Pure Schmaltz

Sly-entific Management 6

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-07-04T09:11:09-04:00

Previously in this series: First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth.

In pursuing this study, the investigator and the official experts were governed throughout by two standards of judgment.

First, scientific management, in its relations to labor, must be judged, not merely by the theories and claims, either of its representatives or opponents, but mainly by what it proves to be in its actual operation.... Like all other things which affect humanity, it must, therefore, be judged by actual results and tendencies.

Secondly, it follows that the scope of scientific management—what features are to be included under it—is to be determined, again, not by the theories of its leaders, but by what is found to exist and persist in the systematized portions of shops designated to represent it. If shops so designated by leaders of the movement generally lay emphasis on so-called welfare work, or, in general, eliminate the spirit and the means for the expression of democracy, then welfare work must be considered a part of scientific management, and the absence of democracy a feature of it, though the former be excluded from the theoretical expositions of its leaders, and democracy be declared by them to be the essence of scientific management.

...... While there is doubtless a fundamental unity in the movement, various leaders and would be leaders have arisen each with his own peculiar doctrines or his own particular emphasis upon special aspects of the system.... The most important of these so called schools are those respectively of the late Mr. FW Taylor, Mr. HL Gantt and Mr. Harrington Emerson 1

(footnote) "These schools are not altogether distinct either in theory or practice. There is considerable overlapping of thought by the leaders and among the assumed followers; both within the schools and without, there is much diversity and departure from the model, due to a distinct element of charlatanism.

"Under these circumstances, the writer has felt justified in making Mr. Taylor's statements of the nature of scientific management and its relations to labor the standard claims of scientific management. In presenting the labor claims of scientific management, therefore, and in judging them with reference to the facts, the Taylor system has been taken as the positive basis of exposition and comparison, the Gantt and Emerson claims being presented and dealt with only as they differ from or modify Mr. Taylor's statements.
Excerpted from Scientific Management and Labor by Robert Franklin Hoxie, D.

Sly-entific Management 5

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-07-03T10:44:55-04:00

Previously in this series: First, Second, Third, Fourth

The General Definition of Scientific Management (according to Labor)

"Organized labor understands by the term "scientific management" certain well defined efficiency systems which have been recently devised by individuals and small groups under the leadership and in imitation of men like Frederick W Taylor, HL Gantt and Harrington Emerson, by whom this term has been preempted. Organized labor makes a clear distinction between scientific management thus defined and science in management. It does not oppose savings of waste and increase of output resulting from improved machinery and truly efficient management. It stands therefore definitely committed to science in management and its objections are directed solely against systems devised by the so called "scientific management" cult."

"Scientific management thus defined is a device employed for the purpose of increasing production and profits and tends to eliminate consideration for the character, rights and welfare of the employees. It looks upon the worker as a mere instrument of production and reduces him to a semi automatic attachment to the machine or tool. In spirit and essence it is a cunningly devised speeding up and sweating system which puts a premium upon muscle and speed rather than brains, forces individuals to become rushers and speeders, stimulates and drives the workers up to the limit of nervous and physical exhaustion and over speeds and over strains them, shows a constant tendency to increase the intensity and extent of the task, tends to displace all but the fastest workers, indicates a purpose to extract the last ounce of energy from the workers, and holds that if the task can be performed it is not too great."
Excerpted from Scientific Management and Labor by Robert Franklin Hoxie, D.

Sly-entific Management 4

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-07-01T00:50:41-04:00

From these, he tried to determine the optimal interaction between operator and machine; what he called The One Best Way.

His first focus was on lathe operators, and he had been a lathe operator.... His biographer claimed that once Taylor was promoted to a supervisory role, he felt moral outrage at the disparity.

But to replace the informally derived rate with his own a priori notions (his original strategy) created a prolonged battle between workers and management. He felt bad about having to come down so hard on people, even if they were just workers, so he sought moral as well as objective justification by applying the scientific method.

