Sixth International Congress for Scientific Management

Abstract

THE Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress for Scientific Management, which have now been published (London: P. S. King and Son, Ltd.), completes the series of seven volumes containing the papers and speeches at the Congress. The six volumes issued prior to the Congress contained the papers to be presented at the various sectional meetings. The final volume includes reports on the actual discussions, and the excellent summaries of the rapporteurs give epitomes of the matter contained in the previous volumes. Full reports are given of the speeches at the first plenary sessions when “Management Problems arising from Government Intervention” were discussed. In the Educational and Training Section, the scientific worker will find much that is of interest in the discussions on sources of recruitment and methods of selection, which ranged over a wide field of personnel problems, and on objects and methods of training and further education, or on the avoidance of excess and waste of personnel selected and trained for high administrative positions. The wider use in administrative work of technical and scientific workers possessing administrative ability, while an urgent need hi industry as in Government to-day, is only part of the general question of encouraging the development and securing the best selection of those possessing real administrative powers. The second plenary session, on the simplification of data, the place of statistics and the standardisation of terms, as well as various discussions in the manufacturing and agricultural sections, are also of considerable interest; for example, those on scientific methods applied to works management and on production control. For a volume designed as a permanent record, it is a pity that the subject index is so meagre.