Franklin Institute
, Philadelphia. Taylor was forced to leave Bethlehem Steel in 1901 after antagonisms with other managers. In 1901, Frederick and Louise Taylor adopted three orphans: Kempton, Robert and Elizabeth.
On October 19, 1906, Taylor was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science
by the University of Pennsylvania
. Taylor eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business
at Dartmouth College
. Late winter of 1915 Taylor caught pneumonia and one day after his fifty-ninth birthday, on March 21, 1915 he died. He was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery
, in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
.
, and was one of the first management consultants
and director of a famous firm. In Peter Drucker
's description,
Taylor was also an accomplished tennis player. He and Clarence Clark
won the first doubles tournament in the 1881 US National Championships, the precursor of the US Open.
Future US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis
coined the term scientific management in the course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission
in 1910. Brandeis debated that railroads, when governed according to the principles of Taylor, did not need to raise rates to increase wages. Taylor used Brandeis's term in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management
, published in 1911. The Eastern Rate Case propelled Taylor's ideas to the forefront of the management agenda. Taylor wrote to Brandeis "I have rarely seen a new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this one." Taylor's approach is also often referred to as Taylor's Principles, or frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism. Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:
Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. According to Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks.
Taylor believed in transferring control from workers to management. He set out to increase the distinction between mental (planning work) and manual labour (executing work). Detailed plans specifying the job, and how it was to be done, were to be formulated by management and communicated to the workers.
The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. The strike at Watertown Arsenal
led to the congressional investigation in 1912.
Taylor believed the labourer was worthy of his hire, and pay was linked to productivity. His workers were able to earn substantially more than those under conventional management, and this earned him enemies among the owners of factories where scientific management was not in use.
. He would break a job into its component parts and measure each to the hundredth of a minute. One of his most famous studies involved shovels. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined that the most effective load was 21½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful in getting his concepts applied and was dismissed from Bethlehem Steel
. Nevertheless, Taylor was able to convince workers who used shovels and whose compensation was tied to how much they produced to adopt his advice about the optimum way to shovel by breaking the movements down into their component elements and recommending better ways to perform these movements. It was largely through the efforts of his disciples (most notably H.L. Gantt
) that industry came to implement his ideas. Moreover, the book he wrote after parting company with Bethlehem Steel
, Shop Management, sold well.
(ASME) from 1906 to 1907. While president, he tried to implement his system into the management of the ASME but was met with much resistance. He was only able to reorganize the publications department and then only partially. He also forced out the ASME's long-time secretary, Morris L. Cooke, and replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure as president was trouble-ridden and marked the beginning of a period of internal dissension within the ASME during the Progressive Age.
In 1912, Taylor collected a number of his articles into a book-length manuscript which he submitted to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne
. The committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford
. Alford was a critic of the Taylor system and the report was negative. The committee modified the report slightly, but accepted Alford's recommendation not to publish Taylor's book. Taylor angrily withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval.
, Le Chatelier
translated Taylor's work and introduced scientific management throughout government owned plants during World War I
. This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol
, whose 1916 Administration Industrielle et Générale emphasized organizational structure in management. In the classic General and Industrial Management Fayol wrote that "Taylor's approach differs from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the "bottom up." he starts with the most elemental units of activity – the workers' actions – then studies the effects of their actions on productivity, devises new methods for making them more efficient, and applies what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy..." He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at lower levels of the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency. According to Fayol, the approach results in a "negation of the principle of unity of command." Fayol criticized Taylor's functional management in this way: In Shop Management, Taylor said « ... the most marked outward characteristics of functional management lies in the fact that each workman, instead of coming in direct contact with the management at one point only, ... receives his daily orders and help from eight different bosses... these eight were (1) route clerks, (2) instruction card men, (3) cost and time clerks, (4) gang bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7) repair bosses, and the (8) shop disciplinarian. » This, Fayol said, was an unworkable situation, and that Taylor must have somehow reconciled the dichotomy in some way not described in Taylor's works.
to spread information about management techniques.
