The Oxford Handbook of Management Theorists: Taylor & Scientific Management PDF

The Oxford Handbook of Management Theorists Morgen Witzel (ed.), Malcolm Warner (ed.) https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585762.001.0001 Published: 2013 Online ISBN: 9780191750342 Print ISBN: 9780199585762 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Search in this book CHAPTER 2 Frederick Winslow Taylor  Robert F. Conti https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585762.013.0002 Pages 11–31 Published: 02 April 2013 Abstract This article examines Frederick Winslow Taylor’s career, contributions, and in uence on management practice. As the father of scienti c management, he evokes the most emotional and polarized responses of any management theorist. He is both revered and reviled. There may be disagreement about Taylor’s e ect on work and workers, but there is little doubt about his enduring in uence. A 2000 survey of the American Academy of Management ranked Taylor rst among the twenty- ve most in uential management thinkers of the twentieth century. He distilled his e orts to increase e ciency into four Principles of Scienti c Management: the scienti c development of work, new management roles, the scienti c selection of workers, and managerial cooperation. Two trends could have a signi cant bearing on Taylor’s in uence in the twenty- rst century: the application of lean principles to health care and the use of arti cial intelligence adaptive computer programmes for securities trading. Keywords: artificial intelligence applications, Frederick Winslow Taylor, managerial cooperation, management practice, scientific management, Taylorism Subject: Business History, Business and Management Series: Oxford Handbooks Collection: Oxford Handbooks Online Introduction Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scienti c management, evokes the most emotional and polarized responses of any management theorist. He is both revered and reviled. Peter Drucker described scienti c management as ‘all but a systematic philosophy of worker and work. Altogether it may well be the most Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 powerful as well as the most lasting contribution that America has made to Western thought since the Federalist Papers’ (Drucker 1954: 280). In contrast, Jeremy Rifkin laments that ‘in the new scienti cally managed factory, the worker's mind was severed from his body and handed over to management. The worker became an automaton. … his humanity left outside the factory gate’ (Rifkin 1987: 109). There may be disagreement about Taylor's e ect on work and workers, but there is little doubt about his enduring in uence. A 2000 survey of the American Academy of Management ranked Taylor rst among the twenty- ve most in uential management thinkers of the twentieth century. This chapter will examine his career, contributions, and in uence on management practice. The early years Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 to Franklin and Emily Winslow Taylor, wealthy Philadelphia Quakers. His father was a lawyer who did not practise law, and his brother Edward was a non-practising physician. Verblen observed that ‘Abstention from labour was the convenient evidence of wealth, and p. 12 therefore the conventional mark of social standing’ (2005: 31). However, this ‘career path’ was incompatible with Taylor's erce drive for achievement. He had a privileged upbringing. When he was 12, his family travelled in Europe for three years, and his father's behaviour toward service providers made a lasting impression on Taylor. Services in the 1870s seldom met the family's expectations, and his father compensated by tipping generously to improve service. Taylor became convinced that money was e ective for changing working-class behaviour. In 1872 Taylor enrolled in Exeter Academy. It was a feeder school for Harvard University, where he was expected to attend and pursue the law. Taylor's intelligence and competitiveness led him to excel in his studies at Exeter, but at a price. He developed frequent headaches and impaired vision, and his parents feared for his health. This concern may have tempered their disappointment over Taylor's decision to pass up Harvard and pursue his love of mathematics and e ciency by becoming an engineer. Rather than attend engineering school he chose the more traditional training of a factory apprenticeship. Taylor later regretted his lack of formal education and managed to earn an engineering degree at Stevens Institute, without interrupting his career. The journeyman journey Apprenticeships were scarce after the panic of 1873 but a family friend was co-founder of Ferrell & Jones, a Philadelphia pump manufacturer, and in 1874 Taylor began a patternmaker apprenticeship at the rm. He developed considerable design and woodworking skills and was eager to further expand his knowledge. After two years, he requested and was granted permission to begin a second apprenticeship as a machinist. In the process he developed a lifelong love a air with machine shops, but the a air had a rocky start. Taylor had been trained by veteran patternmakers but the machinists o ered no such training. Apprentices gained skills slowly, by observing machinists and by trial and error experiments, and Taylor responded by deducing general principles from his observations and experiments. He completed his apprenticeships with increased con dence and a feeling that he understood both his trade and his new working-men friends. For Taylor, ‘his apprenticeship was the ultimate credential, one he would invoke all his life’ (Kanigel 1997: 142). Armed with his journeyman papers, Taylor set out on his career. Midvale: from obsession to insight Jobs were hard to nd during the continuing depression, but once again a friend intervened—a major investor in the Midvale Steel Company, a large Philadelphia manufacturer of steel train car wheels. Taylor began as a labourer but was soon assigned to a clerical job he despised. His request for a transfer to the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 machine shop was granted and he was assigned as a lathe operator. Taylor's aptitude and energy led to p. 13 his promotion as gang boss of the lathe operators. His cordial relationships with his co-workers dramatically changed when he chose to attack the widespread problem of ‘soldiering’—the intentional restriction of output by workers, enforced by peer pressure. Taylor was obsessed with soldiering. He called it ‘the greatest evil with which the working-people of both England and America are now a icted’ (1947: 14). Taylor loathed the practice but understood its reasons. Workers feared increased output would lead to job losses. This could be overcome by incentive pay schemes, but managers were notorious for ‘rate cutting’— reducing the pay per piece whenever higher output increased worker wages. As a result, workers restricted their output, and their deep mistrust thwarted Taylor's e orts to overcome soldiering through incentive pay. He changed tactics and trained promising labourers to operate machines at faster speeds. When assigned to work, however, peer pressure forced them to reduce their output. Taylor took a harder line, imposing nes. The men responded by sabotaging their machines and blaming Taylor for overworking them and their machines. Taylor viewed his fellow machinists as ‘friends’, and was deeply disturbed by their resistance. He was also frustrated, rmly believing that workers and managers shared a common interest, one that could be satis ed by the mutual gains of higher wages and lower unit labour costs. Taylor came to recognize that there were two obstacles to instituting a mutual gains system: ‘The ignorance of management as to what constitutes a proper day's work for the workmen’ (Taylor 1947: 53), and the reality that ‘Men will not work at their best unless assured a good liberal increase (in pay), which must be permanent’ (Taylor 1947: 26). Taylor attacked both obstacles. William Sellers, President of Midvale, approved his request to conduct a ‘series of careful scienti c experiments to nd out how quickly various types of work ought to be done’ (Taylor 1947: 86). For monetary incentives, Taylor assigned his assistant, William Fannon, to devise a di erential piece rate plan, with much higher piece rates for machinists who met a daily target—an incentive to work hard all day. The success of the plan depended on setting challenging, yet attainable targets, requiring that a fair day's output be de ned. To do so, Taylor instituted stopwatch time studies of machining, to measure how long it should take for an operation, such as machining an axle, and how many operations should be completed each day. This was the ‘scienti cally’ based information Taylor needed for his incentive plan, and he organized a ‘rate- xing’ department to time study operations and set daily targets. He was realistic about the remaining hurdle: ‘It is one thing to know how much can be done in a day, and an entirely di erent matter to get even the best men to work at their fastest speed’ (Taylor 1919: 62). Taylor attacked this nal hurdle by using the machining of axles for a trial. Lathe operators were machining three to ve axles a day, but based on time studies Taylor set a target of ten per day, with a 40 per cent attainment bonus. He began a two-week trial, but the selected machinist called Taylor's target ‘impossible’, and refused to machine more than six axles a day. Taylor red the machinist and found one willing to cooperate. The machinist followed Taylor's instruction card and nished ten axles each day. The Gordian knot of soldiering was untangled and the number of cooperating workers steadily grew. A pleased President Sellers cooperated by maintaining rates, even when worker pay doubled. By the p. 14 time Taylor left Midvale in 1890, Scienti c Management had been successfully installed—achieved by his steely determination and William Sellers’ cooperation. Scientific management principles Taylor's instinct was to generalize by organizing experiences and events into coherent principles. Most notably, he distilled his e orts to increase e ciency into four Principles of Scienti c Management (Taylor 1947: 36): Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 1. Each element of a man's work should be scienti cally developed. 