Search results

This paper aims to highlight myriad accomplishments of C. Bertrand Thompson, who is perhaps most well known as a scientific-management bibliographer and a Taylor disciple, in the belief that his contributions as a pioneer management theorist and consultant in Europe deserve to be more widely known and more deeply appreciated.

Archival, primary and secondary sources were used in the research.

Thompson was among the first to bring management consulting to Europe. He understood the importance of adapting scientific-management principles to meet the diverse needs of each client for whom he consulted. Thompson’s strong belief and value system remained constant throughout his life.

Understanding the needs of customers or clients and adapting systems to meet those needs is essential in achieving success as a consultant.

By drawing on rarely accessed published and unpublished materials, this paper discusses Thompson’s many contributions to management thought and practice, most of which previously have not been highlighted in the referent literature.

This paper aims to present the work and contributions of Karol Adamiecki in comparison with Frederick Winslow Taylor and discusses the various contexts in which both scholars conducted their research. The purpose of this study is bring to light some of the main accomplishments of Adamiecki and contribute to the discussion of reasons why the work of some scholars draws wide acclaim, while similar work of others remains unnoticed.

The background for the discussion is the work and ideas of Karol Adamiecki, a Polish engineer and manager, whose methods and findings were similar to those of Frederick Taylor and are contemporary, and, in some cases, precede those of the Father of Scientific Management. The methodology used in this study is a review of the original work of Adamiecki and Taylor to find the true meaning and purpose behind their writings, as well as a review of relevant literature regarding the context of the realities in which both scholars constructed their research.

The concepts and inventions of Karol Adamiecki are, in many aspects, similar to those of Frederick Taylor and his followers. Several factors are identified and discussed which may have influenced the varied level of recognition of conceptually similar ideas evolved in different parts of the world. These factors are, among others, the socio-political reality of Eastern Europe and Poland under the influence of Russia and the Soviets as compared to that of the USA and the Western World and the support of various interest groups and government institutions, as well as the impact of the academic circles.

In today’s world of globalization reaching all aspects of life, it is necessary to recognize and acknowledge the developments emerging in different settings, regions and cultures. Furthermore, the social and political realities in which research is constructed may impact the future acceptance, dissemination and popularity of the findings and authors.

Although some research exists outlining the work of Adamiecki, this study contributes to the body of historical management knowledge by focusing on the main accomplishments of Adamiecki based on his original writings and placing his accomplishments in a historical context in comparison to Taylor, thus analyzing the reasons for the lack of wider acclaim for Adamiecki’s contribution to scientific management.

Response to the serialized publication of Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) in The American Magazine was in two forms: (a) letters‐to‐the‐editor praising and seeking further information, which became the foundation for Frank B. Gilbreth’s Primer of Scientific Management (1912); and (b) highly critical letters, which did not materialize in print but are preserved in the Taylor Collection of Stevens Institute of Technology. This paper describes Gilbreth’s “primer” and documents the origins of this seminal book in management history. Further, it gives highlights of several letters‐to‐the‐editor not mentioned in the primer which show that Taylor was selective about the questions addressed in order to control his image and promote his cause. The letters demonstrate that Upton Sinclair was only one of many who questioned the value of scientific management immediately following its introduction to the public in The American Magazine. These letters reflect the transitional time for labor that existed in the early 1900s which provided the environment in which scientific management was conceived.

This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and identified the particular individual to whom, he claimed, he owed his earliest exposure to time study – George A. “Bull” Wentworth.

Drawing on archival material, including a recently discovered letter by Taylor, this paper substantiates Taylor's claims regarding his association with Wentworth. By corroborating existing and new evidence of the Wentworth‐Taylor link, it probes into the nature and the scope of the influence of the “Old Bull” of Exeter on the father of scientific management.

Taylor did not conceive of time study on his own but acquired it early in his life via traceable socialization influences, many of which came from Wentworth. Such influences were both substantive and lasting: the residue of Wentworth's methodology is distinct in Taylor's early and later time study work. Taken together, both internal and external consistency of the evidence has led me to assert that it is plausible that Wentworth had a traceable and lasting socialization impact on Frederick Taylor.

This paper is a rare inquiry into the part of Taylor's life history that precedes his pioneering of the industrial, managerial, and economic applications of time study. It grounds the matter of Taylor's conceiving the time study idea into the context of his early‐in‐life socialization – an important subject left largely unexplored by Taylor's biographers and the historians of the scientific management movement.

Motivated by the call of the Congress for Industrial Organizations (CIO) for greater labour involvement in management (a call informed by the principles of the Taylor Society), US business launched a crusade in 1944 under the banner, “The Right to Manage”. The purpose of this paper is to extend earlier explorations of the ideas that inspired the leaders of the CIO.