, Vladimir Lenin
was very impressed by Taylorism, which he and Joseph Stalin
sought to incorporate into Soviet manufacturing. Taylorism and the mass production methods of Henry Ford
thus became highly influential during the early years of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless "[...] Frederick Taylor's methods have never really taken root in the Soviet Union." The voluntaristic approach of the Stakhanovite
movement in the 1930s of setting individual records was diametrically opposed to Taylor's systematic approach and proved to be counter-productive. The stop-and-go of the production process – workers having nothing to do at the beginning of a month and 'storming' during illegal extra shifts at the end of the month – which prevailed even in the 1980s had nothing to do with the successfully taylorized plants e.g., of Toyota which are characterized by continuous production processes (heijunka) which are continuously improved (kaizen
).
"The easy availability of replacement labor, which allowed Taylor to choose only 'first-class men,' was an important condition for his system's success." The situation in the Soviet Union was very different. "Because work is so unrhythmic, the rational manager will hire more workers than he would need if supplies were even in order to have enough for storming. Because of the continuing labor shortage, managers are happy to pay needed workers more than the norm, either by issuing false job orders, assigning them to higher skill grades than they deserve on merit criteria, giving them 'loose' piece rates, or making what is supposed to be 'incentive' pay, premia for good work, effectively part of the normal wage. As Mary Mc Auley has suggested under these circumstances piece rates are not an incentive wage, but a way of justifying giving workers whatever they 'should' be getting, no matter what their pay is supposed to be according to the official norms."
Taylor and his theories are also referenced (and put to practice) in the 1921 dystopia
n novel We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
.
went on strike against newly introduced Taylorist work methods. Also, Henry Gantt
, who was a close associate of Taylor, re-organized the Canadian Pacific Railway
.
With the prevalence of US branch plants in Canada and close economic and cultural ties between the two countries, it is safe to assume that Taylorist work practices have been placed into extensive use in Canada.
is highly critical of Taylor’s methods. Mintzberg states that an obsession with efficiency allows measureable benefits to overshadow less quantifiable social benefits completely, and social values get left behind.
Taylor's methods have also been challenged by socialist intellectuals. The argument put forward relates to progressive defanging of workers in the workplace and the subsequent degradation of work as management, powered by capital, uses Taylor's methods to render work repeatable, precise yet monotonous and skill-reducing. James W. Rinehart argued that Taylor's methods of transferring control over production from workers to management, and the division of labour into simple tasks, intensified the alienation of workers that had begun with the factory system of production around 1870-1890.
in 1881.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management
Scientific management
Scientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management...
and was one of the first management consultants
Management consulting
Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement....
. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement
Efficiency Movement
The Efficiency Movement was a major movement in the United States, Britain and other industrial nations in the early 20th century that sought to identify and eliminate waste in all areas of the economy and society, and to develop and implement best practices. The concept covered mechanical,...
and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...
.
Biography
Taylor was born in 1856 to a wealthy Quaker family in Germantown, Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaGermantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...
. Taylor's ancestor, Samuel Taylor, settled in Burlington, New Jersey
Burlington, New Jersey
Burlington is a city in Burlington County, New Jersey, United States and a suburb of Philadelphia. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 9,920....
, in 1677. Taylor's father, Franklin Taylor, a Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
-educated lawyer, built his wealth on mortgages
Mortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
. Taylor's mother, Emily Annette Taylor (née Winslow), was an ardent abolitionist and a coworker with Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Coffin Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, social reformer, and proponent of women's rights.- Early life and education:...
. Educated early by his mother, Taylor studied for two years in France and Germany and traveled Europe for 18 months. In 1872, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
in Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The town's population was 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood...
.
Upon graduation, Taylor was accepted at Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
. However, due to rapidly deteriorating eyesight, Taylor had to consider an alternative career. After the depression of 1873
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
, Taylor became an industrial apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience at a pump-manufacturing company, Enterprise Hydraulic Works, in Philadelphia. Taylor's career progressed in 1878 when he became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Works
Midvale Steel
Midvale Steel was a succession of steel-making corporations whose flagship plant was the Midvale Steel Works at Nicetown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which operated from 1867 until 1976...
