‘All a matter of timing’: Managerial innovation and workplace culture in the New South Wales railways and tramways prior to 1921*

Abstract

‘All a Matter of Timing’ examines how the implementation of scientific management altered spatial arrangements and social interaction in the New South Wales Railways and Tramways Department's workshops during the early decades of the twentieth century. The article argues that the ideology and techniques associated with this managerial innovation were adopted to challenge the collectivist practices and beliefs that characterised the workshops’ industrial culture before World War I. From this perspective, the department's welfarist measures are shown to have been critical to the diffusion of scientific management.