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The purpose of this paper is to add information on which voices contributed to the scientific management narrative from Frederick Taylor’s 1915 death to the early 1930s with a focus on the role of labor union representatives. The strategy is to analyze the role of labor representatives as participants in Taylor Society meetings and publications. The research contributes to the management history literature by bolstering the picture of the Taylor Society as a liberal, pro-labor organization. The research also shows that the Taylor Society was an early proponent of the idea that assembling diverse groups for dialogue improves organizational problem-solving.

The research analyzes historical sources including all issues of the Society’s bulletin from 1914 to 1933 and unpublished material from the Morris Cooke papers and the papers in the Frederick Taylor archive at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Taylor Society leaders took a proactive view of encouraging labor voices to join managers and academics in society meetings. At the beginning, few labor leaders spoke at the society, and often, at least some of their comments were critical of scientific management. By 1925, labor participation increased with William Green, American Federation of Labor (AFL) president appearing several times. In addition, labor leaders became positively inclined toward having scientific management experts working in industrial settings. The labor leaders who participated at Taylor Society meetings in the late 1920s and early 1930s considered scientific management insights as useful for labor and wanted to cooperate with the researchers.

The paper augments a revisionist view of interwar scientific management as progressive and pro-labor, a contested point in the management history literature. The research also shows how the Taylor Society was an early proponent of the importance of diversity, at least in the areas of gender and socioeconomic status, for effective problem-solving.

This paper aims to provide evidence of pro-worker orientation and acceptance of socialist idealism in scientific management, with particular focus on Walter Polakov.

A range of original texts have been examined to identify the ideas expressed or accepted by the early scientific managers. These include Bulletin of the Taylor Society and the early publications of the socialist engineer and scientific manager Walter Polakov.

This paper shows how an avowed socialist is outspoken but unremarkable for the members of the Taylor Society in the 1910s and 1920s, contrary to the views expressed in textbooks and other histories which assert a deep antiworker bias in scientific management.

This is limited to a historical analysis of the role and extent of involvement of the Marxist engineer Walter Polakov in the US scientific management movement in the 1910s and 1920s.

This paper offers insights into the workings of the Taylor Society using a biographical approach. In so doing, it demonstrates, in a new way, the verity of claims that the original proponents of scientific management were not authoritarian or anti-worker in their views or ideals, but, rather, open to progressive and socialist ideals.

This paper explores the “proto-Keynesian” ideas of progressive members of the scientific management community with regard to micro- and macroeconomic planning/management.

Based on a systematic exegetical analysis of articles published in a largely unexplored primary/archival source, the Bulletin of the Taylor Society between 1915 and 1934.

This paper surfaces a latent “proto-Keynesian” bedrock among progressive segments of the US management community that provides a more cogent explanation for the wholehearted reception, as well as the decisive impact, of Keynes’ ideas on US macroeconomic policy than do extant explanations in the history of economic thought. Further, it reveals that most of these progressive managers with views as to both cause of and solution for the 1930’s Depression were members of the Taylor Society, an epistemic community devoted to the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management.

The paper adds to the small but growing corpus of revisionist management history that seeks to problematize the received wisdom about scientific management or Taylorism. Few, if any, management historians appreciate that F. W. Taylor provided the basic planning tools which if developed, could enhance humanity’s control over anarchic market forces and aid the construction of a society based on democratic and effective planning.

Twenty years ago, Hindy Schachter (1989) posed a question about the foundation we use to structure the Public Administration theory narrative. Would an approach based on an art model, rather than the more common science model, produce a narrative with less distortion? This essay employs a definition of modernism developed by Thomas Vargish and Delo Mook outside the purview of public administration and a famous M. C. Escher lithograph as a basis for proposing an alternate way to construct the narrative. It then applies the alternative approach to Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo.

To conduct a content analysis of the portrayal of Frederick W. Taylor in management and psychology textbooks to reveal differences both within and across disciplines.

Forty‐four textbooks from six sub‐disciplines within management and psychology were content analyzed for the amount and accuracy of the material presented about Taylor and the extent to which key terms were included in these descriptions.

The data show that more information is provided in the management texts and the majority of the information conveyed across disciplines appears accurate.

Not all textbooks were examined within all sub‐disciplines within management or psychology or all sub‐disciplines to which Taylor ostensibly contributed. Future research is needed to determine why Taylor is portrayed differently across texts.

Results have important teaching implications as they reveal how accurately textbooks portray one controversial historical figure and what students are learning. Students might be encouraged to consult original sources and information beyond the text. Textbook authors should be held accountable for the accuracy of the information in their texts and may find the comparison information informative. Instructors may find the results useful when selecting a new text.

This paper depicts variability in how historical figures are depicted in textbooks, which is an important part of management history education.

This paper examines the 1928 Women’s Bureau report, The Effects of Labor Legislation on the Employment Opportunities of Women. It argues that this was a landmark study, demonstrating that scientific management had the potential to develop into a mature applied social science which could play an important role in the identification, measurement and amelioration of recurrent social problems. It further argues that the report demonstrated the usefulness of scientific management in measuring impartially the effects of gender‐specific labor legislation. The paper highlights the instrumental role Mary van Kleeck and Lillian Gilbreth played in bringing feminism and scientific management together and the manner by which they utilized the Women’s Bureau report to advance the social and economic interests of women.

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.

Frederick Taylor and the early scientific management movement have commonly been depicted as villains by authors who base their claims on a very superficial reading of their work. Examines an example of such a reading that asserts the Taylorists were opposed to the reduction of long working hours. By outlining the working contribution made by Taylor and by members of the Taylor Society in the period 1895‐1930, aims to highlight the need for historians of management thought to abjure the intellectual myopia that characterizes much of the literature concerned with management. Extends earlier research on the contribution made by the Taylorists to the rationalization of standard time schedules.