A system to make industrial production more efficient, scientific management came to dominate business in the early decades of the 20th century and eventually became part of American culture. Emerging predominately from the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, scientific management was based on the idea that every task could be broken into a series of smaller tasks. Each individual task was then studied to determine the fastest and most efficient method for completing the task. The entire production process could then be split into specialized tasks, each done at peak efficiency. The end result was the creation of a production system in which workers became specialists at individual tasks but had no knowledge of the entire production process. The assembly line was the most significant manifestation of scientific management. This movement to make scientific studies of processes evolved out of its industrial beginnings and took a place in other areas of American life.
The drive for efficiency of production was a response to the production system that relied on individual workers to complete a variety of tasks. It was also an attempt to reduce the power of individual craftsmen who could hold up production by striking because skilled replacements were difficult to find. Once the production process was broken into specialized tasks, any worker could complete them given just a few hours of training. American industrialists thus saw scientific management as the answer to many of their labor troubles. In a way they hoped to remove the human element from certain portions of the production process. Workers did not have to learn new skills nor did they have to unlearn anything to function in a scientifically managed production process. They simply had to perform the same task repeatedly for the entire workday.
Industrialists took the tenets of scientific management further than specializing the production process. They redesigned whole factories to make production more efficient. By moving machinery, for example, they could decrease the time spent transporting parts within the factory. Employers also tried to use scientific management principles in the hiring of workers by establishing personnel departments. Personnel departments then established criteria for hiring new employees. The goal of this was to avoid hiring workers who could not keep up the pace or would refuse to work in those conditions.
Many workers did protest the advent of scientific management. They argued that the managers’ expectations for daily output were inhumane, and many protests erupted over the implementation of scientific management. In some instances workers were able to temper the implementation of scientific management, but they were unable to stop it completely, as it came to define MASS PRODUCTION in the United States.
Scientific management made its way into other parts of American life. Education adopted many of its principles in restructuring curricula, building schools, and attempting to develop an efficient citizenry in which each individual would be prepared for his or her proper place in the social order. Other businesses besides factories turned to scientific management. Department stores tried to make their operations more efficient by studying the actions of clerks. Offices were redesigned to make them more efficient. All of these actions were based on the ideal that individuals could be made to act more efficiently. This ideal, first developed in the early decades of the 20th century, has played a significant role in American industry and in the way Americans analyze various problems.
Further reading: Robert Kanigel, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency (New York: Viking, 1997).
—Michael Hartman
World History