2. The workman for each type of work should be scienti cally selected and trained. 3. Management should heartily cooperate with the men, to ensure that the scienti c methods are being followed. 4. Management should take over all the work for which they are better suited than the workmen, leading to an almost equal division of work and responsibility between the management and the workmen. Taylor developed his practices before his principles, emphasizing that ‘Scienti c Management at every step has been an evolution not a theory’ (1947: 88). Therefore his principles can serve as a framework for evaluating the major practices linked to each. Principle One: the scientific development of work Work measurement The First Principle encompasses Taylor's most in uential and controversial practices—his pioneering studies of the nature and measurement of work, and his breakthrough fragmentation of shop tasks into elements. The latter was more e ective in identifying unnecessary elements, a form of motion study. Taylor did not use the techniques developed by Gilbreath, but he established the principle that motion studies must precede time studies, to make times apply to improved methods (Gilbreath, 1911). The times also had to apply to all machinists, so tasks were standardized, and the motion study results codi ed on instruction cards. To conduct a time study, a skilled machinist was stopwatch timed while following instructions for several cycles. The average element times were totalled to determine the task time. Taylor recognized that a machinist could not maintain a time study work pace for a full day, so he developed an allowance to compensate for operator fatigue. The allowance increased the measured time by 20 to 27 per cent, for a p. 15 more realistic ‘fair day's work’. Taylor once testi ed that allowance values were based on ‘long experience’ (Taylor 1947: 106). However, he gave no scienti c justi cation because there was none. There still isn’t. Lehto and Buck describe contemporary time study practices, and conclude that ‘allowance values tend to be traditional rather than arrived at through scienti c means’ (2008: 307). In 1914, Taylor's elemental times proved vital for Henry Ford's revolutionary manufacturing process. Newly available electric motors freed machines from the constraints of overhead power shafts, and Ford arranged the machines in the sequence of required processes. Parts moved from machine to machine, and when complete were transferred to the assembly line. The mass production era had begun (Hounshell 1984: 218). The e ciency of an assembly line depends on how well the task times at the sequential work stations are equalized, or balanced. Shorter elemental times can be more evenly allocated to the stations, increasing the line e ciency. Metal-cutting research Taylor's systematic research on cutting metals was his most validly scienti c contribution. In 1880 he began experiments to answer the machinists’ questions: At what speed should a machine be run, and how fast should the cutting tool be fed? Machinists based these decisions on experience and ‘rules of thumb’, leading to wide variations in costs and quality, and Taylor believed that metal cutting laws would yield major Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 improvements. He identi ed twelve independent variables in uencing speeds and feeds, and over twenty- six years conducted thousands of experiments. Mathematically pro cient assistants transformed the data into feed and speed formulas. However, the formulas were too complex for machinists, and a Taylor assistant, Carl Barth, converted them to a set of ingenious slide rules. Taylor claimed a slide rule allowed a machinist to determine his settings ‘in less than a half-minute’. His success was consistent with his First Principle, since ‘useful results hinged mainly upon the substitution of science for the individual judgement of the workman’ (Taylor, 1947: 114). The ʻSchmidtʼ case In 1899 Taylor studied the loading of pig iron bars into rail cars at Bethlehem Steel—the celebrated ‘Schmidt’ case. Labourers were loading twelve tons per day per man, and earning $1.15 a day. Taylor improved methods, issued detailed instructions, and instituted a piece work plan. Using the new methods, Schmidt (né Noll) and two fellow workers loaded a daily average of fty tons per man, exceeding Taylor's target of forty-seven tons. Taylor claimed that a key to their impressive performance was having the men regularly ‘sit down and rest’, to conserve energy. But the loaders never actually sat down to rest. Wrege and Grenwood point out: ‘Instead, their return walk, empty-handed, was considered a rest’ (1991: 116). Taylor's zeal led him to enhance his already signi cant job design success. p. 16 Principle Four: new management roles Planning vs. doing The premise of Principle Four is that ‘Management should take over all the work for which they are better suited than the workmen.’ Taylor favoured separating the planning and execution of tasks, with planning done by management. He wrote that ‘All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centred in the planning or laying-out department’ where thinking was done by management (1947: 98). Taylor's new roles for management included the planning and coordination formerly done by workers. This supported his view that ‘Perhaps the most prominent single element in modern scienti c management is the task idea’, with the work of every man planned in detail as to what to do, how to do it, and how long to take (1947: 39). Functional Foremen The new management responsibilities required more ‘non-productive’ support from sta specialists. Taylor, however, rejected a line and sta organization, preferring ‘functional management’. The latter featured an extreme division of duties, with eight Functional Foremen directly supervising workers in eight functions—ranging from machine set-ups to maintaining discipline (Taylor 1947: 104). With few exceptions, even Taylorist managers rejected the complexity and confusion of functional foremanship, preferring the simpler line and sta organization. Management decision support Taylor believed that managers needed more timely, accurate, and relevant information to ful l their new responsibilities. Characteristically he successfully addressed this need. Accounting reports only provided managers with a ‘scorecard’ for past decisions. Managerial accounting was needed, to provide managers with information for making better current decisions, and Taylor studied cost accounting at the Investment Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Company in New York, in order to develop such systems. He also instituted ‘exception principle’ reporting, so managers could focus on major deviations (1947: 129). Taylor realized that all relevant costs should in uence decisions. He applied this insight at Midvale, where buyers were purchasing the lowest priced power transmission belts. However, the relevant costs included the expense of replacing failed belts and the value of production lost by idled machines. A switch to more expensive, but more durable belts reduced total costs (Kanigel 1997: 201). Several successful practices are linked to the First and Fourth Principles. In contrast, Taylor had mixed results with Second and Third Principle practices. p. 17 Principle Two: scientific selection of workers The Second Principle calls for matching workers’ capabilities to job requirements, but Taylor's ‘scienti c’ methods at times deviated from his Principle. He lauded scienti c selection's potential for worker advancement, citing the promotion of former dirt diggers to higher paying jobs at Bethlehem Steel. Selection of the replacement diggers, however, was by ethnic stereotyping. Taylor's rule was to assign ‘Italians or Hungarians’ as diggers. (Taylor 1947: 47) At a bearings company, Taylor studied women inspecting ball bearings for surface defects. He decided that a fast reaction time was essential for inspectors and tested their reactions to visual stimuli as a ‘scienti c’ means of identifying inspectors to be retained. Taylor made no attempt to correlate test scores with performance, and expressed regret over the lay-o s: ‘unfortunately this involved laying o many of the most intelligent, hardest working, and most trustworthy girls merely because they did not possess the quality of quick perception followed by quick action’ (1947: 90). Taylor did increase productivity by moving inspectors far enough apart to eliminate their incessant talking, and instituting hourly output checks and incentive pay. Inspectors were reduced from 120 women to 35, and wages doubled. Principle Three: managerial cooperation Taylor's Third Principle calls for management to heartily cooperate with the workers, to support mutual gains. Taylor appears to put the burden on management for fostering cooperation, writing that ‘managers assume new burdens and responsibilities never dreamed of in the past’ (1947: 36). However, he states that the objective of this cooperation is ‘to ensure that all of the work is being done in accordance with the principles of science’, clearly emphasizing management control. This attitude is consistent with his endorsement of ‘enforced cooperation’, if needed to ‘assure faster work’, with ‘the duty of enforcing this cooperation resting with management alone’ (1947: 83, text italics). Taylor's pro-management bias may have resulted from his ‘not being of the working class’, a status he referred to with pride. His bias led him