TAYLORISM.

Taylorism, also known as "Scientific Management," emerged from the work and writings of Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915), an engineer who, beginning in the early 1880s, at the Midvale Steel Company initiated a series of time studies devised to raise the efficiency of the machine shop. Becoming the most generally recognized and leading factory management system throughout industrialized nations by the early decades of the twentieth century, one can define Taylorism as "an intellectually complex set of techniques for coordinating human behavior in organizations or for providing organizational members with the skills and knowledge to do so" (Beissinger, pp. 4–5). Although representing more than the sum of its individual parts, important elements of Taylorism include the subdivision of tasks into basic components and then timing each part in order to determine a methodology for increasing the speed of the entire job, the implementation of an incentive system, the maintenance of accurate records, and the planning and organizing of production by specialists.

While Taylorism exerted considerable influence on the development of Fordism, the two are not synonymous. Although both production systems are based on time-and-motion studies for intensifying the division of labor, one major difference between Fordism and Taylorism is that the former is built on controlling the production speed of workers through the assembly line. Based on the overhead trolleys used by Chicago meatpackers to process beef, Ford's assembly line, first implemented in 1913, eschewed extensive record keeping and the utilization of experts in the coordination and planning of work inherent in Taylorism, in favor of determining the production pace through the design of the machinery itself. While a benefit of Fordism was its leading to the mass production and the affordability of automobiles (the Model-T) for vast segments of the U.S. population, Fordism (as originally practiced by Ford), unlike Taylorism, had a much darker side in that it extended control of employees outside of the factory through instruments of coercion in dictating workers' private lives.

Although Taylorism was developed in the United States, it was not long before it spread to Europe and was modified to fit the industrial systems unique to the individual cultures and economies of the European countries. In France, for example, the widespread use of Taylorism emerged in 1914 with the country's entry into World War I. Much production up to this time had been based on the "rule of thumb" method of skilled craftsmen who retained control of manufacturing information. However, a new system of production, which was found in Taylorism, was required in order to increase the speed in turning out of shells, cannons, and airplane engines for the war effort. Although Taylorism was embraced by both technical and intellectual circles in France as a method for the rational planning of industries and the state, it remained primarily a tool used at the top of the organizational structure and had more difficulty in penetrating management practices at the lower levels.

In Germany, scientific management arrived early in the twentieth century when engineers first implemented Taylorism in the factories. During these years, this system was strongly opposed by the well-organized German working class and generated a cultural hostility in society as a whole. Such opposition intensified during World War I, although immediately after the war, there was renewed interest that led to the development of a scientific management with a specifically German face. This unique brand of Taylorism involved combining the general philosophy of scientific management with the basic values of the corporate state; in addition, it represented the system as nothing more than a manifestation of the resourceful frugal work patterns exhibited by German craftsmen. Finally, beginning in 1924, Taylorism became a major component of the German rationalization movement undertaken by key German industries.

Taylorism was even implemented in socialist Russia shortly after the 1917 October Revolution. Vladimir Lenin, who admired Taylor's techniques once they were divorced from capital's control, advocated the use of scientific management in 1918 in transitioning the Russian economy from one of state capitalism to socialism. Leon Trotsky, first as the Commissar of War, used Taylorism to reorganize the repair of locomotives as well as to get the railways operating again. During the 1920s, Taylorism became firmly entrenched within Russia, not only as a tool to organize factory production but also as an administrative methodology for engaging in state economic planning. Scientific management techniques were integrated into the First Five Year Plan, approved in 1929, and was connected to Stakhanovism, the drive for speed-up and labor discipline, during the Second Five Year Plan in the 1930s.

Although Taylorism was adapted to fit the needs and requirements of the cultures and economies of different countries, this system was certainly the dominant methodology of standardizing the manufacturing process in the industrialized nations in the twentieth century. While ostensibly new forms of organizing industrial production, such as "Toyotoism," have emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, scholars continue to debate whether these methods constitute a distinct break from Taylorism or are merely new versions of scientific management dressed up in innovative ideologies.

See alsoFive-Year Plan; Fordism; Labor Movements; Lenin, Vladimir; Stakhanovites; Trotsky, Leon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beissinger, Mark R. Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power. Cambridge, Mass., 1988.

Devinatz, Victor G. "Lenin as Scientific Manager Under Monopoly Capitalism, State Capitalism and Socialism: A Response to Scoville." Industrial Relations 42, no. 3 (2003): 513–520.

Merkle, Judith A. Management and Ideology: The Legacy of the International Scientific Management Movement. Berkeley, Calif., 1980.

Victor G. Devinatz