Scientific Management, Systematic Management, and Labor, 1880-1915 cOffering 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 described 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 recent 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 emphasis 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-
The fostering of worker confidence in the organization has been a major goal of big business for a century. Professor Nelson, a well-known authority on the history of human resource management, here provides a new look at company unions. His view shows that the characterization of these organizations by liberal and labor critics was not always accurate. Some company unions represented noteworthy contributions to the development of a professional approach to labor relations.
Two differing managerial philosophies competed for the support of American businessmen around the beginning of the twentieth century — the “scientific management” of Frederick W. Taylor and a general set of practices known as “welfare work.” This study examines the experience of a Brandywine River textile firm which tried to employ both approaches at the same time.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.