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Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 - March 21, 1915) was an American engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He, Maunsel White, and a team of assistants developed high speed steel. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. During the latter part of his career he was a management consultant, and he is sometimes called "The Father of Scientific Management."
Early years
Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a wealthy Quaker family. He had intended to pursue his education at Harvard University, but poor eyesight forced him to consider an alternative career. In 1874, he became an apprentice machinist, learning of factory conditions at the grass-roots level. He got a degree in Mechanical Engineering through a highly unusual (for the time) series of correspondence courses at Stevens Institute of Technology (graduating in 1883) (Kanigel 1997:182-183,199).
The development of management
Taylor thought that by analyzing work, the "One Best Way" to do it would be found. He is most remembered for developing the time and motion study. He would break a job into its component parts and measure each to the second. One of his most famous studies involved shovels. He noticed that the workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined that the most effective load was 21½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful at applying his concepts; it was largely through his disciples (most notably H.L. Gantt) that his ideas were implemented in industry. After being fired from Bethlehem Steel he wrote a book, Shop Management, which sold well.
Taylor believed that contemporary management was amateurish and should be studied as a discipline, that workers should cooperate with management (and hence would not need trade unions), and that the best results would come from the partnership between a trained and qualified management and a cooperative and innovative workforce. Each side needed the other.
Taylor was a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, founded in 1900. He is known for coinage of the term scientific management in his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. However, his approach is often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism.
Taylor developed four principles of Scientific Management:
- Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
- Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
- Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed.
- Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks
Harvard University, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management in 1908, based its first-year curriculum on Taylor's ideas regarding scientific management. His ideas, as well as Henry Ford's, relating to efficiency became highly influential during the early days of the Soviet Union.
Relationship with ASME
Taylor was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) from 1906-1907. While president, he tried to implement his system into the management of the ASME but was met with much resistance. He was only able to reorganize the publications department and then only partially. He also forced out the ASME's long-time secretary, Morris L. Cooke, and replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure as president was trouble-ridden and marked the beginning of a period of internal dissension within the ASME during the Progressive Era (Jaffe 1957:34).
In 1912, Taylor collected his articles into a book-length manuscript and submitted it to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne. The committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford. Alford was a critic of the Taylor system and the report was negative. The committee modified the report slightly, but accepted Alford's recommendation not to publish Taylor's book. Taylor angrily withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval (Jaffe 1957:36-40; Nelson 1980:181-184).
Closest followers
Taylor's Influence in the United States
- Carl Barth, lecturer at Harvard and early consultant on Scientific Management.
- H. L. Gantt developed the Gantt chart, a visual aid for graphing the scheduling of tasks and flow of work to be completed.
- Harrington Emerson introduced scientific management to the railroad industry and developed idea of "staff" function as advisory role to "line" management.
- Morris Cooke adapted scientific management to educational and municipal organizations.
- Hugo Munsterberg created the discipline of industrial psychology.
- Lillian Gilbreth introduced psychology to management studies.
- Frank Gilbreth introduced scientific management in the construction industry and developed "motion" studies using photography for what came to be called "time and motion" studies.
- Harlow S. Person, as dean of Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance, promoted the teaching of scientific management.
- James O. McKinsey, professor at University of Chicago and senior partner in his accounting firm, propagated the budget as a means of accountability and measuring performance.
Outside the United States
France
Le Chatelier translated Taylor's work and introduced scientific management throughout state plants during World War I. This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol who published Administration Industrielle et Générale in 1916 (published in book form in 1917) which emphasized organizational structure in management.
Switzerland
The American Edward Albert Filene established the International Management Institute to spread information about management.
USSR
Lenin was very influenced by Taylor's ideas and sought to incorporate Taylorism into Soviet manufacturing.
Articles
Taylor's life and work was discussed in the Deja Vu column by Cynthia Crossen in the Wall Street Journal on November 6, 2006.
References
- Boddy, David (2002). Management: An Introduction (2nd ed. ed.). New York: Pearson Education. ISBN 0273655183.
{{cite book}}:|edition=has extra text (help) - Jaffe, William (1957). L.P. Alford and the Evolution of Modern Industrial Management. With an introduction by David B. Porter. New York: New York University Press.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|middle=ignored (help) - Kanigel, Robert (1997). The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670864021.
- Nelson, Daniel (1980). Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299081605.
- Nelson, Daniel (ed.) (1992). A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management Since Taylor. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 0814205674.
{{cite book}}:|first=has generic name (help) - Weisbord, Marvin (2004). Productive Workplaces Revisited (Chapter 2: Scientific Management Revisited: A Tale of Two Taylors; Chapter 3: The Consulting Engineer: Taylor Invents a New Profession.). ISBN 0787971170.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help); Unknown parameter|middle=ignored (help) - Aitken, Hugh (1960). Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal.
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External links
- A Selection from Frederick Taylor's Essays
- Works by Frederick Winslow Taylor at Project Gutenberg
- Taylorism and Neo-Taylorism
- Principles of Scientific Management - Full text online
- The Principles of Scientific Management online, more information
- Shop Management, 1911 edition, online
- Special Collections - F.W. Taylor Collection , Stevens Institute of Technology has an extensive collection at its library
- Frederick's Biograpgy