Scientific Management
The Principles of Scientific Management
(1911)
by Frederick Winslow Taylor, M.E., Sc. D.
CHAPTER II:
THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
THE writer has found that there are three questions uppermost in the minds of men when they become interested in scientific management.
First. Wherein do the principles of scientific management differ essentially from those of ordinary management?
Second. Why are better results attained under scientific management than under the other types?
Third. Is not the most important problem that of getting the right man at the head of the company? And if you have the right man cannot the choice of the type of management be safely left to him?
One of the principal objects of the following pages will be to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.
THE FINEST TYPE OF ORDINARY MANAGEMENT
Before starting to illustrate the principles of scientific management, or "task management" as it is briefly called, it seems desirable to outline what the writer believes will be recognized as the best type of management which is in common use. This is done so that the great difference between the best of the ordinary management and scientific management may be fully appreciated.
In an industrial establishment which employs say from 500 to 1000 workmen, there will be found in many cases at least twenty to thirty different trades. The workmen in each of these trades have had their knowledge handed down to them by word of mouth, through the many years in which their trade has been developed from the primitive condition, in which our far-distant ancestors each one practised the rudiments of many different trades, to the present state of great and growing subdivision of labor, in which each man specializes upon some comparatively small class of work.
The ingenuity of each generation has developed quicker and better methods for doing every element of the work in every trade. Thus the methods which are now in use may
(1911)
by Frederick Winslow Taylor, M.E., Sc. D.
CHAPTER II:
THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
THE writer has found that there are three questions uppermost in the minds of men when they become interested in scientific management.
First. Wherein do the principles of scientific management differ essentially from those of ordinary management?
Second. Why are better results attained under scientific management than under the other types?
Third. Is not the most important problem that of getting the right man at the head of the company? And if you have the right man cannot the choice of the type of management be safely left to him?
One of the principal objects of the following pages will be to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.
THE FINEST TYPE OF ORDINARY MANAGEMENT
Before starting to illustrate the principles of scientific management, or "task management" as it is briefly called, it seems desirable to outline what the writer believes will be recognized as the best type of management which is in common use. This is done so that the great difference between the best of the ordinary management and scientific management may be fully appreciated.
In an industrial establishment which employs say from 500 to 1000 workmen, there will be found in many cases at least twenty to thirty different trades. The workmen in each of these trades have had their knowledge handed down to them by word of mouth, through the many years in which their trade has been developed from the primitive condition, in which our far-distant ancestors each one practised the rudiments of many different trades, to the present state of great and growing subdivision of labor, in which each man specializes upon some comparatively small class of work.
The ingenuity of each generation has developed quicker and better methods for doing every element of the work in every trade. Thus the methods which are now in use may