Dimasangkay, Asnie S.

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Peter Drucker
Peter Ferdinand Drucker November 19, 1909 Kaasgraben, Vienna, Austria-Hungary Died
November 11, 2005 (aged 95) Claremont, California Drucker Alma mater was in Goethe
University Frankfurt (PhD) Drucker Occupation Management consultant, educator and author
Drucker Awards Henry Laurence Gantt Medal (1959) Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and
Art, 1st class (1991) Presidential Medal of Freedom (2002) Drucker's books and scholarly and
popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government, and non-
profit sectors of society. He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and
writers on the subject of management theory and practice.
His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century,
including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the
decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity
of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker," and later in his life
considered knowledge-worker productivity to be the next frontier of management. Drucker gave
his name to three institutions and the annual Global Peter Drucker Forum, held in his hometown
of Vienna, honors his legacy.
Drucker Biography
Drucker grew up in what he referred to as a "liberal" Lutheran Protestant household in Austria-
Hungary. His mother Caroline Bondi had studied medicine and his father Adolf Drucker was a
lawyer and high-level civil servant. Drucker was born in Vienna, Austria, in a small village named
Kaasgraben (now part of the 19th district of Vienna-Döbling).He grew up in a home where
intellectuals, high government officials, and scientists would meet to discuss new ideas. These
included Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
Hans Kelsen was his uncle. After graduating from Döbling Gymnasium in 1927, Drucker found
few opportunities for employment in post-World War I Vienna, so he moved to Hamburg,
Germany, first working as an apprentice at an established cotton trading company, then as a
journalist, writing for Der Österreichische Volkswir t (The Austrian Economist). Drucker then
moved to Frankfurt, where he took a job at the Daily Frankfurter General-Anzeiger. While in
Frankfurt, he also earned a doctorate in international law and public law from the Goethe
University Frankfurt in 1931.
In 1933, Drucker left Germany for England. In London, he worked for an insurance company, then
as the chief economist at a private bank. He also reconnected with Doris Schmitz, an acquaintance
from the University of Frankfurt, and they married in 1934.The couple permanently relocated to
the United States, where he became a university professor as well as a freelance writer and business
consultant. In 1943, Drucker became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He then had a
distinguished career as a teacher, first as a professor of politics and philosophy at Bennington
College from 1942 to 1949, then twenty-two years at New York University as a Professor of
Management from 1950 to 1976.
Drucker went to California in 1971, where he developed one of the country's first executive MBA
programs for working professionals at Claremont Graduate University (then known as Claremont
Graduate School). From 1971 until his death, he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and
Management at Claremont. Claremont Graduate University's management school was named the
Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management in his honor in 1987 (later renamed the Peter F.
Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management). He established the Drucker Archives
at Claremont Graduate University in 1999; the Archives became the Drucker Institute in 2006.
Drucker taught his last class in 2002 at age 92.
He continued to act as a consultant to businesses and non-profit organizations well into his nineties.
Drucker died November 11, 2005 in Claremont, California of natural causes at 95. He had four
children and is the grandfather of tech entrepreneur Nova Spivack, one of six grandchildren.
Drucker's wife Doris died in October 2014 at the age of 103.
Drucker Work and philosophy
Among Drucker's early influences was the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, a friend of his
father's, who impressed upon Drucker the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship. Drucker
was also influenced, in a much different way, by John Maynard Keynes, whom he heard lecture in
1934 in Cambridge. "I suddenly realized that Keynes and all the Work and philosophy brilliant
economic students in the room were interested in the behavior of commodities," Drucker wrote,
"while I was interested in the behavior of people."
Over the next 70 years, Drucker's writings would be marked by a focus on relationships among
human beings, as opposed to the crunching of numbers. His books were filled with lessons on how
organizations can bring out the best in people, and how workers can find a sense of community
and dignity in a modern society organized around large institutions. As a business consultant,
Drucker disliked the term "guru," though it was often applied to him; "I have been saying for many
years," Drucker once remarked, "that we are using the word 'guru' only because 'charlatan' is too
long to fit into a headline." As a young writer, Drucker wrote two pieces one on the conservative
German philosopher Friedrich Julius Stahl and another called “The Jewish Question in Germany
" that were burned and banned by the Nazis. In 1939 he published a contemporary analysis of the
rise of fascism called "The End of Economic Man".
