A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor ed. by Daniel Nelson

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 427 A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor. Edited by Daniel Nelson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992. Pp. viii+249; notes, index. $49.50. Daniel Nelson, one of the foremost scholars of scientific manage­ ment, has gathered together a set of important papers in A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor. These essays treat scientific management from F. W. Taylor’s death in 1915 through the postwar era, with most emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s. They examine management science as it changed after 1915, and they consider how it was influenced by Taylor. On the whole, these papers work well together. As a group they discuss the growing culture of efficiency in the early 20th century, the ironic relationship between industrial welfare work and scientific manage­ ment, labor’s concern with scientific management, and the way indi­ viduals worked to introduce scientific management into industry. The authors suggest that after Taylor’s death scientific management became even more important than it had been during his life. A Mental Revolution contains nine chapters, the first an excellent survey ofTaylor and scientific management by Nelson himself. For those who might have been intimidated by the volume of work by and about Taylor, this chapter offers a good introduction. For those who think they know what scientific management is all about, the chapter offers some interesting new insights, especially regarding the international scope of Taylor’s work. Four chapters address ways in which scientific management was implemented in industry, business, and education. They offer new and detailed case studies which help us to better understand how, and to what extent, scientific management was actually used. David Goldberg writes about Joseph & Feiss, clothing manufacturers, as a “premier example” of the application of scientific management, as well as an example of comprehensive industrial welfare work. Kathy Burgess’s study of the Fink-Belt Company focuses on the introduction of scientific management and its accompanying labor problems. John Rumm, in his examination of Du Pont’s High Explosives Operating Department, focuses on the industrial engineer and his use ofscientific management. In addition to these case studies, Daniel Nelson has contributed a chapter on the role scientific management played in business and managerial education as it developed in the early 20th century. The remaining four chapters focus on individuals and their work in developing and spreading scientific management. Brian Price writes about Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, looking at their controversy with Taylorites over motion study versus time study. Guy Alchon explores the career of Mary Van Kleeck, the social worker and reformer, and her interest in scientific management. In a chapter on Charles Bedaux, Steven Kreis examines Bedaux’s variation of scientific management and his company’s successes and failures in America and Britain. Finally, 428 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Steven Waring offers a fascinating analysis of Peter Drucker’s managerial philosophy as it compares to Taylor’s scientific management. There is little to criticize here except that the volume as a whole does not quite live up to the expectations developed after reading Nelson’s first “retrospective” chapter. There, he devotes ten of twenty-five pages to scientific management in Japan and Europe and also points out that there was much activity outside of industry. The chapters that follow deal almost exclusively with the United States, and they all focus on industry, with no treatment of scientific management in government, schools, hospitals, or other institutions. The focus on the United States and industry does not make A Mental Revolution any less important. It is a significant contribution to the literature of management and industrialization in the 20th century. As Nelson points out in his introduction, there has been little work on scientific management since 1915. This volume does much to change that. Lindy Biggs Dr. Biggs is assistant professor of history at Auburn University. She is completing a book on the American factory. TVA’ s Public Planning: The Vision, the Reality. By Walter L. Creese. Knox­ ville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Pp. xxi+388; illustrations, notes, index. $38.95. In 1993 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) marked the sixtieth anniversary of its founding as a New Deal experiment...