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1 – 10 of over 79000Charles R. McCann and Vibha Kapuria-Foreman
Robert Franklin Hoxie was of the first generation of University of Chicago economists, a figure of significance in his own time. He is often heralded as the first of the…
Abstract
Robert Franklin Hoxie was of the first generation of University of Chicago economists, a figure of significance in his own time. He is often heralded as the first of the Institutional economists and the impetus behind the field of labor economics. Yet today, his contributions appear as mere footnotes in the history of economic thought, when mentioned at all, despite the fact that in his professional and popular writings he tackled some of the most pressing problems of the day. The topics upon which he focused included bimetallism, price theory, methodology, the economics profession, socialism, syndicalism, scientific management, and trade unionism, the last being the field with which he is most closely associated. His work attracted the notice of some of the most famous economists of his time, including Frank Fetter, J. Laurence Laughlin, Thorstein Veblen, and John R. Commons. For all the promise, his suicide at the age of 48 ended what could have been a storied career. This paper is an attempt to resurrect Hoxie through a review of his life and work, placing him within the social and intellectual milieux of his time.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore parallels between scientific management and the new scientific management to gain insight into applications of machine learning and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore parallels between scientific management and the new scientific management to gain insight into applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to human resource management and employee assessment.
Design/methodology/approach
Analysis of Taylor’s work and its interpretation by scholars is contrasted with modern analysis of human resource analytics to demonstrate conceptual and methodological commonalities between the old and the new forms of scientific management.
Findings
The analysis demonstrates how the epistemology, ethos and cultural trajectory of scientific management has resulted in a mindset that has influenced the implementation and objectives of the new scientific management with respect to human resources analytics.
Social implications
This paper offers an alternative to the view that machine learning and AI as applied to work and employees are beneficial and points out why important challenges have been overlooked and how they can be addressed.
Originality/value
Commonalties between Taylorism and the new scientific management have been overlooked so that attempts to gain an understanding of how machine learning is likely to influence work, employees and work organizations are incomplete. This paper provides a new perspective that can be used to address challenges associated with applications of machine learning to work design and employee rights.
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The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a significant transformation in managerial control practices within the US department store. New principles of scientific…
Abstract
The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a significant transformation in managerial control practices within the US department store. New principles of scientific management, already employed on the factory floor, were now implemented on the retail “shop floor”. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into this transition by examining three such scientific management initiatives introduced by store management during this era. The paper draws on a number of sources in its historical examination of early department store scientific management initiatives. These include archival records, published literature of the era, and particularly the proceedings of meetings of the annual Controllers Congress of the National Retail Dry Goods Association (US). The paper finds how notions of the rationality of science reined over such store operations as inventory valuation, credit control and overhead expense allocation. Traditional positions of power were recast and new managerial roles created in the name of science. The paper illustrates the insights that can be gained from an examination of scientific management practices in an alternative arena to the factory floor. Further historical research in the area of retail management may prove productive not only for our understanding of this site but also our knowledge of the process by which new managerial initiatives become assimilated. The study of the managerial practices of such vast organizational forms proves fruitful not only for the history scholar. Given the centrality of the department store in the creation of a contemporary culture of consumption, such examination becomes all the more insightful.
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This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific management to success in Taylor’s native Quaker Philadelphia in the 1880s. The paper’s main contribution is to contrast the philosophical origins of Taylor’s ideas in scientific management to his native Quaker roots, and how Taylor, over time, into the 1910s, wrestled with this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is situated in historical interpretivism and subjectivism, leaning on contextual and narrative research on religious morality.
Findings
Quaker morality prevented managerial opportunism at Taylor’s Midvale Steel in the 1880s. Conversely, by the 1900s and 1910s, interest conflicts between workers and managers escalated when scientific management moved out of its traditional cultural contexts of Quaker Philadelphia and spread across the USA. The historical implication is, already for Taylor’s time, that scientific management never was the “one-best way” of management.