This was his first book, published in New York, in English. In the introduction he refers to "The
Jewish Question in Germany" saying "An early excerpt [of this book] was published as a pamphlet
by an Austrian Catholic and Anti-Nazi in ... 1936".
The "business thinker"
Drucker's career as a business thinker took off in 1942, when his initial writings on politics and
society won him access to the internal workings of General Motors (GM), one of the largest
companies in the world at that time. His experiences in Europe had left him fascinated with the
problem of authority. He shared his fascination with Donaldson Brown, the mastermind behind
the administrative controls at GM. In 1943 Brown invited him in to conduct what might be called
a "political audit": a two year social-scientific analysis of the corporation. Drucker attended every
board meeting, interviewed employees, and analysed production and decision-making processes.
The resulting book, Concept of the Corporation, popularized GM's multidivisional structure and
led to numerous articles, consulting engagements, and additional books. GM, however, was hardly
thrilled with the final product. Drucker had suggested that the auto giant might want to re-examine
a host of long-standing policies on customer relations, dealer relations, employee relations and
more. Inside the corporation, Drucker's counsel was viewed as hypercritical.
GM's revered chairman, Alfred Sloan, was so upset about the book that he "simply treated it as if
it did not exist," Drucker later recalled, "never mentioning it and never allowing it to be mentioned
in his presence." Drucker taught that management is "a liberal art," and he infused his management
advice with interdisciplinary lessons from history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, culture and
religion. He also believed strongly that all institutions, including those in the private sector, have
a responsibility to the whole of society. "The fact is," Drucker wrote in his 1973 Management:
Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices, "that in modern society there is no other leadership group
but managers. If the managers of our major institutions, and especially of business, do not take
responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will."
Drucker was interested in the growing effect of people who worked with their minds rather than
their hands. He was intrigued by employees who knew more about certain subjects than their
bosses or colleagues, and yet had to cooperate with others in a large organization. Rather than
simply glorify the phenomenon as the epitome of human progress, Drucker analysed it, and
explained how it challenged the common thinking about how organizations should be run.
His approach worked well in the increasingly mature business world of the second half of the
twentieth century. By that time large corporations had developed the basic manufacturing
efficiencies and managerial hierarchies of mass production. Executives thought they knew how to
run companies, and Drucker took it upon himself to poke holes in their beliefs, lest organizations
become stale. But he did so in a sympathetic way.
He assumed that his readers were intelligent, rational, hardworking people of good will. If their
organizations struggled, he believed it was usually because of outdated ideas, a narrow conception
of problems, or internal misunderstandings. Drucker developed an extensive consulting business
built around his personal relationship with top management. He became legendary among many
of post-war Japan's new business leaders trying to rebuild their war-torn homeland.
He advised the heads of General Motors, Sears, General Electric, W.R. Grace and IBM, among
many others. Over time he offered his management advice to non-profits like the American Red
Cross and the Salvation Army. His advice was eagerly sought by the senior executives of the Adela
Investment Company, a private initiative of the world's multinational corporations to promote
investment in the developing countries of Latin America.
Drucker's writings
Drucker's 39 books have been translated into more than thirty-six languages. Two are novels, one
an autobiography. He is the co-author of a book on Japanese painting, and made eight series of
educational films on management topics. He also penned a regular column in the Wall Street
Journal for 10 years and contributed frequently to the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic
Monthly, and The Economist.
His work is especially popular in Japan, even more so after the publication of "What If the Female
Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker's Management", a novel that features the
main character using one of his books to great effect, which was also adapted into an anime and a
live action film. His popularity in Japan may be compared with that of his contemporary W.
Edwards Deming. Key ideas Decentralization and simplification. Drucker discounted the
command and control model and asserted that companies work best when they are decentralized.
