The Principles of Scientific Management

by Frederick Winslow Taylor

Overview

It seems, at first glance, for an obvious step to improve industrial productivity: one should simply watch workers at work in order to learn how they actually do their jobs. However, this highly influential book, a must-read for anyone seeking to understand modern management practices, puts lie to such misconceptions. It disproves that making industrial processes more efficient increases unemployment and that shorter workdays decrease productivity. And it lays the foundations for the discipline of management to be studied, taught, and applied with methodical precision. American engineer FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR (1856-1915) broke new ground with this 1919 essay, in which he applied the rigors of scientific observation to such labor as shoveling and bricklayer in order to streamline their work... and bring a sense of logic and practicality to the management of that work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616403928
Publisher:	Cosimo Classics
Publication date:	09/01/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	86
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants and director of a famous firm. Taylor was also an accomplished tennis player. He and Clarence Clark won the first doubles tournament in the 1881 U.S. National Championships, the precursor of the U.S. Open. Future U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis coined the term scientific management in the course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1910. Brandeis debated that railroads, when governed according to the principles of Taylor, did not need to raise rates to increase wages. Taylor used Brandeis's term in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. The Eastern Rate Case propelled Taylor's ideas to the forefront of the management agenda. Taylor wrote to Brandeis "I have rarely seen a new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this one."

Editorial Reviews

<:st>Reprint of Taylor's classic 1911 work on industrial management/engineering with a new introduction and an article from magazine of October, 1992. Cited in . Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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