Scientific Management, Systematic Management, and Labor, 1880-1915

By Daniel Nelson ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF lllSTORY UNIVERSITY OF AKRON Scientific Management, Systematic Management, and Labor, 1880-1915 fl Offering a significant revision of prevailing views, Professor Nelson examines the actual implementation of scientific management in industry and finds that it bore only a superficial resemblance to the system de scribed by Taylor and his disciples. Rather than a "partial solution of the labor problem," the Taylor system was a comprehensive answer to the problems of factory coordination, a refinement and extension of the earlier ideas known as systematic management. For nearly sixty years engineers and scholars have associated the development of scientific management with a "partial solution of the labor problem," notably the effort to find a "scientific" basis for the incentive wage.1 Frederick W. Taylor, the "father" of scientific management, devoted more attention in his speeches and writings to time study, the "efficiency" of the workmen, and labor issues than to any other feature of his complex system of management. Frank B. Copley, his authorized biographer, followed his example, and re cent academic writers, almost without exception, have based their discussions on Taylor's writings and Copley's account.2 Though not incorrect ( for scientific management did include time study and an incentive wage), this approach is deficient in several respects. It obscures the background of Taylor's work and places undue empha sis on what was, ironically, its least well-developed feature - the approach to the worker. Indeed, as devised and applied by Taylor and his disciples, scientific management bore only a superficial re- Business History Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 4 (Winter, 1974). Copyright © the President and Fellows of Harvard College. 1 Fredrick w. Taylor, "A Piece Rate System Being a Step Toward Partial Solution of the Labor Problem," Transactions of the American Society of Mechnical Engineers, vol. 16 ( 1895), 856--903. By "labor problem" Taylor's contemporaries usually meant overt hostility - strikes and violence. Taylor included these activities but emphasized subtler forms of resistance or noncooperation, especially restriction of output or ''soldiering," • Frank B. Copley, Frederick W. Taylor, Father of Scientific Management, 2 vols. (New York, 1923); Sudhir Kakar, Frederick Taylor: A Study in Personality and Innovation (Cambridge, 1970), Chs. 4-5, 10; Daniel A. Wren, The Evolution of Management Thought (New York, 1972), Chs. 6-7; Samuel Haber, Effeciency and Uplift (Chicago, 1964), Chs. 1-2; Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt af the Engineers (Cleveland, 1972), Chs. 6-7. Two important monographs, Milton J. Nadwomy, Scientific Management and the Unions, l900-3S (Cambridge, 1955) and Hugh G. J. Aitken, Taylorlsm at Watertown Arsenal (Cambridge, 1960), focus on the relationship between the Taylor system and labor but indicate the complexity of scientific management. semblance to the system they subsequently described. Rather than a "partial solution of the labor problem," the Taylor system was a comprehensive answer to the problems of factory coordination, a refinement and extension of systematic management. TAYLOR'S EARLY WORK Systematic management was the effort to "recouple" or reinte grate the fragmented industrial plant of the late nineteenth cen tury.3 As factories became larger and more complex, as the number of men and machines multiplied and performed more specific, dis crete tasks, managerial control became more difficult. "The problem was a gradual breakdown of the integration of work fl.ow at the lower levels of the company and a concordant deterioration in the ability of top executives to control work lower in the company hier archy." 4 The acquisition and movement of materials became more complicated, accurate cost figures were increasingly difficult to ob tain, foremen were harder to supervise, and labor-management re lations, as managers were fond of bemoaning, became increasingly distant and impersonal. One answer, as Joseph Litterer notes, was to decrease the size of the firm. 5 An alternative, which was far more acceptable and popular, was to systematize management. This effort absorbed the energies of progressive factory owners and su perintendents during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and provided the context from which scientific management emerged. The basic achievements of systematic management were in the areas of costs, production and inventory controls, and labor. Draw ing on the experiences of the railroads, managers devised methods of recording detailed production costs and assigning overhead ex penses to the factory output. Cost systems proliferated and became a staple of the technical press by the 1890s. 6 