. At Midvale, Taylor was promoted to gang-boss, foreman, research director, and finally chief engineer of the works. Taylor became a student of Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology is a technological university located on a campus in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA – founded in 1870 with an 1868 bequest from Edwin A. Stevens. It is known for its engineering, science, and technological management curricula.The institute has produced leading...
, studying via correspondence and obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering in 1883. On May 3, 1884, he married Louise M. Spooner of Philadelphia.
From 1890 until 1893 Taylor worked as a general manager and a consulting engineer to management for the Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia, a company that operated large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin. He spent time as a plant manager in Maine. In 1893, Taylor opened an independent consulting practice in Philadelphia. His business card read "Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty". In 1898, Taylor joined Bethlehem Steel
Bethlehem Steel
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation , based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel. After a decline in the U.S...
, where he, Maunsel White, and a team of assistants developed high speed steel
High speed steel
High speed steelMost copyeditors today would tend to choose to style the unit adjective high-speed with a hyphen, rendering the full term as high-speed steel, and this styling is not uncommon . However, it is true that in the metalworking industries the styling high speed steel is long-established...
. For his process of treating high speed tool steels he received a personal gold medal at the Paris exposition in 1900, and was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal
Elliott Cresson Medal
The Elliott Cresson Medal, also known as the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal, was the highest award given by the Franklin Institute. The award was established by Elliott Cresson, life member of the Franklin Institute, with $1,000 granted in 1848...
that same year by the Franklin Institute
Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States, dating to 1824. The Institute also houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.-History:On February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughn Merrick and...
, Philadelphia. Taylor was forced to leave Bethlehem Steel in 1901 after antagonisms with other managers. In 1901, Frederick and Louise Taylor adopted three orphans: Kempton, Robert and Elizabeth.
On October 19, 1906, Taylor was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science , usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D. or Dr.Sc., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries Doctor of Science is the name used for the standard doctorate in the sciences, elsewhere the Sc.D...
by the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. Taylor eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business
Tuck School of Business
The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration is the graduate business school of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States...
at Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
. Late winter of 1915 Taylor caught pneumonia and one day after his fifty-ninth birthday, on March 21, 1915 he died. He was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery
West Laurel Hill Cemetery
West Laurel Hill Cemetery is a cemetery located in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the site of many notable burials, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992...
, in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd is a community in Lower Merion Township which is located on the Main Line in southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at US Route 1 . It was originally two separate towns, Bala and Cynwyd, but is commonly treated as a single community...
.
Work
Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific managementScientific management
Scientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management...
, and was one of the first management consultants
Management consulting
Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement....
and director of a famous firm. In Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an influential writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.”-Introduction:...
's description,
Taylor was also an accomplished tennis player. He and Clarence Clark
Clarence Clark
Clarence Munroe Clark was an American tennis player active near the end of the 19th century.-Biography:Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, he was part of a distinguished family from Philadelphia. In 1881, he became the first secretary of the recently-formed United States Lawn Tennis Association...
won the first doubles tournament in the 1881 US National Championships, the precursor of the US Open.
Future US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis
Louis Brandeis
Louis Dembitz Brandeis ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a secular mode...
coined the term scientific management in the course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
in 1910. Brandeis debated that railroads, when governed according to the principles of Taylor, did not need to raise rates to increase wages. Taylor used Brandeis's term in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management
The Principles of Scientific Management
The Principles of Scientific Management is a monograph published by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911. This influential monograph, which laid out the principles of scientific management, is a seminal text of modern organization and decision theory and has motivated administrators and students of...
, published in 1911. The Eastern Rate Case propelled Taylor's ideas to the forefront of the management agenda. Taylor wrote to Brandeis "I have rarely seen a new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this one." Taylor's approach is also often referred to as Taylor's Principles, or frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism. Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:
- Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
- Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
- Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
- Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
Managers and workers
Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system:Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. According to Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks.
Taylor believed in transferring control from workers to management. He set out to increase the distinction between mental (planning work) and manual labour (executing work). Detailed plans specifying the job, and how it was to be done, were to be formulated by management and communicated to the workers.
