SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World? SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World?
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World? SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World? Edited by J.-C. Spender Hugo J. I<ijne Rutgers University Newark, New Jersey ~. KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS Boston / Dordrecht" / London Distributors for North America: Kluwer Academic Publishers 101 Philip Drive Assinippi Park Norwell, Massachusetts 02061 USA Distributors for all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group Distribution Centre Post Office Box 322 3300 AH Dordrecht, THE NETHERLANDS Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scientific management: Frederick Winslow Taylor's gift to the world? / edited by J.-C. Spender, Hugo J. Kijne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-8617-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-1421-9 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4613-1421-9 1. Industrial engineering. 2. Industrial management. 3. Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1856-1915. I. Spender, J.-C. II. Kijne, Hugo Jakob T55.9.S35 1996 670.42--dc20 96-28080 CIP Copyright © 1996 by Kluwer Academic Publishers Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, Massachusetts 02061. Printed on acid-free paper CONTENTS About the authors VB Preface ix Introduction to the essays. Hugo J Kijne & J-c. Spender XI Chapter 1 Villain, victim or visionary?: The insights and flaws in F. W. Taylor's ideas. J-c. Spender Chapter 2 Machine-shop engineering roots of Taylorism: The efficiency of machine-tools and machinists, 1865 - 1884. Geoffrey W. Clark 33 Chapter 3 Time and motion study: Beyond the Taylor - Gilbreth controversy. Hugo J Kijne 63 Chapter 4 Standards and the development of an internal labor market. Ton Korver 93 Chapter 5 The movement for scientific management in Europe between the wars. Erik Bloemen 111 Chapter 6 Scientific management in Central Eastern Europe - Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. John Mihalasky. 133 Chapter 7 Scientific management and Japanese management, 1910 - 1945. Seishi Nakagawa 163 Index 181 ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Erik Bloemen - Assistant Professor of History at the Free University of Amsterdam. Author of Scientific Management in the Netherlands, 1900 - 1930 (In Dutch), Amsterdam: VEGA, 1988. Geoffrey Clark - Associate Professor of History in the Humanities Department, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken NJ. Author of several articles about the early engineering curriculum at the Stevens Institute. Hugo J. Kijne - Associate Director, Rutgers Center for International Business Education and Research, Faculty of Management, Rutgers University, Newark NJ. Author of The Measured Rate System: Taylorism and the Dutch metal industry, 1945 - 1963 (In Dutch), Delft: Delft University Press, 1990. Ton Korver - Lecturer in Sociology and Economics at the University of Amsterdam. Author of The Fictitious Commodity: A study ofthe US labor market, 1880 - 1940, Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. John Mihilaski - Professor Emeritus at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark NJ, and Exemplary Service Professor in the Department of Management, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. Seishi Nakagawa - Lecturer in the Department of Commerce, Fukuoka University, Japan. J.-C. Spender - Professor of Strategy, and Director of the Rutgers Center for International Business Education and Research, Faculty of Management, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ. Author of three books including Industry Recipes: The nature and sources ofmanagerial judgement, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. PREFACE Many of those interested in the effect of industry on contemporary life are also interested in Frederick W. Taylor and his work. He was a true character, the stuff of legends, enormously influential and quintessentially American, an award-winning sportsman and mechanical tinkerer as well as a moralizing rationalist and early scientist. But he was also intensely modem, one of the long line of American social reformers exploiting the freedom to present an idiosyncratic version of American democracy, in this case one that began in the industrial workplace. Such as wide net captures an amazing range of critics and questioners as well as supporters. So much is puzzling, ambiguous, unexplained and even secret about Taylor's life that there will be plenty of scope for re-examination, re-interpretation and disagreement for years to come. But there is a surge of fresh interest and new analyses have appeared in recent years (e.g. Wrege, C. & R. Greenwood, 1991 "F. W. Taylor: The father of scientific management", Business One Irwin, Homewood IL; Nelson, D. (Ed.) 1992 "The mental revolution: Scientific management since Taylor", Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH). We know other books are under way. As is customary, we offer this additional volume respectfully to our academic and managerial colleagues, from whatever point of view they approach scientific management, in the hope that it will provoke fresh thought and discussion. But we have a more aggressive agenda. The industrial world is in the midst of profound socio-economic changes which have severely shaken our intellectual grasp of its nature and behavior. We feel, in particular, that today's managers, and management educators, cannot move on to the creation of a new post-industrial society without a better appreciation of the influence of scientific management, and of the person who was its principal architect. Among those most supportive of our endeavor, we acknowledge the vital part that Myron F. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of the Stevens Institute of Technology, played in getting the project started. We hope his own biographical study, based on intimate knowledge of Taylor's family and records, and originally intended for this volume, will be published soon. l-C. Spender also acknowledges the inspiration many years ago of Professor Chuck Wrege, of Rutgers and Cornell (also Archivist for the Academy of Management), who sparked a lifelong interest in the importance of knowing what really happened in those early days when today's management ideas were crystallizing and becoming the conventions we now take for granted. We dedicate this work to our wives and families, who, as every author knows, make the space in which such projects grow from small seeds to full maturity. INTRODUCTION Hugo Kijne and J.-c. Spender, Rutgers University. Corporate managers have long been the targets for books and ideas which promise much and deliver little. But this has not always been true. The history of accounting, for instance, shows us that many ideas have been instrumental in the growth of industry. Today we see ideas like teamwork, total quality management (TQM) and bench marking having a powerful impact on business practice. But no business idea has had more impact than scientific management. Our basic understanding of how to manage a business is still largely shaped by this essentially American system of ideas about modern work and business organization. While the Americans did not invent business, or business organization, scientific management is very American and played a key part in the evolution of business's modern form. However much of scientific management's influence is considered malign. Sometimes it is just misunderstood. Taylorism was, and still is, much demonized and made the subject of much misrepresentation and misinterpretation. For instance, it will surprise many to discover that scientific management was not just about factory work, it was also about the systematic approach to that we experience today at many dentists' and doctors' surgeries. This book is important because it adds depth to our understanding of scientific management, itself under radical review because of the changes sweeping the world's industrial activities. For many business writers and management teachers the key to increasing US competitiveness is the elimination of scientific management's legacy and the adoption of new flexible forms of organization based on trust rather than science. Japanese firms are often used as illustrative examples. Ironically, it is from the Japanese that US business has lately learned about TQM and the kanban system which, as Nagakawa shows in this book, are actually Japanese developments of Taylor's ideas. Likewise the use of expert systems and robots, the implementation of automation and flexible machining, and today's new systems of shop floor organization such as teaming, concurrent engineering and in-line inspection, revolve around the same ideas which scientific management explored. Our book shows that the disciplined engineering approach to manufacturing which underpins scientific management was not uniquely American. But from the mid- Spender & Kijne xii nineteenth century on, when the American system of manufactures startled the world at the Crystal Palace International Exhibition, it was clear that America led the world in the application of rigorous scientific analysis to the process of large-scale, high volume and heavy manufacturing. Scientific management, as developed by Taylor, his assistants, and a loose group of US engineering consultants, spread from America to the rest of the world. Sometimes it was taken up eagerly, as in Russia, sometimes it converged with local initiatives, as in Poland and Czechoslovakia,