Managers attempted with less success to improve purchasing and stores procedures, fa cilitate the routing of materials in the plant, and avoid unnecessary • The following discussion is based on Joseph Litterer, "Systematic Management: The Search for Order and Integration," Business History Review, XXXV ( Winter, 1961), 461- 4 76; Litterer, "Systematic Management: Design for Organizational Recoupling in American Manufacturing Firms,'' Business History Review, XXXVII (Winter, 1963), 369--391, and Henry P. Kendall, "Types of Management: Unsystematized, Systematized and Scientific," in Dartmouth College Conferences, Addresses and Discussions of the Conference on Scientific Management Held October 12, 13, 14, 1911 (Hanover, N.H., 1912), 112-125. For a broader treatment of the management movement see Leland H. Jenks, "Early Phases of the Manage ment Movement," Administrative Science Quarterly, V (December, 1960), 421-447. ' Litterer, "Systematic Management;" 373. • Ibid., 376. • Joseph Litterer has noted the proliferation of articles on managerial subjects. Litterer, "The Emergence of Systematic Management as Indicated by the Literature of Management from 1870 to 1900" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 1959), 64-66. 480 BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW delays between operations. They reduced the foreman's authority by centralizing cost accounting and quality control. And they sought to restore the worker's initiative by introducing incentive wage systems. While most of the features of systematic management were not designed as labor measures, they inevitably affected factory em ployees. To operate effectively, cost and production control plans required the workers to supply detailed information about their activities, submit to standardized procedures, and surrender tradi tional functions and prerogatives. A production control scheme, for example, might be introduced to reduce delays and make better use of existing plant and machinery. But, by instructing the workman what to produce at a particular time and perhaps providing him with the necessary materials and tools, it might also reduce his abil ity to decide what to do and how to do it. 7 The first line supervisor, in particular, lost many of his powers. He no longer exercised his customary responsibilities in areas such as cost keeping. Increas ingly he became an intermediary between higher management and workers. In many plants the impact of the cost and production con trol plans on the machine operator or laborer depended largely on the degree of authority the supervisor had exercised before.8 In contrast, the only feature of systematic management that ap plied directly to the worker was the incentive wage. Litterer's re view of the literature of systematic management revealed little or no interest in methods of selection or promotion, the techniques of supervision, or ways of improving morale other than the incentive wage. In strictly personnel matters the first line supervisor retained virtually all of his powers. This arrangement reflected the late nine teenth century engineer's belief that men worked for money and that other programs or benefits were irrelevant and demeaning. 9 For the proponents of systematic management, the incentive wage • Writers on the origins of personnel management have often tried - unsuccessfully, I believe - to establish a direct tie between the management movement and personnel work. See Henry Eilbirt, "The Development of Personnel Management in the United States," Business History Review, XXXIII (Autumn, 1959), 345-364; Thomas Wilmont Wood, "The Contributions of Frederick W. Taylor to Scientific Personnel Management" ( Ph.D. Disserta tion, University of North Carolina, 1941). Cyril Curtis Ling wisely has resisted this tendency; see The Management of Personnel Relations (Homewood, 1965). s For the changing character of the foreman's functions, see Thomas Patten, The Foreman: Forgotten Man of Management (New York, 1968). • The key words here are programs or benefits. Even the most unsentimental engineers recognized the need ( in Taylor's words) for "the proper personal relations.'' "The employer who . is never known to dirty his hands or clothes, and who either talks to his men in a condescending or patronizing way, or else not at all, has no chance whatever of ascertaining [the employees'} real thoughts or feelings.'' Taylor, "Shop Management," ASME Transactions, vol. 24 ( 1903), 1447. Taylor quoted this statement from "A Piece Rate System.'' SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 481 was the answer to labor unrest.10 Appropriately, the two best known wage plans, the Towne "gain sharing" system and the Halsey "premium" plan, were products of their originators' growing concern over the labor problem.11 Other groups, however, took a broader view. Journalists

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