Anyone who's ever tried to determine the optimum of anything regarding people can see where his inquiry would lead him.... He had a way of making his calculations stick.

So, the second reason for calling it scientific is that it was designed as a scientific enquiry.... His goal was not achieved in that he was not able to unambiguously determine optimum performance, but he could and did boost performance beyond what was possible otherwise.

His science, like much science, was not of the pure variety.... He insisted upon using the term One Best Way, however, and stuck by his story that he was conjuring science.

The third reason scientific management is considered scientific is because one of the prominent early practitioners called what he did science.... He produced a system more suitable for supermen than humans, and replaced one form of top down governance with another, one which might be argued, also held the enterprise hostage.

I could make a long list of the instances where industry subsumed science, and an even longer list where the temperament of the investigator did.

Taylor adopted a systematic approach to managing work.

Sly-entific Management 3

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-06-27T08:56:31-04:00

Then technique gets taught as if that would induce inspiration.

The history of every management scheme, every movement since Scientific Management, has followed exactly the same pattern.... Usually for no reason directly related to anything the oddball actually did (but sometimes due entirely to passionate public relations), the odd insight gets noticed.... By the time prominent companies notice and join in the throng, the originating spirit, the inspiration (which is and always was quite personal, context-dependent, and, well, nothing like a process in the first place) has been thoroughly branded, man-handled, and shop-worn until it resembles even more of the same of whatever was already happening.

Once the major corporations show real interest, the movement is certainly in decline.... So, like they did with Scientific Management a hundred years ago, recognizing the commercial necessity of associating with the latest, greatest movement, they adopt the label while continuing to do pretty much what they were always doing, while proclaiming themselves transformed.

"In 1922, Persons (then President of The Taylor Society) announced that one need not "be a 'Taylor man' or represent a 'Taylor plant'" to join the [Taylor] Society. Membership now meant only that one was interested in that field, and was "open-minded and appreciative of the great contributions to the development of better management."... These officials usually had no intention of revamping their firms in accordance with the stringent requirements of the Taylor System; rather, they would shape the mechanisms of Taylorism to fit into the existing structure of their companies.... (excerpted from Efficiency and Uplift-Scientific Management in the Progressive Era 1890-1920 by Samuel Haber, 1964, University of Chicago Press T58.H23)

Most practitioners complain about this distastefully political meat grinder without fully acknowledging that their movement is no less political than the orthodoxy it opposes.

Sly-entific Management 2

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-06-25T08:20:46-04:00

It's a curious fact of history that most of the attempts to implement Scientific Management failed, and every implementation was achieved only by autocratic command.

Yea, I know, much of the literature of the time speaks glowingly of Scientific Management as the key to cooperation between worker and owner, but in practice, Taylor's methods tended to further disconnect worker and owner, replacing their separate judgments with an internal planning department.... They are filled with the enthusiasms of someone convinced that they are on a holy mission.

But Taylor and Gantt had a falling out in 1913.... This, alone, was probably enough to earn him excommunication from Taylor's sanctuary, but this was just the start.

Shortly before he died, Gantt wrote an essay entitled A Parting of the Ways.... He spoke like a Utopian Socialist, even encouraging thirty-some engineers to create a splinter group of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers entitled The New Machine.

Gantt, like many efficiency engineers volunteered to work with the war production boards set up by the Wilson administration.... But understanding the need to continue producing baby clothes, for instance, these boards ended up managing much of the economy for the duration of the war.

This was sweet work for Gantt, who maintained his deep belief that facts rather than opinion should determine critical decisions. He had no faith in the debating society politics that prevailed on Capitol Hill, and Congress was largely silent on the question of board control, save for a few impassioned floor speeches. The engineers went about telling industries how to produce and what to produce without getting too sideways to any free-marketeer.

Gantt looked at this experience and had a difficult time rationalizing the free market after than.