Through examining the work of the neglected feminist, and labour and social activist, Mary van Kleeck, the paper shows how the ideas concerning the democratisation of management, and the determination of decision making by knowledge, not profit, evolved into Taylorism's principal tenets.

The paper finds that an analysis of Mary van Kleeck's work helps explain why many of the ideas that prevailed among inter‐war Taylor Society members deeply disturbed employers, while concomitantly enthusing the CIO.

This paper redresses the view of scientific management's history that misleadingly stresses the initial hostility between Taylor's circle and organised labour, which has become entrenched in management folklore and accepted as axiomatic within the discipline, while ignoring the subsequent commitment of Taylor and the Taylor Society to management democratisation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the life and work of Frank Gilbreth using a critical biographical approach to draw connections between his life experiences and the major contributions he made to management history.

The research design is critical biography. First, a biography is provided that reveals critical incidents from his childhood, his early career before marriage, his life after his marriage and his key personality traits. Gilbreth’s major contributions to management thought are then considered in context of his biography.

Although Frank Gilbreth is recalled for his contributions to management history through his work in advancing efficiency through motion studies, he should likewise be credited for his foresight of management theories related to the human element in organizations. The major influences on Gilbreth’s career include Lillian Gilbreth and Frederick Taylor.

A limitation of critical biography is that researchers cannot address causality but, rather, are focused on drawing connections between life experiences and significant accomplishments.

Critical biography can illuminate theory and practice by providing greater clarity by examining concepts in depth and in context. The authors situate Frank Gilbreth’s work in the context of his lived experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to use an inter-disciplinary approach to examine the relevance of F.W. Taylor’s principles to modern shop-floor practices in the context of a manufacturing organization.

Standard time study guidelines laid out by the ILO were adopted and random observations made between two operators independently performing an identical operation in the shop-floor premises of a particular factory.

It was evident from the study that modern management has developed the science for each element of the operator’s manual work, as postulated and proposed by F.W. Taylor. It was also evident that completion of the operation on time was necessary for the operators but not as important as the total number of jobs performed during the duration of the shift. These empirical findings highlighted the high relevance of F.W. Taylor’s principles to modern shop-floor practices.

The authors adopted time study observation as the single method to collect real data from real practices but this could be considered as a biased approach. Since the time study observation is a slow, time consuming, and expensive process of obtaining data, the authors restricted the study to only two operators. Further, the study was carried out in a real setting under several assumptions that may limit its wider applications and practical implications. The study findings suggest that measuring the operator’s performance in terms of time consumption and resource utilization is necessary but not sufficient to evaluate and improve his/her productivity because operators evaluate their performance in terms of the total number of jobs completed during the duration of the shift. Therefore, it is suggested that the managers on the modern shop-floor measure the output at the aggregate level for the given input, while developing new work methods as well as devising performance management and reward systems.

The study has contributed to the body of knowledge by conducting a complete assessment of F.W. Taylor’s first principle from its origin to its application in modern shop-floor practices. Also, the authors empirically examined the relevance of Taylor’s principles to modern shop-floor practices in the context of a manufacturing organization. The study supports the descriptive work of Freeman (1996), who envisaged the relevance of Taylor’s ideas to modern management practices; also, it gives a few directions to test behavioral operations theory in terms of using real operational data to examine an established organization theory (Gino and Pisano, 2008).

This paper documents the publishing exposure of Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management subsequent to the February 1911 private printing. In doing so, the paper completes a chronology of the multiple occasions that Taylor’s classic occurred in print. Landmarks in the publishing history of Taylor’s “principles” following the private printing include its appearance in The American Magazine and The Journal of Accountancy. Following these serialized mediums, the trade edition ‐ the most familiar version ‐ was published. These and various other forms of Taylor’s “principles” were basically the same discourse. However, the details of the various occurrences and Taylor’s related personal correspondence proffer glimpses of the personality of the man and of his motives.

Outlines a new method of discovering original documents related to management history. Uses seemingly insignificant statements in books, articles or original documents to locate documents not listed on any computer database or public archive records, but which are undiscovered in attics or basements. The method involves the use of sources not commonly used by management scholars: obituaries, wills, cemetery records, deeds, land‐ownership maps, city directories and court records. Provides two examples to illustrate the discovery of actual documents: (1) the discovery of ten years of correspondence between F.W. Taylor and S. Thompson on the time required to do work, and (2) new evidence on F.W. Taylor’s interest in high‐heat treatment of tool steel leading to high‐speed steel and in shovels and shovelling. Finally presents new evidence on Taylor’s secret agreement with Bethlehem Steel to give favourable testimony in a patent case in exchange for a free licence for the high‐speed steel process Taylor had sold to Bethlehem for more than $50,000 in 1901.