Taylorism, the International Labour Organization and the Diffusion of Codetermination

Abstract

The conventional understanding of scientific management and why it ceased to be the primary school of thought within the field of organization and management studies has been problematized in recent decades. This paper compounds this process by documenting how the scientific managers sought to build a science of management not limited by managerial opportunism and strove to diffuse their ideas by building an alliance with the International Labour Organization, a body whose core purpose was to promote pluralistic and deliberative management practices and ideas such as codetermination.