Who Is Your Daddy?

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-06-21T08:28:47-04:00

Father.

Father is the painting of a blue house green. Father lives on the other side of the sky. Father is a cloudy day with sun.... Father is books and drives in the country.... Father is the ocean I swim in. Father is a cascades volcano, a skyscraper.... Father is a bowl of pasta, an arugula salad, a Christmas goose. Father is a day in June.

Sly-entific Management

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-06-16T06:30:15-04:00

By then, corporations had grown beyond proprietorships manageable by the owner into geographically-dispersed, culture-straddling entities which were, by traditional means, unmanageable.

American Telegraph was one of the first corporations to outgrow their founders' britches.... Their board meeting minutes, written in the fine secretary hand of the day, preserved in the archives at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History, make some of the most mind-numbing reading available anywhere.

While that board nattered over trivial matters, a few seemingly insignificant discussions were recorded, like the questioning of the value received from a hundred dollar payment to one Thomas Alva Edison, who believed he could transmit voices over telegraph wires.... They served as a medium between the aristocratic owners, who had by long tradition maintained a studied indifference to shop floor practices, and the shop floor employees, who were responsible for actually producing stuff. By that time, owners had grown skilled in producing prices: monopolizing markets, stifling supply, and smothering wages, but were unaware of the negative influences these practices had on long-term viability.... He carried this penchant for organizing on into the flow of work across a factory, routinizing what he could, creating standard practices he labeled 'The One Best Way."

The question, of course, was what the aristocrats, who knew little and cared less about the means of production, would do with this new science. One needn't be a student of anyone's history to reasonably predict the answer.

The first twenty years of the twentieth century saw the greatest labor unrest in the history of our republic, and God bless us, it should have.... But while there's no evidence that Taylor's years organizing shop floor operations ever influenced his self confidence that he (or some other duly qualified scientific manager) could scientifically determine any worker's One Best Way to work, Gantt's experience differed.

...

Taking Stock

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-06-06T18:03:19-04:00

The freezer, which by this time is filled with odd little plastic bags of asparagus butts, Brussel sprout trimmings, parsnip and carrot peelings, and rejected artichoke leaves, also gets a thorough going over, with ingredients selected as if in their prime to create a once-in-a-lifetime combination.

Today was a lucky day.... After an hour, roughly chop that odd end of parsnip you found in the bottom of the veg crisper, the larger of the two wilting turnips, a carrot or two, and an onion, and take the garlic that's starting to sprout and wilt, no need to even take the paper off those.... Go read a novel for a half hour or so while this mess crazes.

At the end of the half hour, plop dem bones in right in on top of the glistening veg, then deglaze the pan they were roasting in. This is simple, just pour a bit of that leftover white wine you bought for someone who never showed at your last soiree, drizzle that into the hot pan the bones left behind, and swirl with a whisk until the stuck bits come loose.... Add more water if you're greedy and want as much stock as possible from this mess, then go back to see what the villains are plotting in that novel.

Ninety minutes might be enough time. Certainly no less time, and the liquid will have reduced a little bit, but not too much, because you left the mess on moderately high heat before you disappeared back into fantasy land. When the time is right, and your nose will tell you that the veg is exhausted and won't give another drizzle to the performance, drain the mess and pour into your wide-mouth jars (perhaps with a little finely chopped leek to dress it up a bit.)... I'll dress the garlic scapes and asparagus with it at dinner.

If you don't stop and take stock, and make stock every few weeks, we have to wonder about you.

The Modern Chief Executive

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-06-04T08:29:09-04:00

The Dead Fish

david@projectcommunity.com — 2009-05-28T15:33:52-04:00

"King Charles II once invited members of the Royal Society to explain to him why a dead fish weighs more than the same fish alive; a number of subtle explanations were offered him." excerpted from After Virtue-a study in moral theory by Alasdair MacIntyre

Can you explain the scientific reason why?