Management "Science" Exposed!

While it would make me feel like a hypocrite to suggest that there's no value behind all those powerpoint slides and spreadsheets, maybe there's less than we like to think.

The part of this New Yorker review that caught my attention is the description of the difference between "leading" workers and "driving" them - a difference that eluded Taylor and Gilchrest, and still seems to elude many in management. Taylor, in particular, seemed to think that most workers were simply loafers. I particularly liked this passage, describing Taylor's performance in 1912, when called before a House committee:

"The ordinary pig-iron handler” is not suited to shovelling coal, Taylor said. “He is too stupid.” But a first-class man, who could lift a shovelful weighing twenty-one and a half pounds, could move a pile of coal lickety-split. “You have told us the effect on the pile,” an exasperated committee member said, but “what about the effect on the man?” Wilson wanted to know what happened to workers who weren’t “first-class men”:

THE CHAIRMAN: Scientific management has no place for such men?

MR. TAYLOR: Scientific management has no place for a bird that can sing and won’t sing. . . .

THE CHAIRMAN: We are not . . . dealing with horses nor singing birds, but we are dealing with men who are a part of society and for whose benefit society is organized.

Right on. The book looks fascinating. I'll get it and report back.