Scientific Management

Frederick Winslow Taylor

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415279833
• eBook ISBN: 9781134466238
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

This volume comprises three works originally published separately as Shop Management (1903), The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) and Testimony Before the Special House Committee (1912). Taylor aimed at reducing conflict between managers and workers by using scientific thought to develop new principles and mechanisms of management. In contrast to ideas prevalent at the time, Taylor maintained that the workers' output could be increased by standardizing tasks and working conditions, with high pay for success and loss in case of failure. Scientific Management controversially suggested that almost every act of the worker would have to be preceded by one or more preparatory acts of management, thus separating the planning of an act from its execution.

This edition reprints Frederick Winslow Taylor, Scientific Management, New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1947

This edition published 2003
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Copyright © 1911 by Frederick W. Taylor
Copyright © 1939 by Louise M. S. Taylor
Copyright © 1947 by Harper & Brothers
Editorial matter and selection © 2003 Kenneth Thompson

Typeset in Times by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne

Transferred to digital printing 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 0-415-27982-8 (set)
ISBN 0-415-27983-6 (volume I)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent.

Introduction to The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations

By Kenneth Thompson

In considering the often fuzzy boundaries of any field within the discipline of sociology it has to be appreciated that sociology itself only slowly emerged as a separate discipline within the social sciences. Of the three major figures acknowledged as laying the foundations of sociology - Karl Marx (1818-83), Max Weber (1864-1920) and Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) - only Durkheim could be said to have clearly demarcated sociology as an academic discipline to which he could be solely attached (Thompson 1982/2002). This vagueness or permeability with regard to the boundaries of sociology persisted until well into the twentieth century. Some sociologists would even maintain that it is a myth 'that there is an essence to sociology, that it has some essential characteristics that give it and its practitioners a unity, coherence and common tradition' (Urry, 2002: 334). The sociologist John Urry maintains that sociology has always been a 'parasitic' discipline that feeds off developments in neighbouring disciplines and related social movements. This has both advantages and disadvantages. A disadvantage is that it is not always clear where the distinctively sociological study of any social phenomenon begins and ends. One of the advantages is that sociologists benefit from keeping a watchful eye on developments elsewhere and they are always willing to incorporate relevant insights into their own work. To put it another way: it could be said that sociology has always had a relaxed attitude towards interdisciplinarity and has not been much inclined to guard its boundaries. This explains why the early stages in the development of new sub-fields of sociological study have always been marked by interdisciplinarity.

We can observe this land of vagueness, about where sociology begins and ends, in the early sociology of management and organizations. In the first half of the twentieth century it would have been hard to distinguish the sociological perspective on organizations from that of some of the other approaches. The field of management studies and organization studies was being populated by a proliferation of perspectives and academic disciplines: Public Administration, Organization Theory, Administration Theory, Industrial Sociology, Management Science (and the perspective of Scientific Management), Industrial Psychology, and so on. To some extent, because this is an area of applied studies in which there are pressing demands for theory and research to produce practical results and prescriptions, the different perspectives and disciplines still jostle each other in a mixture of interdisciplinary co-operation as well as competition for attention and support. Managers who are interested in finding academic guidance towards the solution of organizational problems have plenty of options from which to choose, as they had then.

Today, it is likely that a well-educated manager will already have some training in particular academic disciplines and have a fairly clear idea of what they might have to offer. However, in the first half of the twentieth century this would have been much less clear. Administrators in the public sector and managers in industry were turning eagerly, but more naively, to academics for guidance. They were encouraged in this by governments, which wanted to push forward with social reconstruction and sought the achievement of peaceful solutions to industrial conflicts. The often proclaimed goals were increased efficiency of administration and increased productivity. The two major impediments were seen as: lack of clarity about the principles of good administration and management, and conflict resulting from restrictions on output by workers. It was towards the resolution of these twin problems that much of the early writing on management and organization was directed.