According to Drucker, corporations tend to produce too many products, hire employees they don't
need (when a better solution would be outsourcing), and expand into economic sectors that they
should avoid. The prediction of the death of the "Blue Collar" worker. The changing face of the
US Auto Industry is a testimony to this prediction.
The concept of what eventually came to be known as "outsourcing." He used the example of "front
room" and "back room" of each business: A company should be engaged in only the front room
activities that are critical to supporting its core business. Back room activities should be handed
over to other companies, for whom these tasks are the front room activities. The importance of the
non-profit sector, which he calls the third sector (private sector and the Government sector being
the first two).
Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) play crucial roles in the economies of countries around
the world. A profound skepticism of macroeconomic theory. Drucker contended that economists
of all schools fail to explain significant aspects of modern economies. A lament that the sole focus
of microeconomics is price, citing its lack of showing what products actually do for us, thereby
stimulating commercial interest in discovering how to calculate what products actually do for us,
from their price. Respect for the worker.
Drucker believed that employees are assets not liabilities. He taught that knowledgeable workers
are the essential ingredients of the modern economy, and that a hybrid management model is the
sole method of demonstrating an employee's value to the organization. Central to this philosophy
is the view that people are an organization's most valuable resource, and that a manager's job is
both to prepare people to perform and give them freedom to do so. A belief in what he called "the
sickness of government." Drucker made nonpartisan claims that government is often unable or
unwilling to provide new services that people need and/or want, though he believed that this
condition is not intrinsic to the form of government.
The chapter "The Sickness of Government" in his book The Age of Discontinuity formed the basis
of New Public Management, a theory of public administration that dominated the discipline in the
1980s and 1990s. The need for "planned abandonment." Businesses and governments have a
natural human tendency to cling to "yesterday's successes" rather than seeing when they are no
longer useful. A belief that taking action without thinking is the cause of every failure. The need
for community. Early in his career, Drucker predicted the "end of economic man" and advocated
the creation of a "plant community" where an individual's social needs could be met.
He later acknowledged that the plant community never materialized, and by the 1980s, suggested
that volunteering in the non-profit sector was the key to fostering a healthy society where people
found a sense of belonging and civic pride. The need to manage business by balancing a variety
of needs and goals, rather than subordinating an institution to a single value. This concept of
management by objectives and self-control forms the keynote of his 1954 landmark The Practice
of Management. A company's primary responsibility is to serve its customers. Profit is not the
primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company's continued existence and
sustainability.
A belief in the notion that great companies could stand among humankind's noblest inventions.
"Do what you do best and outsource the rest" is a business tagline first "coined and developed" in
the 1990s by Drucker. The slogan was primarily used to advocate outsourcing as a viable business
strategy. Drucker began explaining the concept of outsourcing as early as 1989 in his Wall Street
Journal (WSJ) article entitled "Sell the Mailroom."
Ducker Criticism
The Wall Street Journal researched several of his lectures in 1987 and reported that he was
sometimes loose with the facts. Drucker was off the mark, for example, when he told an audience
that the English language was the official language for all employees at Japan's Mitsui trading
company. Drucker defended himself: "I use anecdotes to make a point, not to write history."
Criticism Also, while Drucker was known for his prescience, he was not always correct in his
forecasts. He predicted, for instance, that the nation's financial center would shift from New York
to Washington. Others maintain that one of Drucker's core concepts," management by objectives,"
is flawed and has never really been proven to work effectively. Critic Dale Krueger said that the
system is difficult to implement and that companies often wind up overemphasizing control, as
opposed to fostering creativity, to meet their goals.
Drucker's classic work, Concept of the Corporation, criticized General Motors while it was
considered the most successful corporation in the world. Many of GM's executives considered
Drucker persona non grata for a long time afterward. Although Alfred P. Sloan refrained from
personal hostility toward Drucker, he considered Drucker's critiques of GM's management to be
"dead wrong." Drucker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President George
Awards and honors W. Bush on July 9, 2002.