The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. The strike at Watertown Arsenal
Watertown Arsenal
The Watertown Arsenal was a major American arsenal located on the northern shore of the Charles River in Watertown, Massachusetts. Its site is now registered on the ASCE's List of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks and on the U.S.'s National Register of Historic Places, and it is home to the...
led to the congressional investigation in 1912.
Taylor believed the labourer was worthy of his hire, and pay was linked to productivity. His workers were able to earn substantially more than those under conventional management, and this earned him enemies among the owners of factories where scientific management was not in use.
Propaganda techniques
Taylor promised to reconcile labor and capital.Management theory
Taylor thought that by analyzing work, the "One Best Way" to do it would be found. He is most remembered for developing the time and motion studyTime and motion study
A time and motion study is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth . It is a major part of scientific management...
. He would break a job into its component parts and measure each to the hundredth of a minute. One of his most famous studies involved shovels. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined that the most effective load was 21½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful in getting his concepts applied and was dismissed from Bethlehem Steel
Bethlehem Steel
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation , based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel. After a decline in the U.S...
. Nevertheless, Taylor was able to convince workers who used shovels and whose compensation was tied to how much they produced to adopt his advice about the optimum way to shovel by breaking the movements down into their component elements and recommending better ways to perform these movements. It was largely through the efforts of his disciples (most notably H.L. Gantt
Henry Gantt
Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is most famous for developing the Gantt chart in the 1910s....
) that industry came to implement his ideas. Moreover, the book he wrote after parting company with Bethlehem Steel
Bethlehem Steel
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation , based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel. After a decline in the U.S...
, Shop Management, sold well.
Relations with ASME
Taylor was president of the American Society of Mechanical EngineersAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers is a professional body, specifically an engineering society, focused on mechanical engineering....
(ASME) from 1906 to 1907. While president, he tried to implement his system into the management of the ASME but was met with much resistance. He was only able to reorganize the publications department and then only partially. He also forced out the ASME's long-time secretary, Morris L. Cooke, and replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure as president was trouble-ridden and marked the beginning of a period of internal dissension within the ASME during the Progressive Age.
In 1912, Taylor collected a number of his articles into a book-length manuscript which he submitted to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne
Henry R. Towne
Henry Robinson Towne was an American mechanical engineer and businessman.-Early life:Henry R. Towne was the son of John Henry and Maria T. Towne. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1861 to 1862, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall, but did not complete a degree...
. The committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford
Leon P. Alford
Leon Pratt Alford was a mechanical engineer, administrator for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and management-relations innovator....
. Alford was a critic of the Taylor system and the report was negative. The committee modified the report slightly, but accepted Alford's recommendation not to publish Taylor's book. Taylor angrily withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval.
United States
- Carl G. Barth helped Taylor to develop speed-and-feed-calculating slide ruleSlide ruleThe slide rule, also known colloquially as a slipstick, is a mechanical analog computer. The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but is not normally used for addition or subtraction.Slide rules come in a...
s to a previously unknown level of usefulness. Similar aids are still used in machine shops today. Barth became an early consultant on scientific management and later taught at Harvard. - H. L. Gantt developed the Gantt chartGantt chartA Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some Gantt charts...
, a visual aid for scheduling tasks and displaying the flow of work. - Harrington Emerson introduced scientific management to the railroad industry, and proposed the dichotomy of staff versus line employees, with the former advising the latter.
- Morris Cooke adapted scientific management to educational and municipal organizations.
- Hugo MünsterbergHugo MünsterbergHugo Münsterberg was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial/Organizational , legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. Münsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the...
created industrial psychology. - Lillian GilbrethLillian Moller GilbrethLillian Moller Gilbreth was an American psychologist and industrial engineer. One of the first working female engineers holding a Ph.D., she is arguably the first true industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr...
introduced psychology to management studies. - Frank GilbrethFrank Bunker GilbrethFrank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. was an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of motion study, but is perhaps best known as the father and central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen.- Biography :...