The early development of the sociology of management and organizations has to be viewed in relation to the emergence, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of a 'Management Movement'. This movement took various forms. On the one hand, it entailed the formation of professional management associations in industrial societies, such as America and Britain, with the aim of promoting both knowledge of the principles of organization and the professional status of managers. For example, the American Association of Industrial Management was founded in 1899 as the National Metal Trades Association, ostensibly with the purpose of promoting good employee-employer relations. Similarly, the American Management Association was formed in 1923 from a merger of the National Association of Corporate Schools (founded in 1913) and the Industrial Relations Association of America (organized in 1918 as the National Association of Employment Managers). Perhaps the most significant management association, as far as management theory was concerned, was the Society for the Advancement of Management (SAM). It claims to have the oldest roots of all the professional management societies, emanating from the Society to Promote the Science of Management, formed in 1912, which changed its name in 1916 to the Taylor Society, to honour Frederick W. Taylor. It is Taylor's work in creating the theory and practice of Scientific Management at the beginning of the twentieth century that sets the scene for The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations.

The main figures whose works are featured in this set of volumes on The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations represent the main streams of thought that converged together in the first decades of the twentieth century to inform thinking about management. They are:

1. The scientific management movement, with its origin in engineering, the key figure being Frederick W. Taylor.
2. The development of organization theory, first in the form of traditional principles of management and administration, and later as revolutionized by interdisciplinary contributions. Key figures represented here are: Henri Fayol, Mary Parker Follett, Luther H. Gulick, Lyndall F. Urwick, and Chester I. Barnard.
3. The personnel, human relations, and behavioural science flow of thought. This stream was originally identified with scientific management, but it was changed by contributions from empirical studies by sociologists, social psychologists and other researchers. The outstanding figures are Elton Mayo and his collaborators in the Hawthorne Experiments, notably F. J. Roethlisberger. Their pivotal international role is reflected in the attention given to them in subsequent studies, even those which diverged from them, as illustrated in the work of a leading British researcher after the Second World War, Tom Lupton.

Of course, as the sociology of management and organizations became more clearly defined as a sub-field within sociology after the Second World War, it became distinct from these earlier streams. It was increasingly shaped by some of the broader sociological theories and perspectives, such as those concerning bureaucracy, the division of labour in society, conflict theory, structural-functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology. These later contributions to the sociology of management and organizations have been well documented (cf. Salaman and Thompson, 1973, 1980). However, it is useful and important to present some of the earlier key contributions to the sociology of management and organizations, especially those that converged together in the first decades of the twentieth century to inform thinking about these subjects.

The works presented in The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations are representative of the three streams: scientific management, organization (and administration) theory, and human relations and behavioural science. There is also an example of the emerging, distinctively sociological studies after the Second World War, in the form of Tom Lupton's study, On the Shop Floor (1963), based on research carried out in the 1950s. Lupton begins his work by situating it in relation to the earlier streams, before showing how his research, informed by wider sociological theories, leads to a critique of assumptions and absences in the earlier theories.

There is no doubt that the seminal and most controversial contribution to the early phase in the development of management thought was Frederick Winslow Taylor's theory and practice of scientific management, subsequently known as 'Taylorism'. The single-volume Scientific Management (1947) comprises three works originally published separately as Shop Management (1903), The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) and Testimony Before the Special House Committee (1912). The third of these, the Testimony, is singularly revealing because Taylor faced some searching questioning when summoned to appear before this Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management, in January 1912. The Foreword to the single volume points out that the appointment of the special committee by the House of Representatives was inspired by organized labour, which by this time was showing concern over the effects on workers and unions of the use of scientific management mechanisms to measure the productivity of individual workers against a standard rate set by often unscrupulous employers and managers (p. viii). Although the Foreword is aimed at defending and eulogizing Taylor and Taylorism, it cannot help but reveal how much conflict existed.

