Transfer of Taylorist ideas to China, 1910‐1930s

Abstract

PurposeManagement is a “hot field” in China, yet little has been written in English about the history of management in China. Contrary to contemporary management literature, the paper aims to show that Chinese entrepreneurs and managers were exposed to modern management ideas from the early twentieth century. The paper is an initial exploration of the transfer of managerial knowledge to China, especially Scientific Management, during the interwar period.Design/methodology/approachDraws on Chinese journal articles and books from 1910‐1930s, supplemented with archive materials and secondary sources in Chinese and English.FindingsChinese industrialists, officials and academics were attracted to Taylor's ideas of scientific management during the 1920s and 1930s, which were experimented with on a wider scale than is commonly realized. The interest in “new” management extended beyond industrialists and industry officials to reportage in the popular press.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should consider first how new ideas about management and organization were implemented on the shopfloor in individual Chinese enterprises, and second examine the role of social networks constituted by native place, industry ties and professional association membership in the diffusion of managerial ideas among the Chinese business elite of the period.Originality/valueThe paper shows that the transfer to China of modern management as an ideas system was not a recent phenomenon, but part of a century‐long process of transfer and adaptation of western management theory and practice.

Taylorism Revisited: Culture, Management Theory and Paradigm-Shift

“…By the 1880s, Chinese translations of new Western works on economics and management, were in circulation, along with original Chinese books calling for reform (Witzel, 2012: 77). Taylor's Principles was translated into Mandarin in 1916 (see Morgan, 2006), the Japanese translations of both Shop Management and his Principles had appeared five years earlier (see Warner, 1994).…”

“…At this point, we turn to the debate about 'paradigms' in natural science, associated with scholars of the history of science, such as Thomas Kuhn (see Fuller, 2000), in his seminal work half-a-century ago, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1962), a number of economists (Coats, 1969;Blaug, 1975;Stiglitz, 2011) amongst others) and a few sociologists (see Hassard and Cox, 2013). We will ask why Scientific Management eventually became a possibly dominant management model of its time for many decades, with wide influence around the globe (Devinat, 1927;Merkle, 1980;Greenwood and Ross, 1982;Locke, 1982;Humphreys, 1986;Kanigel, 1987;Wrege and Greenwood, 1992;Warner, 1994;Nelson, 1995;Morgan, 2006) and even in fields beyond management (for example, Guillén, 2006).…”

Taylorism, the International Labour Organization, and the Genesis and Diffusion of Codetermination

“…Construction of our narrative is assisted by a considerable body of scholarship on the diffusion of Taylorism to Western Europe (Bloemen, 1996;Guillen, 1994;Maier, 1970;Merkle, 1980;), Russia (Beissinger, 1988;Wren, 1980), China (Morgan, 2006), Japan (Tsutsui, 1998;Warner, 1994), Australasia (Wright, 1993) and numerous other countries and regions. These works have shown that scientific management was received, interpreted and institutionalized in ways that reflected local contingencies.…”

Pedagogy in management history: the scholarship of representation

“…Another paper on management in China, albeit in regard to management knowledge of more recent vintage (Morgan, 2006), shows that Chinese entrepreneurs and managers were exposed to modern management ideas from the early 20 th century. Utilising a variety of Chinese journal articles, archive materials and books from the period, Morgan's (2006) paper shows us that Chinese industrialists, officials and academics were attracted to Taylor's ideas of scientific management during the 1920s and 1930s.…”

“…Utilising a variety of Chinese journal articles, archive materials and books from the period, Morgan's (2006) paper shows us that Chinese industrialists, officials and academics were attracted to Taylor's ideas of scientific management during the 1920s and 1930s. Far from being a new phenomenon, the transfer to China of management ideas has been (at least) a century-long process of transfer and adaptation of western management theory and practice.…”