(husband of Lillian) discovered scientific management while working in the construction industry, eventually developing motion studies independently of Taylor. These logically complemented Taylor's time studies, as time and motion are two sides of the efficiency improvement coin. The two fields eventually became time and motion studyTime and motion studyA time and motion study is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth . It is a major part of scientific management...
. - Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management in 1908, based its first-year curriculum on Taylor's scientific management. - Harlow S. Person, as deanDean (education)In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...
of DartmouthDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
's Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance, promoted the teaching of scientific management. - James O. McKinseyJames O. McKinseyJames Oscar McKinsey was the founder of McKinsey & Company.Management theory was still in its infancy when James O. McKinsey founded the firm that bears his name in 1926...
, professor of accounting at the University of ChicagoUniversity of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and founder of the consulting firm bearing his name, advocated budgets as a means of assuring accountability and of measuring performance.
France
In FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Le Chatelier
Henri Louis Le Chatelier
Henri Louis Le Châtelier was an influential French chemist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is most famous for devising Le Châtelier's principle, used by chemists to predict the effect a changing condition has on a system in chemical equilibrium...
translated Taylor's work and introduced scientific management throughout government owned plants during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol
Henri Fayol
Henri Fayol was a French mining engineer and director of mines who developed a general theory of business administration. He and his colleagues developed this theory independently of scientific management but roughly contemporaneously...
, whose 1916 Administration Industrielle et Générale emphasized organizational structure in management. In the classic General and Industrial Management Fayol wrote that "Taylor's approach differs from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the "bottom up." he starts with the most elemental units of activity – the workers' actions – then studies the effects of their actions on productivity, devises new methods for making them more efficient, and applies what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy..." He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at lower levels of the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency. According to Fayol, the approach results in a "negation of the principle of unity of command." Fayol criticized Taylor's functional management in this way: In Shop Management, Taylor said « ... the most marked outward characteristics of functional management lies in the fact that each workman, instead of coming in direct contact with the management at one point only, ... receives his daily orders and help from eight different bosses... these eight were (1) route clerks, (2) instruction card men, (3) cost and time clerks, (4) gang bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7) repair bosses, and the (8) shop disciplinarian. » This, Fayol said, was an unworkable situation, and that Taylor must have somehow reconciled the dichotomy in some way not described in Taylor's works.
Switzerland
In Switzerland, the American Edward Albert Filene established the International Management InstituteInternational Institute for Management Development
IMD - International Institute for Management Development is a non profit business school located in Lausanne, Switzerland.- History & Mission :...
to spread information about management techniques.
USSR
In the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
was very impressed by Taylorism, which he and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
sought to incorporate into Soviet manufacturing. Taylorism and the mass production methods of Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
thus became highly influential during the early years of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless "[...] Frederick Taylor's methods have never really taken root in the Soviet Union." The voluntaristic approach of the Stakhanovite
Stakhanovite
In Soviet history and iconography, a Stakhanovite follows the example of Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, employing hard work or Taylorist efficiencies to over-achieve on the job.- History :...
movement in the 1930s of setting individual records was diametrically opposed to Taylor's systematic approach and proved to be counter-productive. The stop-and-go of the production process – workers having nothing to do at the beginning of a month and 'storming' during illegal extra shifts at the end of the month – which prevailed even in the 1980s had nothing to do with the successfully taylorized plants e.g., of Toyota which are characterized by continuous production processes (heijunka) which are continuously improved (kaizen
Kaizen
, Japanese for "improvement", or "change for the better" refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, game development, and business management. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life-coaching, government,...
).
"The easy availability of replacement labor, which allowed Taylor to choose only 'first-class men,' was an important condition for his system's success." The situation in the Soviet Union was very different. "Because work is so unrhythmic, the rational manager will hire more workers than he would need if supplies were even in order to have enough for storming. Because of the continuing labor shortage, managers are happy to pay needed workers more than the norm, either by issuing false job orders, assigning them to higher skill grades than they deserve on merit criteria, giving them 'loose' piece rates, or making what is supposed to be 'incentive' pay, premia for good work, effectively part of the normal wage. As Mary Mc Auley has suggested under these circumstances piece rates are not an incentive wage, but a way of justifying giving workers whatever they 'should' be getting, no matter what their pay is supposed to be according to the official norms."