He also received honors from the governments of Austria, including the Grand Silver Medal for
Services to the Republic of Austria in 1974, the Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the
Republic of Austria in 1991 and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class in
1999 and Japan (Order of the Sacred Treasure, 3rd class; 24 June 1966. Drucker was the Honorary
Chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non-profit Management, now the Leader to
Leader Institute, from 1990 through 2002. In 1969 he was awarded New York University's highest
honor, its Presidential Citation. For his article, "What Makes an Effective Executive", Harvard
Business Review honored Drucker in the June 2004 with his seventh McKinsey Award the most
awarded to one person.
Drucker was inducted into the Junior Achievement US Business Hall of Fame in 1996. He received
25 honorary doctorates from American, Belgian, Czech, English, Spanish and Swiss universities.
His 1954 book The Practice of Management was voted the third most influential management book
of the 20th century in a poll of the Fellows of the Academy of Management. In Claremont,
California, Eleventh Street between College Avenue and Dartmouth Avenue was renamed
"Drucker Way" in October 2009 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Drucker's birth.
Drucker was posthumously honored when he was inducted into the Outsourcing Hall of Fame in
recognition of his outstanding contributions in the field. In 2018, Drucker was named the world's
most influential business thinker on the Thinkers com list.

Discussion
Peter Ferdinand Drucker is one of the most widely-known and influence thinker on management,
whose work continues to be used by manager worldwide. He was prolific author, and among the
first (after Taylor and Fayol) to depict management as a distinct responsibility. His writing showed
real understanding of and sympathy for the difficulties and demands faced by managers.
Throughout his long career he has had interest as diverse as journalism, art appreciation,
mountaineering, reading drawing inspiration from the work of Jane Austen and, of course,
management teaching, writing and consultancy. With 39 books published over seven decades and
many books written about himself since his death, Drucker was by common consent, the founding
father of modern management studies. Part of Drucker’s success and longevity as a management
expert was he had remarkable knack of spotting trends which have since been picked up and made
fashionable by others. Invariably, research will trace the origin back to something Drucker wrote
10 or 20 years ago. It is interesting that Drucker noted that one of the key aspect of leadership is
timing, he has in fact upbraided himself for being 10 years with his forecast.
Henri Fayol (1841-1925) “Fayolism”
Fayolism was a theory of management that analysed and synthesized the role of management in
organizations, developed around 1900 by the French management theorist Henri Fayol. It was
through Fayol's work as a philosopher of administration that he contributed most widely to the
theory and practice of organizational management.
Research and Teaching of Management
Fayol believed by focusing on managerial practices he could minimize misunderstandings and
increase efficiency in organizations. He enlightened managers on how to accomplish their
managerial duties, and the practices in which they should engage. In his book General and
Industrial Management (published in French in 1916, then published in English in 1949), Fayol
outlined his theory of general management, which he believed could be applied to the
administration of myriad industries. His concern was with the administrative apparatus (or
functions of administration), and to that end he presented his administrative e theory, that is,
principles and elements of management. His theories and ideas were ideally a result of his
environment a post revolutionized France with an emerging republic bourgeois. A bourgeois
himself, he believed in controlling workers to achieve greater productivity over all other
managerial considerations.
However, through reading General and Industrial Management, it is apparent that Fayol advocated
a flexible approach to management, one he believed could be applied to any circumstance whether
in the home, the workplace, or within the state. He stressed the importance and the practice of
forecasting and planning in order to apply these ideas and techniques, which demonstrated his
ability and emphasis in being able to adapt to any sort of situation. In General and Industrial
Management he outlines an agenda whereby, under an accepted theory of management, every
citizen is exposed and taught some form of management education and allowed to exercise
management abilities first at school and later on in the workplace.
Fayol vs. Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management
Fayol has been regarded by many as the father of the modern operational management theory, and
his ideas have become a fundamental part of modern management concepts. Fayol is often
compared to Frederick Winslow Taylor who developed Scientific Management.