Research limitations/implications
Future research needs to deepen and broaden research on scientific management when tracing the significance of religion and culture in management thought.
Practical implications
The paper has implications for modern studies of business morality by uncovering the practical relevance of religious business ethics at the outset of management studies.
Social implications
The historic emergence of scientific management points to a theory of institutional evolution and economic growth, when religiously grounded governance of the firm deinstitutionalized, and institutional economic governance, with different but superior economic advantages, progressed by the 1900s.
Originality/value
The paper suggests an alternative version of the intellectual heritage of management studies by tracing the legacy of Taylor’s Quakerism and how religious and cultural ideas contributed to the formation of science in management.
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Mikhail Grachev and Boris Rakitsky
The purpose of the article is to historically position F. Taylor's scientific management in a broad socio-economic landscape, arguing that Taylorism was predetermined by the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the article is to historically position F. Taylor's scientific management in a broad socio-economic landscape, arguing that Taylorism was predetermined by the distinctive industrial type of economic growth and shaped by a political environment of an industrial economy. The authors further aim to discuss how scientific management transcended national boundaries and to analyse the case of Russia, with the focus on the rise and fall of Taylorism in that country in response to political transformations in the twentieth century.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors summarize key attributes of F. Taylor's scientific management as a systemic theoretical approach to efficiency with prioritized practical programmatic orientation and perceived social effects. The discussion on how scientific management fits the industrial economic growth and responds to the political environment follows. The authors conduct archival research and aggregate major literature on the history of Taylorism in twentieth century Russia.
Findings
The key findings of the study include: a summary of F. Taylor's management paradigm; Taylorism as the product of the industrial type of economic growth; how the political environment in Russia modified the unique cycle of scientific management with its emergence in the 1910s, rise in the 1920s, fall in the 1930s, and rebirth on a technocratic basis in the late 1950s.
Research limitations/implications
The paper contributes to the general discussion on Taylorism and provides unique assessments of its historic development in Russia. The results of the study have both academic and educational implications.
Originality/value
The findings of the study enrich the discussion about Taylorism and its application in other countries. The archival and analytic results of the study permit conclusions at a high level of aggregation; highlight conflicting positions on the history of Taylorism in Russia in the literature; provide the framework to better understand the scope of scientific management in a historic socio-economic landscape; and display original arguments to support major findings.
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Kenneth S. Rhee and Tracey Honeycutt Sigler
Motivation theory in the 20th century has evolved to meet the changing social, political, and economic environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the developmental path…
Abstract
Motivation theory in the 20th century has evolved to meet the changing social, political, and economic environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the developmental path of modern motivation theory from the perspective of the Tao and the cyclical nature of Yin and Yang. We review motivation theory from the Industrial Revolution to the present. The developmental path during the past 100 years consists of seven distinct stages, each stage representing a significant shift in theory as well as a shift in the social, political, and economic environment in the United States. The dominant theme that emerges from the analysis is the discourse between science and humanity, and the revolving cycle of these fundamental theories throughout the century.
In all forms of workplaces, especially in the English‐speakingworld, administrators have been exhorted to introduce what are perceivedto be the “best practices” operating in the…
Abstract
In all forms of workplaces, especially in the English‐speaking world, administrators have been exhorted to introduce what are perceived to be the “best practices” operating in the more successful economies. The education “industry” in Australia appears to be no different in this regard from other industries, and the “best practices” appear to originate from Japan. Japanese management practices are promulgated as having abandoned the old methods of scientific management, offering new ways of managing workplaces in general, and schools in particular. Seeks to examine this proposition critically through an examination of two proposals which have been advanced as bringing “best practices” into the administration of schools. The two areas which have been given currency recently are the introduction of salary packages for teachers and the formation of work in schools. Concludes that these seeming innovations may not differ markedly from the principles advocated earlier this century by the proponents of scientific management. Nevertheless, they may still provide some means towards more democratic administrative practices.
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