to consider uncooperative management rate-cutting a moral failure, instead of the more likely self-interested pro t-seeking. As a result, he optimistically called for ‘a mental revolution in attitudes for managers’ (1947: 27). Taylor also called for a mental revolution by working men, but he expected primarily physical responses on the shop oor. p. 18 Scientific management di usion in the US Spreading the Word Taylor left Midvale in 1890 to join the Manufacturing Investment Company, investing his savings in stock Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 options. He supervised operations at a pulp mill being converted to a new process. Technical problems and excessive transition costs led to bankruptcy during the panic of 1893—wiping out Taylor's investment. He ruefully concluded that ‘a systematiser must not have managerial responsibility’, and became a consultant to spread the gospel of Scienti c Management with evangelical zeal (Merkle 1980: 54). In 1893 Taylor was hired to improve operations at the huge Bethlehem Steel machine shops. He recognized the need for more e cient metal cutting and began a series of experiments to improve the tools. Working with a metallurgist, Taylor perfected a heat-treating process for making tool steel that operated at twice the speed, with a 40 per cent deeper cut than existing tools. He patented the tool steel and it created a sensation when demonstrated in the Bethlehem Steel exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900, along with machining slide rules. The exhibit triggered a wave of interest in the steel and in Scienti c Management. Between 1901 and 1910 there were eighteen recorded adopters of Scienti c management (Chandler 1977: 277). Among them were three early ‘showcase’ implementers: Tabor Manufacturing, Link-Belt Engineering and Yale & Towne. They helped convert other rms to Taylorism, and Harry Towne, President of Yale and Towne, was responsible for Taylor's election as President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers—a prestigious post o ering a platform for his ideas. A major endorsement came at an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) hearing in 1911. The Eastern Railroad Company applied for a rate increase, based on higher costs. A Taylor supporter, Harrington Emerson, took the stand and con dently testi ed that a rate increase was unmerited, since Scienti c Management could save Eastern ‘a million dollars a day’. Widespread favourable press accounts created a public relations bonanza for Taylor. There were, however, bumps in the road, notably the highly publicized 1911 Watertown Arsenal strike, where union workers refused to be time studied. The strike led to a 1912 House of Representatives investigation of Taylor's system and increased political resistance to public-sector installations of Scienti c Management. In the private sector, top managers were often sceptical of the high costs of implementation and perceived threats to their authority. Taylor transferred knowledge and control from the workers—but to a cadre of professional specialists, not to top management. However, Taylorism continued to expand, ‘emerging from the 1920s, as a general philosophical doctrine of management’ (Merkle 1980: 243). The 1930s and beyond In the 1930s, the Depression swept Franklin D. Roosevelt into o ce. His ambitious ‘New Deal’ recovery p. 19 policy created several new government agencies and programmes. Scienti c Management had a direct impact in this rapid expansion of the federal bureaucracy. Urwick noted that ‘for the rst time, the philosophy developed by F.W. Taylor and other pioneers has been applied practically to the government of a Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 great nation’ (1949, 1: 154). The World War II industrial mobilization of 1940–5 employed extensive Taylorist activities to improve e ciency and output in factories heavily manned by women. The standardized, repetitive tasks helped ‘Rosie the Riveter’, and her counterparts, adapt quickly to production. After the war, Fordist mass production dominated American industry in converting to consumer goods. Workers tolerated the fast-paced, repetitive jobs as a result of favourable labour–management agreements. These agreements set a pattern for recognizing management's right to organize and control production, and the countervailing power of unions to negotiate high wages, job security, grievance procedures, and work rules. This truce began to unravel during the upheaval of the 1960s, with younger workers increasingly rejecting monotonous jobs and speed-ups. The resistance peaked in 1972, with strikes and sabotage at the General Motors Lordstown assembly plant. Workers protested a production line speed 40 per cent higher than any other auto plant (Waring 1991: 142). Lordstown symbolized an industrial crisis, lending impetus to several movements to reform Taylorist organizations and job designs. These are discussed in the ‘Taylorism Reform E orts’ section. In the 1980s Japanese transplants showed that lean production could be e ectively operated with American workers. The use of lean production accelerated, and with it, the growth of its imbedded Taylorist practices. International di usion of scientific management At the turn of the twentieth century, international interest in Scienti c Management was generated by translations of Taylor's writings and the Paris steel-cutting demonstrations. There were marked di erences, however, in the patterns of adopting Scienti c Management in various countries. Guillén identi es seven explanatory factors: structural changes in industry, international pressures or opportunities, industrial relations systems and labour unrest, business-elite mentalities, status of the engineering profession, the role of the state, and the reactions of the workers (1994: 268). The impact of these factors in six countries will be reviewed. Russia Vladimir Lenin read Taylor's writings in 1916. He was impressed with the results claimed for scienti c management and attracted to its routine job designs. The latter could shorten the training of unskilled p. 20 peasants for factory work, as part of Bolshevik industrialization. The plan was disrupted by the October 1917 Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power. The con ict decimated Russian industry, and in 1918 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Lenin decreed that scienti c management be employed to rebuild the economy. He appointed Leon Trotsky, who had reorganized the army, to do the same with Soviet industry. Trotsky instituted a drastic ‘militarization’ of industry, and justi ed it as a form of Taylorism (Merkle 1980: 119). Workers were conscripted and transferred to work sites, and escapees arrested. Strong protests from disenfranchized workers and powerless unions ultimately led Lenin to abandon the Trotsky policies. High levels of American e ciency during the 1920s sparked renewed interest in scienti c management, and Stalin incorporated Taylorism into his rst Five Year Plan in 1928. He employed American experts, including Russian-born Walter Polakov, a former Gantt associate, who prepared Gantt charts to coordinate and track Five Year Plan activities (Wren 1980). Stalin abolished the unions as part of his industrial plan, allowing widespread exploitation of workers. Central planners set unrealistic production quotas, causing pervasive speed-ups in vain attempts to meet quotas. The Stakhanovism programme employed Stakhovites, elite workers awarded bonuses for very high output. Their role was to serve as work pace examples and to stimulate task improvements by workers. Stakhanovism employed Taylorist objectives of division of labour, individual achievement, and elimination of unnecessary work elements. However, the work improvement programmes were poorly organized. Workers received little training, and were forced to work harder, not smarter, under the threat of gulag labour camps for missing quotas. Witzel describes the lesson of Russian Taylorism: ‘just how dangerous the system could be when the power of the company was transferred into the hands of a tyrannical state was demonstrated in the Soviet Union’ (2005). France High-speed cutting steel demonstrations at the Paris Exposition of 1900 stimulated great interest in scienti c management, and Taylor's use of classical experiments impressed the French—including the noted chemist and metallurgist, Henri Le Chatelier. He founded the leading metallurgical industry publication, Revue de Métallurgie, and translated and publicized Taylor's writings. The reception of scienti c Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 management among the technical elite was not universal. Supporters of management theorist Henry Fayol viewed Taylorism as awed by its violation of Fayol's unity of command principle. Taylor supporters counter-charged that Fayolism was unscienti c. The con ict raged untiI 1925, when Fayol announced that his work and Taylor's were the same, both focusing on management. It was a quali ed truce, however, since Fayol claimed that ‘Taylor dealt with the lower technical elements of management, while his own system with the higher administrative elements’ (Merkle 1980: 165). French employers were leery of the high cost of implementing scienti c management and concerned that organizational changes would undercut their authority. Strong class di erences generated further resistance. The upper class, including business owners, p. 21 identi ed with crafted luxury items, not with low-cost uniform products. The French elite considered e ciency a ‘sin against taste’ (Merkle 1980: 152). There was a notable exception to the prejudices of the owners. In 1913, Edouard Michelin read about Taylor in the Revue de Métallurgie and invited him to Paris. The charismatic Taylor impressed Edouard and his brother André, and they adapted his methods in their plants. The endorsement of the