Taylor and his theories are also referenced (and put to practice) in the 1921 dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n novel We
We (novel)
We is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First...
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
.
Canada
In the early 1920s, the Canadian textile industry was re-organized according to scientific management principles. In 1928, workers at Canada Cotton Ltd. in Hamilton, OntarioHamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
went on strike against newly introduced Taylorist work methods. Also, Henry Gantt
Henry Gantt
Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is most famous for developing the Gantt chart in the 1910s....
, who was a close associate of Taylor, re-organized the Canadian Pacific Railway
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...
.
With the prevalence of US branch plants in Canada and close economic and cultural ties between the two countries, it is safe to assume that Taylorist work practices have been placed into extensive use in Canada.
Criticism of Taylor
Management theorist Henry MintzbergHenry Mintzberg
Professor Henry Mintzberg, is an internationally renowned academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he has been teaching since...
is highly critical of Taylor’s methods. Mintzberg states that an obsession with efficiency allows measureable benefits to overshadow less quantifiable social benefits completely, and social values get left behind.
Taylor's methods have also been challenged by socialist intellectuals. The argument put forward relates to progressive defanging of workers in the workplace and the subsequent degradation of work as management, powered by capital, uses Taylor's methods to render work repeatable, precise yet monotonous and skill-reducing. James W. Rinehart argued that Taylor's methods of transferring control over production from workers to management, and the division of labour into simple tasks, intensified the alienation of workers that had begun with the factory system of production around 1870-1890.
Tennis accomplishments
Taylor won the inaugural United States National tennis doubles championship at Newport CasinoNewport Casino
The Newport Casino is located at 186-202 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on February 27, 1987.- 1879 - 1900 :The complex was commissioned in 1880 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr...
in 1881.
See also
- Assembly lineAssembly lineAn assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods...
- Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.
- Henry FordHenry FordHenry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
- Scientific managementScientific managementScientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management...
Publications
Taylor published many articles and short monographs. A selection:- 1894. Notes on Belting
- 1895. A Piece-rate System
- 1896. The adjustment of wages to efficiency; three papers .... New York, For the American economic association by the Macmillan company; London, S. Sonnenschein & co..
- 1903. Shop management; a paper read before the American society of mechanical engineers. New York.
- 1906. On the art of cutting metals, by Mr. F. W. Taylor; an address made at the opening of the annual meeting in New York, December 1906. New York, The American society of mechanical engineers.
- 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers.
- 1911. Shop management, by Frederick Winslow Taylor ... with an introduction by Henry R. Towne .... New York, London, Harper & Brothers.
- 1911. A treatise on concrete, plain and reinforced: materials, construction, and design of concrete and reinforced concrete. (2d ed). New York, J. Wiley & sons.
- 1912. Concrete costs. New York, J. Wiley & sons.
Further reading
- Aitken, Hugh (1960), Taylorism at Watertown ArsenalWatertown ArsenalThe Watertown Arsenal was a major American arsenal located on the northern shore of the Charles River in Watertown, Massachusetts. Its site is now registered on the ASCE's List of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks and on the U.S.'s National Register of Historic Places, and it is home to the...
. Scientific management in action, 1908-1915, Harvard UPCompara - Taylor, Frederick, Scientific Management (includes "Shop Management" (1903), "The Principles of Scientific Management" (1911) and "Testimony Before the Special House Committee" (1912)), Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-27983-6
External links
- Special Collections – F.W. Taylor Collection , Stevens Institute of Technology has an extensive collection at its library
- The Principles of Scientific Management (full text)
- NY Times Obituary, March 22, 1915: F. W. Taylor, Expert in Efficiency, Dies
- A Selection from Frederick Taylor's Essays
- The Principles of Scientific Management, with more information.
- CNA Duties, with more information.
- Shop Management, 1911 edition, online
- An undergraduate's biography of Taylor (birth year of 1856 is incorrectly reported as 1865 here)
- Biography-West Laurel Hill Cemetery web site