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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).

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 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.

Much has been written about the works of Chester I. Barnard and Frederick W. Taylor but little attempt has been made by scholars to compare Barnard and Taylor. Barnard is a successor of Taylor and this may be one of the reasons why there has been a reluctance to place them side‐by‐side. The purpose of this paper is to capture the similarities and differences that existed in the thinking of these two individuals who greatly influenced management thinking during the twentieth century.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Frederick W. Taylor's lecture on his “task” system of management, given at his home in “Boxley” in 1907.

The paper summarizes the lecture's contents, and details its background.

The paper emphasizes the critical importance of primary sources to the work of management scholars, not just management history.

The paper provides further evidence of the import that needs to be attached to sound historical method as a basis for scholarship in management in general, and management history, in particular.

Although the ideas of F.W. Taylor have profoundly marked the twentieth century, they do not seem to have been understood in the same way by the people who have studied them. Aims to enrich our understanding of the ideas of this remarkable author. Proposes a graphic representation of Taylor’s thinking in the form of a cognitive map. Then analyses the structure and content of the map using the Decision Explorer software package. Most of the concepts and links shown in the map were drawn from “Shop management”, and the remainder were taken from The Principles of Scientific Management. The results highlight the relative importance of the concepts used by Taylor, the dimensions on which he more or less consciously structured his thinking, together with the characteristics of the concepts he considered basically as “explanations” or “consequences”, and the more or less systemic or circular logic that guided him in the organization of his thinking. Discusses the limitations of the results and some future avenues for research.

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.

Introduces Frederick W. Taylor′s lecture on his “task” system of management, given at his home, “Boxly”, in 1907 and recorded by his friend Morris Cooke as the basis for part of his book. Summarizes the lecture′s contents, and details its background, including correspondence between Cooke and Taylor regarding its development.