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SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011
The term scientific management is applied to a method of
work organization where management implements a specialized division of labor and sets out
detailed instructions for the performance of work.
Scientific management is associated with the innovative
methods introduced by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) to separate workers from their
knowledge of the work process, to divide labor so as to pay only for the specific skill
required to perform a narrow function and to establish management as the controller of
work and the work process.
Ernst Abbe’s scientific management: theoretical
insights from a nineteenth-century dynamic capabilities approach
Guido Buenstorf and Johann Peter Murmann
Correspondence: Guido Buenstorf, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Kahlaische Strasse 10,
07745 Jena, Germany. Email: buenstorf@econ.mpg.de.
Correspondence: Johann Peter Murmann, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA. E-mail: icc@professor-murmann.net
‘Scientific management’ is the label Frederick Taylor attached to the system of
shop-floor management devised by him.
In this article we present our discovery of very different
‘scientific’ management principles that, roughly concurrently with Taylorism,
were developed by German physicist-turned-manager Ernst Abbe and that are codified in the
statutes of the Carl Zeiss Foundation created by Abbe.
They exhibit striking parallels to resource- and
capability-based theories of the firm, and indicate managerial challenges that warrant
further theoretical elaboration. Abbe develops an account for managing a science-based
firm and securing its long-term competitiveness, giving detailed prescriptions with regard
to the type and scope of a firm’s activities, its organizational set-up and its labor
relations.
We highlight some of the most characteristic features of
Abbe’s thought, discuss its effects on the development of the firms owned by the
Zeiss Foundation, and compare it to and draw out implications for present-day management
theory. - icc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/4/543
Scientific management, culture and control: A first-hand
account of Taylorism in practice
Oswald Jones, Aston Business School, UK
In this article I examine the changes that occurred in a large domestic appliance factory
over a 12 year period. The appointment of a new managing director was the catalyst for
many innovations in the plant including the ending of PBR (payment by results) and the use
of stopwatches by work study engineers (WSEs). Despite senior managerial efforts to change
the organizational culture those employed in the work study department continued to exert
considerable influence over factory design and work organization. In the article I present
a first-hand account of the way in which individual identity and subjectivity contributed
to a distinctive subculture. This masculine culture encouraged conflict with shopfloor
workers even after the PBR scheme had been discontinued. Hence, the article focuses on the
way in which the subjective experiences of a small group of WSEs influenced the
organization of shopfloor work as well as relationships between workers and manager. -
hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/53/5/631
Scientific Management, Bureau-Professionalism, New Managerialism: The Labour
Process of State Social Work
JOHN HARRIS, Senior Lecturer
Summary: An outline is provided of radical social work writers' use of Braverman's labour
process thesis on scientific management to account for developments in state social work
in the late 197Os/early 1980s. The advocacy of a scientific management model in radical
social work texts is tested against the existence of a bureau-professional social work
labour process in the 1970s/early 1980s. The nature of this bureau-professional labour
process is explored and then used as a baseline from which to chart developments in state
social work in the late 1980s/1990s towards a new managerialist labour process. -
bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/839
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