Taylor's Scientific Management deals with the efficient organization of production in the context
of a competitive enterprise that is concerned with controlling its production costs. Taylor's system
of scientific management is the cornerstone of classical theory. Fayol was also a classical theorist,
and referred to Taylor in his writing and considered him a visionary and pioneer in the management
of organizations.
However, Fayol differed from Taylor in his focus. Taylor's main focus was on the task, whereas
Fayol was more concerned with management. Another difference between the two theorists is their
treatment of workers. Fayol appears to have slightly more respect for the worker than Taylor had,
as evidenced by Fayol's proclamation that workers may indeed be motivated by more than just
money. Fayol also argued for equity in the treatment of workers.
According to Claude George (1968), a primary difference between Fayol and Taylor was that
Taylor viewed management processes from the bottom up, while Fayol viewed it from the top
down. In Fayol's book General and Industrial Management, Fayol wrote that
“Taylor's approach differs from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from
the bottom up. He starts with the most elemental units of activity —the workers' actions—
then studies the effects of their actions on productivity, devises new methods for making
them more efficient, and applies what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy...”
He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at lower levels of
the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency. According to Fayol, the approach
results in a "negation of the principle of unity of command". Fayol criticized Taylor’s functional
management in this way.
This eight, Fayol said, were
1. Route clerks,
2. Instruction card men
3. Cost and time clerks
4. Gang bosses
5. Speed bosses
6. Inspectors
7. Repair bosses, and the only, receives his daily orders and help from eight different bosses…
8. Shop disciplinarian.
This, he said, was an unworkable situation, and that Taylor must have somehow reconciled the
dichotomy in some way not described in Taylor's works. Fayol's desire for teaching a generalized
theory of management stemmed from the belief that each individual of an organization at one point
or another takes on duties that involve managerial decisions. Unlike Taylor, however, who
believed management activity was the exclusive duty of an organizations dominant class. Fayol's
approach was more in sync with his idea of Authority, which stated, "...that the right to give orders
should not be considered without the acceptance and understanding of responsibility."
Noted as one of the early fathers of the Human Relations movements, Fayol expressed ideas and
practices different from Taylor, in that they showed flexibility and adaptation, and stressed the
importance of interpersonal interaction among employees.
Fayol's Principles of Management
During the early 20th century, Fayol developed 14 principles of management to help managers
manage their affairs more effectively. Organizations in technologically advanced countries
interpret these principles quite differently from the way they were interpreted during Fayol's time
as well. These differences in interpretation are in part a result of the cultural challenges managers
face when implementing this framework. The fourteen principles are:
1. Division of work- According to this principle the whole work is divided into small task.
2. Authority and Responsibility- Authority means the right of superior to give enhance order to
his subordinates; responsibilities means obligation for performance.
3. Discipline- It is obedience, proper conduct in relation to other, respect of authority, etc.
4. Unity of commands- This principle states that each subordinate should receive orders and be
accountable to one and only one superior.
5. Unity of direction- All related activities should be put under one group, there should be one
plan of action for theme, and they should be under the control of one manager.
6. Subordination of individual interest to mutual interest- The management must put aside
personal consideration and put company objectives firstly.
7. Remuneration- Worker must be paid sufficiently as this chief motivation of employees and
therefore greatly influence productivity.
8. Centralization- The amount of power wielded with the central management depends on
company size.
9. Scalar chains- This refers to the chain of superior ranging from top management to the lowest
rank.
10. Order- Social order ensure the fluid operation of a company through authoritative procedure.
11. Equity- Employees must be treated kindly, and justice must be enacted to ensure a just
workplace.
12. Stability- Is a principle stating that in order for an organization to run smoothly, personnel
(especially managerial personnel) must not frequently enter and exit the organization.
13. Initiatives- Using the initiative of employees can add strength and new ideas to an
organization.
14. Team-Spirit or Esprit de corps- This refers to the need of manager to ensure and develop
morale in the workplace.
Fayol's Elements (or functions) of Management
Within his theory, Fayol outlined five elements of management that depict the kinds of behaviors
managers should engage in so that the goals and objectives of an organization are effectively met.
