Who is the ‘one best man?’: Taylorism and personality tests (1924-1955)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between 1924 and 1955 factory managers introduced personality tests as a new tool to discriminate amongst large pools of potential employees. The new worker protections granted by New Deal legislation alarmed factory managers who developed personality tests to identify the ‘best workers,’ or least politically active ones, amongst a rising group of union sympathizers. Personality tests became important tools in the emergence of Human Resource Management, whose foundational thinkers compared themselves against the dominant model of factory management: Taylorism. They argued that Taylorism focused exclusive attention on the refinement of the physical movements of workers in order to maximize productivity and ignored the workers’ emotional needs. Traditional scholarship has drawn sharp distinctions between Human Resource Management and Taylorism by praising the former’s interest in protecting worker emotions and morale. However, this article argues that by incorporating personality tests, Taylorist managers assessed worker psychology in order to control their workers more efficiently.