prestigious Michelin rm was a powerful boost for Taylorism, but was countered by strikes at Taylorist plants.Workers protested unrealistic work quotas and deskilled jobs. The outbreak of World War I reversed the French opposition to scienti c management. The urgent need for high quality armaments, built to close tolerances, in large quantities, was incompatible with the inherent variability of prevailing craft-based, ‘rule of thumb’ production. Taylorism was widely implemented, and standardized tasks allowed skilled workmen, called to war, to be replaced by unskilled retirees and women. The contributions of Taylorism to the French victory were recognized in 1918 by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, who called for its study in all plants. In the interwar years, from 1918 to 1939, the pre-WWI opposition re-emerged and Taylorism was largely present on shop oors in name only. France entered World War II in September 1939, surrendering only nine months later. The rapid end of the war e ort eliminated any impetus for a Taylorist revival. After the war, however, there was a re-emergence of scienti c management, spurred by Marshall Plan reconstruction programmes. Progress was slow, however, and Servan-Schreiver warned France of the competitive dangers of a Taylorist America: In America today, the government o cial, the industrial manager, the economics professor, the engineer, and the scientist have joined forces to develop coordinated techniques for integrating factors of production. These techniques have stimulated what amounts to a permanent industrial revolution. (1969: 53) Germany In the early twentieth century, engineering exchanges with the US introduced German rms to Taylorism. The exchanges were interrupted by World War I but resumed after the war, making Taylor's writings widely available to engineers and managers. This exposure was enhanced by the 1910 Paris Exposition. German engineers were impressed by the e ectiveness of Taylor's high-speed steel, as well as his organizational Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 and work design innovations. After World War I, Germany instituted a programme to rationalize and rebuild industry. The movement incorporated Taylorist elements of industrial planning, standardization, and e ciency. The programme was suspended during the post-war economic crisis, and resumed in 1924, prompting the spread of scienti c management until the 1929 depression. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in July 1930, and he denounced industrial rationalization for causing unemployment. Despite his implied criticism of scienti c management, Third Reich production planning under Albert Speer had strong Taylorist elements. Speer used armament production planning groups and initiated the division of labour and task standardization. Regrettably there was also widespread exploitation of workers. Speed-ups occurred, ‘in classical Scienti c Management fashion, by manipulation of di erential piece work rates’ p. 22 (Speer 1970: 371). Simpli ed, repetitive job designs made possible the use of unskilled slave labour on production lines (Kanigel 1997: 329). German workers, however, resisted speed-ups and the deskilling of jobs, and the lack of valid time standards created con icts over piece rates. A review of German scienti c management raises the question of the extent of Taylorism in the barbaric processes of the death camps. There are cited examples in some camps. For example, Rudolf Hoess sought to ‘run Auschwitz as a labour camp, dedicated to production and run according to enlightened principles of scienti c management’ (Campbell 1989: 347). Allen cites a Buchenwald survivor's description of experiments to determine the minimum number of prisoners needed to carry long, heavy iron beams. Allen terms the experiments ‘an evil parody of Frederick Taylor's classic tale of Schmidt’ (1995: 81). However, Allen's extensive research indicates that, in general, the death camps were badly mismanaged, and were not the reported ‘well-oiled machines of extermination’, with apparently little evidence of e ective Taylorist practices (Allen 1995: 255). Great Britain Scienti c management received a chilly reception from British industry—a surprising reaction in the nation that pioneered the Industrial Revolution and was the rst to study the e cient management of labour. Adam Smith publicized the bene ts of the division of labour and Babbage the bene ts of varying the skills and pay of workers to match their tasks. In the 1920s, industry faced increasing American and German competition, while coping with the legacy of having ceded control of the shop oor to the workers during the Victorian era, and growing trade union challenges. However, both management and the unions rejected Taylorism as a solution. Engineers opposed scienti c management as deskilling for workers and too expensive to implement, and they traditionally preferred ‘commonsense approaches to management’ (Guillén 1994: 214). British intellectual and business leaders were culturally conservative. Most shared an elite education at ‘public’ (private) schools and Oxbridge, where classics were emphasized, and technical and commercial subjects ignored. Historian Herbert Sussman described the prevailing interwar climate: The opposition to mechanized production, the celebration of hand labour, the aesthetic distaste for the machine are but expressions of the deeper con ict between rationalism and intuitionism, between scienti c and organic modes of thought. (1968: 233) The performance of British industry during World War II showed little evidence of e ective management— scienti c or otherwise. Military historian Corelli Barnett cited o cial statistics and scathing examples to reveal widespread mismanagement and opportunistic union behaviour on shop oors and shipyards throughout the con ict (Barnett 1986). Scienti c management was more widely adopted after the war— aided by the British Productivity Centre, and associated Marshall Plan agencies. A major factor was a change p. 23 in the trades union policy toward Taylorism. In 1950, the Trades Union Congress recommended that unions cooperate in the application of scienti c management, to increase productivity and economic growth. During the Thatcher years there was a marked increase in Taylorist practices as Japanese transplants and progressive British rms implemented lean production. The movement was aided by the industrial relations reforms of the 1980s and Prime Minister Thatcher's successful initiative to convince Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Japanese rms such as Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and Sony to manufacture in Britain. That trend has continued and lean production is the prevailing method of organizing production in many British factories. Japan Japanese industry was introduced to Taylorism by a 1912 translation of Taylor's Principles of Scienti c Management. Subsequent Japanese books communicated Taylorism to industrial executives and managers, and they, in turn, distributed thousands of copies to their workers. Interest evolved into action and between 1913 and 1915 the National Railways and leading textile rms adopted Taylorist techniques, Yasukawa Electric introduced a worker bonus scheme, Toyobo initiated motion study, and the Port Arthur School of Technology became the rst school to teach Taylorism courses. Scienti c management was a major factor in the modernization of Japanese manufacturing, and in 1925 a Japanese chapter of the Taylor Society was formed. In the same year Ford started assembling cars in Yokohama, and General Motors set up an assembly plant in Osaka the following year. The auto manufacturers brought the technology of the moving assembly line to Japan, setting the stage for the post-war development of the Toyota Production System. The Toyoda Company pioneered automatic looms in 1902 and diversi ed into automobiles in the 1930s, under the Toyota brand. Kiichiro Toyoda assumed control in 1945, and accepted Henry Ford's invitation to study the massive Rouge River plant. Toyoda was impressed by the continuous ow but recognized that Toyota could not copy Ford's high volume, single model system, requiring large parts inventories to maintain ow. Toyota's annual volume was about one week's output at Rouge, they produced a wide variety of trucks and cars, and could not a ord large inventories. Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno and consultant Shigeo Shingo overcame these constraints by developing an innovative adaptation of Ford mass production—the Toyota Production System (TPS) (Ohno 1988 and Shingo 1989). The TPS used exible ‘mixed model scheduling’ to simultaneously build several di erent models, in small quantities, on the same line. Machine set-up reductions reduced parts inventories by eliminating the need to make large quantities. And ‘just-in-time’ supplier component deliveries to the assembly line eliminated the large line-side inventories of mass production. Despite its innovations, many Taylorist practices are imbedded in the TPS. Work tasks are broken down into elements for time study and balancing of assembly lines. Motion studies are performed by engineers, and workers in kaizen improvement programmes. Scienti c worker selection is widespread. Work tasks are standardized and codi ed in Standard Operating Procedures, and updated after each p. 24 improvement to foster learning. Production schedules are prepared by a planning department and ‘exception principle’ graphic charts are posted in work areas. The TPS propelled Japan's industries to world-class status, and in the process greatly expanded the scope and scale of Japanese Taylorist practices. China The emergence of China as a major manufacturing power has triggered a cascade of Chinese books on management theories and practice. These are linked to an introduction of scienti c management in 1915 by the essay ‘Personal