The irony was that Taylor and Taylorism precisely aimed at reducing conflict between managers and workers by using scientific thought to develop new principles and mechanisms of management. The traumatic experience that prompted Taylor to begin his search for ideas and methods of scientific management occurred when he was appointed boss of a gang of workers at the Midvale Steel Company, which he had joined as an ordinary labourer in 1878. (Although he had been a bright pupil at the elite private school, Phillips-Exeter Academy, and had prepared for entrance to Harvard University, eyesight problems caused him to drop out and seek a career that did not involve much reading.) Having risen to the position of supervisor, he sought to increase output by putting pressure on the workers. A serious struggle ensued and, although Taylor came out on top, he is said to have been hurt by the experience. He decided that the primary cause of such conflicts was that management, without knowing what was a proper day's work, tried to secure output by pressure or by relying on bonus payments. If management would develop methods for discovering the proper output for each operation then it could get output by demonstration. His experiments along these lines continued throughout his service with the Midvale Steel Company, then at the giant Bethlehem Steel Company, and later in various types of enterprises as a consultant.

Taylor's first publication was a paper on 'A Piece Rate System', delivered to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)in 1895. Because wage systems were then the focal point of interest he tried to smuggle a description of his techniques of managing into a paper that was ostensibly about a differential piece rate system with which he had experimented, but which he did not consider as important as getting the principles of management right. He was disappointed when all the discussion was devoted to the piece rate system and the principles were ignored. Because of this, he devoted several years to accumulating evidence and arguments to support his ideas about scientific management. These ideas were then presented in another paper to the ASME in 1903, with the title 'Shop Management'. It is this that forms the kernel of the book, Shop Management, which is the first of the three books included in the volume, Scientific Management. The emphasis in this book is on the importance of coupling high wages for the worker with low labour costs for the employer, and the resulting public benefits from lower prices. The following principles are listed as guides for the best type of management:

1. A Large Daily Task. Each worker in the establishment, high or low, should daily have a clearly defined task laid out.
2. Standard Conditions. The worker should be given such standardized conditions and appliances as will make it possible to accomplish the task with certainty.
3. High Pay for Success. The worker should be sure of high pay when the task was accomplished.
4. Loss in Case of Failure. When the worker failed, it should be sure that sooner or later there would be a penalty.

The next of Taylor's books, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), gave a much more extended and detailed account of the principles of scientific management that had been only briefly indicated in the earlier work. He recognized the need to separate the planning of work from its execution. Taylor made clear that management must first systematically study its work for the purpose of identifying and defining various principles. Then, it must develop adequate procedures for applying them. He suggested that in order to work according to scientific principles, management would have to take over and perform much of the work that was currently being performed by the workers. Almost every act of the worker would have to be preceded by one or more preparatory acts of management, which would enable the worker to work better and more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

Taylor stated that scientific management comprised a combination of four great underlying principles: first, the development of a true science. Second, the scientific selection of workers. Third, the scientific education and development of workers. Fourth, intimate, friendly co-operation between managers and workers. He went on to list the various tools to serve these principles, such as time and motion study, functional foremanship, standardization of tools and movements of workers for each type of work, planning rooms or departments, slide-rules and other timesaving devices, instruction cards for workers, the task idea in compensation with bonuses for above-average performance, the mnemonic classification system, routing systems, and cost accounting techniques.

The application of these principles in a specific workplace, such as a metalworking plant, would entail the following steps: first, the development and introduction of standards throughout the works and office. Second, the scientific study of unit times on several types of work. Third, a complete analysis of the pulling, feeding power, and the proper speeding of the various machine tools throughout the place with a view to making a slide-rule for properly tunning each machine. Fourth, the work of establishing the system of time cards by means of which ultimately all of the desired information would be conveyed from the workers to the planning room. Fifth, overhauling the stores' issuing and receiving system so as to establish a complete running balance of materials. Sixth, ruling and printing the various forms that would be required for maintenance of standards in all tasks throughout the plant.

It should be evident that one of the appeals of scientif...

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