E ciency’ by Yang Xingfo, who studied scienti c management at Cornell. More in uential was Mu Xiangyu's translation of Taylor's Principles of Scienti c Management. The economic slump Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 and increased foreign competition of the 1920s spurred interest in scienti c management, and Chinese rms in diverse industries, such as cotton, silk, electrical equipment, and commercial presses, experimented with Taylorism. Scienti c management continues to be a competitive priority in China. In March 1979 the Chinese Enterprise Management Association (CEMA) was organized, to coordinate management training at the national level and sponsor research on management theories and systems. The association takes a very Taylorist position: ‘Management, a branch of science, is governed by its own law. Only by strictly following this law and running the enterprise in a scienti c way will it be possible to bring into full play the potentialities of the manpower and material resources, and to gain greater economic results’ (Warner 1986). Opposition to Taylorism The term ‘Taylorist’ is a pejorative descriptor, used by critics of scienti c management. They object to practices such as fragmented, repetitive, short-cycle tasks, the intensi cation of work, deskilled job designs devoid of discretion, and work speed-ups. Each will be evaluated. Task fragmentation Taylor fragmented work tasks into ner elements for more e ective analysis, not for designing production jobs. His call for con ning work ‘to the performance of a single leading function’ applied not to workers but to ‘each man in management’, to justify functional foremanship (1947: 99). For batch production of items such as wiring harness sub-assemblies, Attewell points out that an excessive division of labour is sub- optimal, since ‘the extra time spent shifting objects from one person to the other and the problems of coordinating the production speeds of numerous workers begin to increase’ (1987). In these cases, cost p. 25 minimization results when each worker assembles an entire harness—counter to the contention of Braverman that pro t maximization inevitably leads to ever ner divisions of labour (Braverman 1974). For sequential ow production, work station times are determined by the required output, not by job designs. For example, to produce thirty units per hour, one unit must exit the nal work station, and all prior stations, every two minutes, so the cycle time for completing tasks at each station must be two minutes. A ner division of labour on the line would lead to lower cycle times and costly excess production. Work intensification Work intensity is the proportion of work time spent actually performing production tasks. Littler (1978) describes what he views as the deskilling e ect of divorcing ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ labour in order to increase work intensity: ‘all preparation and servicing tasks are stripped away to be performed by unskilled, and cheaper, workers as far as possible’. For example, machinists would no longer do their own materials Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 handling. This would be done by lower paid workers. Attewell views this change di erently. He considers it to be upgrading for both the machinists and the helpers: ‘It leaves craft workers with more complex work and removes the least sophisticated of their tasks’, and it ‘modestly upgrades the work of non-craft workers: They have now taken on some previously craft tasks’ (Attewell 1987). For example, oor sweepers can become higher paid materials handlers. The intensi cation of the machinist's work eliminates the opportunity costs of a skilled, experienced machinist spending time searching through inventories to nd the correct alloy and size of steel bar stock, while his expensive machine tool stands idle. Deskilling jobs The proper degree of worker judgement and discretion is determined by products and customer preferences. At companies such as Steuben Glass, Waterford Crystal, and Royal Doulton China, high levels of judgement and discretion exercised by their workers are necessary for products prized for craft-built uniqueness and variability. This variability, however, would not appeal to Toyota or Ford customers, who value reliable operation. A car, with over 10,000 parts, requires high levels of consistency for high reliability. This requires non-discretionary work tasks, because of the limits of human accuracy and the statistics of sequential production. The probability of a trained worker making an error in performing a discretionary task is the Human Error Probability, or HEP (Ayres 1988). Studies show that under ideal conditions the HEP is approximately 0.001, or one error per thousand tasks. Therefore the probability of a single successful task is 0.999. This appears adequate until the sequential nature of car assembly is considered. The probability of an error-free process for N sequential tasks is 0.999 raised to the Nth power. For a product with a sequence of 1,000 tasks, far fewer than a car, the probability of an error-free completion of all tasks is 0.999 raised to p. 26 the one-thousandth power, or 0.368. Therefore, over 60 per cent of the products being assembled will encounter errors, despite the best e orts of conscientious workers. High reliability requires product designs that minimize the number of parts, and hence the number of tasks, and the use of non-discretionary job designs. Viewing non-discretionary job designs as strictly pro t maximizing behaviour ignores reality. The improved assembly quality minimizes the frustrations of workers coping with misaligned and ill- tting parts, and the Porsche experience shows how lean production and non-discretionary tasks can save a company. In the early 1990s Porsche was losing money, caused by high costs and poor quality, and the rm risked bankruptcy. Workers exercised high levels of discretion, and the resulting variability led to quality problems, and costly reworking in the recti cation area at the end of the line. Workers performed their own materials handling, often experiencing long, production-interrupting searches for parts in the line-choking inventories. Japanese consultants helped Porsche convert to lean production and non-discretionary tasks. After implementation, cars were built in 45 hours instead of 120, inventories were slashed by 90 per cent, and on 27 July 1994, for the rst time ever, an error-free Porsche came o the end of the line, requiring no rework—the rst of many to follow. Porsche survived and has thrived, and all parties won: workers, managers, shareholders, and customers (Womack and Jones 1996: 189). Speed-ups A work speed-up, forcing workers to operate at an abnormal pace, results from mismanagement. Regrettably, speed-ups were practised long before Taylor's time. The Book of Exodus, Chapter 5, describes Pharaoh instructing his slave drivers to stop furnishing straw to the Israelites for making bricks. They will have to go out and nd their own straw, but their brick quotas will not be reduced. With less time to make Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 bricks, slaves had to work faster to meet the same quota. While not divinely inspired, Taylorism does increase speed-up opportunities—as a result of shifting the shop- oor power balance from workers to management. Speed-ups also occur in lean production. In some lean plants a percentage of the workers on a smoothly operating process are removed, to ‘motivate’ the remaining workers to devise improvements. To maintain output, these workers are forced to speed up and work faster than normal until improvements take e ect. The Conti et al, study of lean production job stress found the practice of resource removal to be linked to increased worker stress levels (2006). Taylorism reform e orts In addition to the operational objections to Taylorism, there were several concerns about organizational p. 27 shortcomings of the prevailing bureaucratic model. Waring summarizes them: Taylorism helped create con icts between workers and managers, between departments, between business and the public; it engendered bureaucratic organizations whose specialized operations could not be controlled by time and motion studies, spawned work that could not be easily managed through separation of planning from doing, and bred workers who resented being treated as factors of production, (1991: 7) These concerns for the quality of work life spawned several reform movements that attempted to overcome the aws in the Taylor model. One group of reformers attempted to salvage the Taylor bureaucracy through modi cations designed to make it more e cient. These included operations research and management science (Acko and Rivett 1963), the cybernetics/arti cial intelligence theories of Herbert Simon (1981) and the Toyota/lean production system of Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo (Ohno 1988 and Shingo 1989). Elton Mayo applied his interpretation of the Hawthorne experiments to the human relations movement. He accepted the validity of a bureaucracy but believed that benevolent, friendly managers would in uence workers to more readily accept company goals and improve their job performance (Mayo 1933). Other reformers went beyond Mayo. They believed that a Taylor bureaucracy was dysfunctional, with an over- emphasis on monetary rewards, and they sought to achieve workplace harmony through democratic management and motivated workers. Reformers included Abraham Maslow and the self-actualization theory (Maslow 1943), Douglas McGregor and Theories X & Y (McGregor 1960), and Frederick Herzberg and the hygienic-motivation theory (Herzberg et al 1959). Peter Drucker's management by objectives programme took a middle position (Drucker 1954). It fostered employee participation in setting personal goals congruent with those of the corporation. Arguably, Ohno and Shingo have had the greatest impact. The TPS evolved into lean production, which has become the global competitive standard for manufacturing products assembled from discrete parts. Lean production workers face a Taylorist environment of standardized, repetitive tasks, but they have signi cantly di erent roles. Taylor believed ‘It is also clear that in most cases one type of man is needed to plan ahead and an entirely di erent type to execute the work’ (1949: 38). The TPS rejected the separation of planning and execution, as well as the view of workers as doers, not thinkers. Lean production workers are able to use their experience, judgement and creativity. On the line, they exercise quality control, stopping the line if they encounter a quality problem that cannot be quickly xed, and they participate in corrective activities to resume production. O -line, workers can take part in kaizen continuous improvement programmes. Participants are trained in process analysis and the design of ‘poke-yoke’ (foolproof) tasks for preventing errors. While studying lean production in Japan, this writer's executive host described their training philosophy: ‘We train our workers so they can use their minds to make their jobs more mindless.’ At the rm, non-discretionary, foolproof tasks were devised by workers using their discretion, knowledge, and creativity—a form of mediated-Taylorism. At the Toyota NUMMI plant in California, worker kaizen participation was raised to a new level. Workers were trained to p. 28 perform time studies of their improved methods (Adler 1993). The Conti et al, lean production job stress Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 study found that participation in continuing improvement programmes was associated with reduced worker job stress levels (2006). Taylor's legacy in the twenty-first century In the ranks of Taylorism reformers, time has been kindest to the bureaucratic enhancers. Operations research, management science, and computer decision support systems all thrive—as do Taylor's ideas. Many of his scienti c management techniques have survived—at times virtually intact and, more often, in an evolved manner. Stopwatch time study is little changed, but work measurement has been enhanced by a myriad of computer-based standard data systems. Gantt charts have evolved into sophisticated PERT project management and review systems, and motion studies are routinely made, although more likely using Gilbreath's techniques than Taylor's (Gilbreath 1911). Barth's slide rules replaced machinist's decisions in Taylor's time, and computer-controlled machining centres do the same by transferring machining decisions to programmers. Lean production has become the dominant mode of contemporary manufacturing and its Taylorist elements ensure an in uential position for Taylor's ideas for the foreseeable future. There will likely be more attempts to design more worker-friendly systems, similar to the experiments at the Volvo auto plants at Kalmar and Uddevalla, Sweden. Teams of ten Volvo workers assembled entire cars, starting with painted bodies. They set their own work pace patterns, while completing four cars a day. The plants were shut down in the early 1990s after four years of operation, apparently unable to compete with lean production in either cost or reliability (Berggren et al, 1994) The Volvo experiment was consistent with the lean concept of continuous improvement, and similar e orts should be encouraged. Conclusion Two trends could have a signi cant bearing on Taylor's in uence in the twenty- rst century: the application of lean principles to health care and the use of arti cial intelligence (AI) adaptive computer programmes for securities trading. The global crisis in healthcare quality and costs has spawned interest in Taylorist and lean systems for hospital care and doctor–patient relations. The Wall Street Journal of 15 July 2010 featured a story about Dr Donald Berwick, newly appointed director of the US Centre for Medicare and p. 29 Medicaid Services. He addressed the medical community with a ringing endorsement of Taylorism: I would place a commitment to excellence—standardization to the best-known method—above clinician autonomy as a rule for care. Health care has taken a century to learn how badly we need the best of Frederick Taylor [the father of scienti c management]. If we can’t standardize appropriate parts of our processes to absolute reliability, we cannot approach perfection. Young doctors and nurses should emerge from training understanding the values of standardization and the risks of too great an emphasis on individual autonomy. Predictably, the editorial page responses from physicians were swift and largely negative, warning of the dangers of ‘cook-book’ medicine. Berwick's attempts to improve quality and costs by limiting physicians’ autonomy will face sti resistance. The outcome of this struggle will a ect the role of Taylorism in healthcare systems and possibly the future quality and cost of healthcare. A 14 July 2010 Wall Street Journal headline reported ‘New Wave of Investment Firms Look to “Arti cial Intelligence” in Trade Decisions’. Herbert Simon saw humans and computers as interchangeable in many instances, claiming that ‘In a visible future, computers would exhibit as much “intuition, insight and learning” as people’ (1977). Arti cial intelligence programmes have the ability to rapidly process huge amounts of data, ‘learn’ from the outcomes, and adjust trading strategies and parameters in real time. Traditional non-adaptive computer Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 trading models require programming interventions for such changes. Technically, arti cial intelligence systems could be considered to be anti-Taylorist. Pre-computer traders both planned and executed their transactions. AI programs now allow computers to do the same. From a human standpoint, however, AI may lead to deskilling, with traders becoming ‘computer tenders’ much like the CNC machining centre ‘machine tenders’. The spread of arti cial intelligence applications among trading rms will depend on whether results can overcome the concerns of investors about the risk of opaque quantitative systems. Regardless of the outcome of the healthcare debate, or the extent of AI use by trading rms, Frederick Taylor's legacy should remain secure. Merkle explains why: Scienti c Management increased productivity, making more low-cost manufactured goods available for consumption, and it generally increased middle class opportunities by rede ning the role of the planner, synthesizer and white-collar worker in industrial production. E ciency in the factory was a measureable commodity, with a scienti c basis and real bene ts. (1980: 244) Taylor's e ciency has proved to be a measureable, valuable, enduring commodity. References (* shows annotation) Acko , R. and Rivett, P. (1963). A Manager's Guide to Operations Research. New York: Wiley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Adler, P. (1993). ʻTime and Motion Regainedʼ. Harvard Business Review, 71/1: 97–108. Google Scholar WorldCat p. 30 Allen, M. (1995). ʻEngineers and Modern Managers in the SSʼ. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, Dissertation. *Attewell, P. (1987). ʻThe Deskilling Controversyʼ. Work and Occupation, 14/3: 323–46. Balanced study of the theoretical and empirical validity of the Braverman deskilling thesis. Google Scholar WorldCat Ayres, R. (1988). ʻComplexity, Reliability, and Design: Manufacturing Implicationsʼ. Manufacturing Review, 1/1: 26–35. Google Scholar WorldCat Barnett, C. (1986). The Audit of War.The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation. 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Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Exhaustive 675 page assessment of Taylor's considerable achievements as well as his tendency to ʻwindow dressʼ intuition and hunches as ʻscienceʼ. Lehto, M. and Buch, J. (2008). Introduction to Human Factors and Ergonomics for Engineers. New York: Taylor and Francis Group. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Littler, C. (1978). ʻUnderstanding Taylorismʼ. The British Journal of Sociology, 29/2: 185–202. Google Scholar WorldCat McGregor, D. (1960). The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw Hill. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Maslow, A. (1943). ʻA Theory of Human Motivationʼ. Psychological Review, 50: 370–96. Google Scholar WorldCat *Merkle, J. (1980). Management and Ideology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 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Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Excellent book to read a er reading the 1947 Taylor reprints, to clarify many of the Taylor narratives. Wren, D. (1980). ʻScientific Management in the USSR, With Particular Reference to the Contributions of Walter N. Polakovʼ. Academy of Management Review, 5/1: 1–11. Google Scholar WorldCat Bibliography (* shows annotation) *Barnes, R. (1940). Motion and Time Study. New York: John Wiley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587477 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 The definitive reference for understanding the historical and technical aspects of traditional work improvement and work measurement. Campbell, J. (1989). Joy in Work, German Work, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Mayo, E. (1933). The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, New York: MacMillan. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC *Pruijt, H. (1997). Job Design and Technology, Taylorism vs. Anti-Taylorism. London: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Comparison of neo-Taylorist and anti-Taylorist job design strategies, with case-studies of computer control, job enlargement, job enrichment and participation. Taylor, F. W. (1919). ʻA Piece-Rate Systemʼ, in Two Papers on Scientific Management, London: George Routledge and Sons. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC *Womack, J., Jones, D., and Roos, D. (1990). The Machine That Changed the World. New York: Rawson Associates. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC The report of the MIT study of the global automotive industry. It first used the term ʻlean productionʼ to describe an evolved version of the Toyota Production System, and provides data to support the view that lean production has become a competitive necessity for autos and similarly assembled products. The Oxford Handbook of Management Theorists Morgen Witzel (ed.), Malcolm Warner (ed.) https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585762.001.0001 Published: 2013 Online ISBN: 9780191750342 Print ISBN: 9780199585762 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587639 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Search in this book CHAPTER 4 Henri Fayol  Jean-Louis Peaucelle, Cameron Guthrie https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585762.013.0004 Pages 49–73 Published: 02 April 2013 Abstract This article discusses the impact of Henri Fayol’s life and career on management practice. Fayol rst spoke publicly of his theory of management in 1900, and later, in 1908. It was based on his experience managing a successful business. In 1916, Fayol published his major work Administration Industrielle et Générale. His fourteen principles as published in their 1949 English translation are still relevant today, and are coherent with current models and theories of strategic leadership and management. Fayolism has lived on through modern writings and can be seen today in three key areas: management tools, consulting, and research methodology. The development of HRM tools by Fayol opened consulting opportunities. Fayol’s management research methodology is better known today as ‘action-research’. Keywords: action research, Administration Industrielle, Henri Fayol, Fayolism, HRM tools, management theory, management tools Subject: Business History, Business and Management Series: Oxford Handbooks Collection: Oxford Handbooks Online The life of Henri Fayol 1 Henri Fayol was born on 29 July 1841, in Istanbul. His father worked as a foreman in a steel plant at La Voulte, a town 130 km south of Lyon. Henri was the rst of three children. He was a good pupil in La Voulte, then later in Valence and Lyon. He studied to be a mining engineer at the École Nationale Supérieure des Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587639 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Mines de Saint Etienne where he specialized in mining, rather than metallurgy. After graduating in 1861 he remained loyal to his school, later hiring or seeking the counsel of alumni, such as Alexandre Pourcel who advised Fayol on metallurgical issues in 1892. He became a member of the school's alumni board. Fayol spent his entire career in the same company. He married in 1875 and had three children: two girls and one boy. He died on 19 November 1925 in Paris. Fayol began working in central France in the Commentry coal mines as an intern in 1860. In 1865 he became director and by 1888 he was managing director of the Commentry-Fourchambault company. He was appointed to sell o the company which was losing money, but managed to trade it back into pro t. He built its growth on a ‘scrap and build’ strategy, closing old and exhausted mines and acquiring or building new ones. He bought the Brassac coal mine in 1891 and the Decazeville mine and steel plant in 1892. The company became Commentry-Fourchambault et Decazeville with about 10,000 workers in 1914. Fayol was a good manager, both for the shareholders and for the workers, each year visiting the plants and meeting the managers and a number of workers. During his directorship he built an iron mine in the north-east of France near Metz at Joudreville and a steel plant in the north of France near Lens at Pont-à-Vendin. Both were destroyed in 1914 during the German invasion. Fayol retired in 1918. p. 50 Fayol had the spirit of an experimental scientist. He developed experiments which led to a theory explaining the formation of coal layers in lakes. This theory is today called the ‘Gilbert deltas’, named after the American geologist who formulated it a little later. Fayol sent the fossils he discovered in his mine to the Museum of Paris. He also supported Charles Edouard Guillaume's research into Invar, a steel alloy with 36 per cent nickel content and a very low coe cient of thermal expansion. Fayol published twelve articles from his scienti c and technical research into coal mining. He was an expert in coal mine res, and invented techniques to both prevent and extinguish them. These techniques were used in all French mines and on colliers shipping coal from New South Wales, Australia. After the success of his book on the science of management in 1916 (Fayol 1916) he evangelized his theory until his death. He gave numerous conferences and pressed for the creation of management training for both the public and private sectors. He sat on two government commissions investigating the French national postal, telephone and telegraph service (PTT) and later the state-owned cigarette and cigar manufacturers (‘Manufacture des tabacs’). These two state monopolies were considered for privatization, both for nancial reasons that Fayol chose to ignore and for sound management reasons that he highlighted. He drew a number of conclusions about the management of public sector organizations, although they were never adopted in France. Henri Fayol's thought: Fayolism Fayol rst spoke publicly of his theory of management in 1900 (Fayol 1900) and later in 1908 (Fayol 1908), based on his experience managing a successful business. His speeches, however, went relatively unheard. In 1916 he published his major work Administration Industrielle et Générale which was widely acclaimed both in France and abroad. It was re-edited several times in French and translated into thirteen languages, including English as Industrial and General Administration in 1930 (Fayol 1930) and as General and Industrial Management in 1949 (Fayol 1949). This success was somewhat ambiguous, however. Fayol's theory of management applied to both private companies (‘industrial’) and public bodies such as the Army (‘general’). During the First World War, many believed that war operations were poorly run. Government censure did not allow such opinions to be expressed. Fayol's theoretical rules of management appeared to point out the errors committed by Army commanders. Before the end of the war, Fayol arranged for two publications written by wounded o cers that criticized the way the war was conducted to be published. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587639 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Fayol's 1916 work is widely considered his unique written theoretical contribution, yet during his lifetime he wrote fteen works on management. He also left many handwritten manuscripts which were given by his family to the Fonds Fayol at the Fondation des Sciences Politiques in Paris. We will use these multiple sources to present Fayol's thought and to explain how it evolved. p. 51 Administrative abilities When Fayol was hired by the Commentry coal mine, the director was Stéphane Mony, a former Saint- 2 Simonian. Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) strongly in uenced French engineers in the nineteenth century. The future, he argued, belonged to the ‘industrial class’ made up of plant owners, managers, and workers. The ‘industrial class’ had proven that it had a special ‘administrative ability’, which can be roughly understood as rational collective economic behaviour. Fayol ampli ed this idea in the rst two chapters of his book. Fayol identi ed six abilities he considered essential in any rm: administrative abilities, technical abilities, marketing abilities, nancial abilities, safety abilities, and accounting abilities. Each person in an enterprise has these abilities in di erent quantities. Saint-Simon believed that the worker, for example, has few administrative abilities (5 per cent), great technical abilities (85 per cent), some safety abilities (5 per cent), and weak accounting abilities (5 per cent). According to Saint Simon, all members of the ‘industrial class’ have ‘administrative abilities’. The administrative ability level of managers is high, and of workers is low. No one type of activity is performed exclusively by any one level in a company. Accountants, for example, are not the only ones to work on the accounts and salesmen do not only work on marketing. All employees take part in administrative activities. Abilities are quanti ed according to the amount of work time spent using each ability. In 1900, Fayol explained Of 100 hours spent working in a large industrial rm, a laborer spends few on administrative tasks: information passed on to the foreman, discussions over salaries, the timing and organization of work activities, time spent in relief fund and union meetings, etc. […] The time spent on administrative activities increases with an employee's level in the industrial hierarchy. (Fayol 1901: 762) Fayol's notion of ‘ability’ underlies a typology of use of time on the di erent activities within a company as shown in Table 4.1. Based on Fayol's experience, a company's performance deteriorates as people's use of time moves away from such typical values. Table 4.1: The six abilities for the eight standard levels in a company (Fayol 1916, 1925: 20 bis; 1949: 8; 1999: 123) Administrative Technical Marketing Financial Safety Accounting abilities abilities abilities abilities abilities abilities Shareholder 15% 80% 5% Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587639 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 Board 60% 5% 5% 15% 5% 10% Managing director and 40% 15% 15% 10% 10% 10% executive management Technical department 35% 30% 10% 10% 5% 10% manager Department manager 30% 30% 5% 5% 10% 20% Workshop manager 25% 45% 5% 5% 10% 10% Foreman 15% 60% 5% 10% 10% Worker 5% 85% 5% 5% Fayol's word ‘administration’ comes from the Saint-Simonian concept of ‘administrative abilities’, and in particular from the adjective ‘administrative’. Fayol employed the nounal form in the same way we may derive the noun ‘rationality’ from ‘rational’. However, in French the word ‘administration’ has two meanings. First, it refers to the public service, a ministry for example such as the ‘Finance Ministry’ p. 52 (‘l’administration des nances’). Second, it is used in the private sphere to clearly identify what is being managed: ‘managing a company’ (‘l’administration d’une entreprise’), ‘managing someone's assets’ (‘l’administration des biens de quelqu’un’). The faculties of business in French state universities are called ‘Instituts d’Administration des Entreprises’ (IAE). Unlike the word ‘management’, the word ‘administration’ does not exist in French as Fayol used it, as it requires a complement to specify what is being administered. Fayol wanted to give new meaning to the word ‘administration’: one of a general science of all management activities. This meaning is awkward, even in French. It is contrary to its use in the military. Administrative activities are those that take place in the o ce, as opposed to those on the battle eld. Fayol was trying to de ne what was already understood by the word ‘command’. Military o cers may have agreed with Fayol's basic ideas, but they could not accept the words he used. In English, such a new meaning for the word ‘administration’ is unnecessary as the word ‘management’ already exists. Coubrough used the term ‘administration’ in his 1930 translation of Fayol's work (Fayol 1930), whereas Constance Storrs more correctly used the word ‘management’ in 1949 (Fayol 1949). Reading the 1913 translation of Taylor's book Shop Management, Fayol noted: Taylor writes about ‘management’ (‘direction’) without de ning it. He no doubt means ‘administration’ and he insists on studying it as a science, just as I do. (Fonds Fayol, HF5 bis, le Taylor, underlined by Fayol). For Fayol, ‘management’, ‘direction’, and ‘administration’ all mean the same thing. There is no cause for debate. The Académie Française o cially adopted the word ‘management’ as part of the French language in the 1960s. We will hereupon use the term ‘management’ to translate Fayol's use of the French word ‘administration’. p. 53 The five ʻelements of managementʼ Fayol de ned his concept of management with a list: To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to co-ordinate and to verify. (Fayol 1916, 1925: 13; 1949: 6; 1999: 8) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587639 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 This de nition of management dates back to a handwritten note from 27 May 1911 (Fonds Fayol HF4 DR5). The rst reference to planning was much earlier however, dating back to 1898. ‘Verifying’ was referred to in 1888 along with a description of the di erent functions in the Commentry coal mine. This de nition of management is fundamental for Henri Fayol. His thought was abbreviated by the French acronym POCCC (‘Prévoir, Organiser, Commander, Coordonner et Contrôler’). Fayol's de nition of management gradates according to the temporal distance a management element lies from operations. ‘Planning’ is a long-term activity. ‘Organizing’ involves the setting up of productive capacity in the medium term. ‘Coordinating’ harmonizes all the productive resources in the short term. These are three preparatory steps before action. ‘Commanding’ triggers productive operations, and ‘verifying’ takes place after an operation has occurred, as a form of management control. We have inverted the order of the third and fourth management elements to highlight this temporal progression. We suggest the following translation of Fayol's de nition: ‘To manage is to plan, to install the productive resources (to organize), to coordinate, to command, and to verify (to control)’. Fayol's de nitions for each of these management elements are presented below: To plan is ‘to reckon and to prepare the future; to plan is to act ahead’; ‘to manage is to plan’ (‘gouverner c’est prévoir’) (Fayol 1916, 1925: 59; 1949: 43; 1999: 48). It is the modern concept of strategy. Fayol stressed the practice of forecasting and planning. Fayol had drawn up operating plans for the Commentry mine. He was told to increase production each year. When he declared that the mine's reserves were running out, the company's executive management disputed his claims. External experts, however, con rmed Fayol's analysis. Fayol then planned how to extract all the remaining coal before closing the mine. Mining rights to new deposits were acquired and the company's activity was transferred to the new mine. In 1914 he sold o the assets at the exhausted Commentry mine. To install the productive resources (‘organiser’) is to ‘provide the company with all that it requires in order to operate: supplies, tooling, nancing, personnel’ (Fayol 1916, 1925: 78; 1949: 53; 1999: 61). Fayol used the word ‘organizing’, quite a broad term but no other word adequately captures Fayol's meaning. As a manager he mainly developed human resource management. He worked on the formal structuring of the rm, with its hierarchy and job descriptions, recruitment, and training. Supplies management would be the equivalent of today's manufacturing resource planning. Tooling would be p. 54 the same as technology intelligence and manufacturing process management. Fayol's ideas for nancing were the equivalent of today's nancial management. Fayol only detailed human resource management. To coordinate (‘coordonner’) is ‘to harmonize a company's di erent actions to correctly proportion things or acts, and to adapt the means to the goals’ (Fayol 1916, 1925: 149; 1949: 103; 1999: 115). The nature of the goals is of little importance. Fayol's doctrine applies to not-for-pro t and public sector organizations, as well as to private enterprise: He believed that ‘in a well co-ordinated company [ … ] each department walks in time with the others; the purchasing department knows what it must provide and when, and the production department knows what is expected of it; the maintenance department keeps the material and the equipment in working order; the nance department secures the necesssary capital; the security department protects assets and people (Fayol 1916, 1925: 149–50; 1949: 103–4; 1999: 115). Fayol was referring to the management of material ows, production scheduling and runs, cash management, inventory management, and so on. The daily management of operations was ‘constantly harmonzied with the circumstances’. To command (‘commander’) (Fayol 1916, 1925: 140; 1949: 97; 1999: 108) is to lead operational activity. It is a leader's main day-to-day role. The importance of this activity is lessened by the three previous preparatory management elements. It is nonetheless necessary to ‘get an activity underway’, and it is Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37216/chapter/327587639 by Universidad de los Andes Sistema de Bibliotecas user on 14 June 2024 the leader's role to trigger action. To verify (‘contrôler’) is ‘to check that everything occurs in conformity with the de ned plans, the established rules and the given orders, and the accepted principles’ (Fayol 1916, 1925: 155, 1949: 107, 1999: 119). We should note that the hierarchy already performs some veri cation. These management elements occupy nearly 60 per cent of Fayol's 1916 book. The emphasis is placed on the 3 second element, ‘organizing’ (to install the productive resources). Fayol writes at length of human resource management as workers were a company's main productive resource at the beginning of the twentieth century. The management tools These ve management elements are abstract. They are put into practice through management tools (‘outillage administratif’). Fayol discovered this idea when he took over the Decazeville coal mines: When I took charge of turning around Decazeville, I did not count on my superior skills or those of my collaborators. I laid faith in my organizing and people leading abilities. I knew that my collaborators would give a great deal if I applied my rules and principles. Within a few years, the p. 55 3000 laborers at Decazeville, previously considered undisciplined and poorly skilled, showed su cient talent to make these establishments (the mines and others) as pro table as the most successful. A remarkable achievement that the same men, in such a short space of time, could be the main actors of both decadence and renovation. (Fonds Fayol 1898, HF4 DR3) Fayol spent twenty- ve years looking for a word to describe these good management practices. He called them ‘principles, rules, procedures’ in 1898, ‘management machines’ and ‘set-up of the management apparatus’ (‘dispositions adoptées pour l’appareil administratif’) in 1900, ‘management procedures’ (‘procédés administratifs’) in 1908, ‘management cogs’ (‘rouages administratifs’), ‘methods’, ‘procedures’, ‘instruments’ in 1916. These terms are repeated up until 1923 when Fayol de nitively adopted the term ‘management tools’: Management tools: they are a collection of documents that provide the manager with information and help him make knowledgeable decisions in all situations. (Fayol, 1923: 315) Fayol's invention of the term ‘management tools’ was based on an engineering metaphor. These tools were of course already known by others prior to Fayol. A ve-page document classifying the di erent ‘management operations’ by management element was found in Fayol's archives. It is reproduced below. It is similar to the plan of Fayol's 1916 book, although it often goes into greater detail. This document was written around 1920. It resembles a

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