The five elements of management are:
1. Planning: creating a plan of action for the future, determining the stages of the plan and the
technology necessary to implement it. Deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do
it, and who should do it. It maps the path from where the organization is to where it wants to be.
The planning function involves establishing goals and arranging them in a logical order.
Administrators engage in both short range and long-range planning.
2. Organizing: Once a plan of action is designed, managers need to provide everything necessary
to carry it out; including raw materials, tools, capital and human resources. Identifying
responsibilities, grouping them into departments or divisions, and specifying organizational
relationships.
3. Command: Managers need to implement the plan. They must have an understanding of the
strengths and weaknesses of their personnel. Leading people in a manner that achieves the goals
of the organization requires proper allocation of resources and an effective support system.
Directing requires exceptional interpersonal skills and the ability to motivate people. One of the
crucial issues in directing is the correct balance between staff needs and production.
4. Coordination: High-level managers must work to "harmonize" all the activities to facilitate
organizational success. Communication is the prime coordinating mechanism. Synchronizes the
elements of the organization and must take into account delegation of authority and responsibility
and span of control within units.
5. Control: The final element of management involves the comparison of the activities of the
personnel to the plan of action, it is the evaluation component of management. Monitoring function
that evaluates quality in all areas and detects potential or actual deviations from the organization's
plan, ensuring high-quality performance and satisfactory results while maintaining an orderly and
problem-free environment. Controlling includes information management, measurement of
performance, and institution of corrective actions.
Effects of Written Communication
Fayol believed that animosity and unease within the workplace occurred among employees in
different departments. Many of these "misunderstandings" were thought to be caused by improper
communication, mainly through letters (or in present-day emails). Among scholars of
organizational communication and psychology, letters were perceived to induce or solidify a
hierarchical structure within the organization. Through this type of vertical communication, many
individuals gained a false feeling of importance. Furthermore, it gave way to selfish thinking and
eventual conflict among employees in the workplace.
This concept was expressed in Fayol's book, General and Industrial Management, by stating," in
some firms... employees in neighboring departments with numerous points of contact, or even
employees within a department, who could quite easily meet, communicate with each other in
writing... there is to be observed a certain amount of animosity prevailing between different
departments or different employees within a department. The system of written communication
usually brings this result. There is a way of putting an end to this deplorable system ... and that is
to forbid all communication in writing which could easily and advantageously be replaced by
verbal ones."
Administrative Theory in the Modern Workplace
Fayol believed that managerial practices were key to predictability and efficiency in organizations.
The Administrative theory views communication as a necessary ingredient to successful
management and many of Fayol's practices are still alive in today's workplace. The elements and
principles of management can be found in modern organizations in several ways: as accepted
practices in some industries, as revamped versions of the original principles or elements, or as
remnants of the organization's history to which alternative practices and philosophies are being
offered. The U.S. military is a prime example of an organization that has continued to use these
principles.

Discussion
Henri Fayol was a French coal-mine engineer, director of mines and modern management
theoretician. His scientific management theory forms the based for business administrator and
business management. In the academic world, this known as “FAYOLISM”.
Henri Fayol provide one of the most influential modern management concept of his time. He is
founder of the 14 principles of management and the five function of management. Fayol started
his career as an engineer at the mining company Campagnie De Commentry Fourchambeau
Decazeville in Commentry at the age of 19. In 1888 he became the managing director of this
mining company that employed over 1,000 people.
He was very successful in this position for over 30 years until 1918. Around 1990 mining company
was one of the largest producer of iron and steel in France. At that time this industry was
considered to be vital for France.
In addition to being the managing director of the Commentry-Fourchambault mining company
(1990), Henri fayol was also one of the founder of the principles of modern management. His
research work was in competition with that of another great theoretician namely Frederick Taylor.
In 1916, he published his work experience in the book Administration Industrielle Et Generale
(General and Industrial Management).
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915)
Biography of Taylor
Taylor was born in 1856 to a Quaker family in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Taylor's
father, Franklin Taylor, a Princeton-educated lawyer, built his wealth on mortgages. Taylor's
mother, Emily Annette Taylor (née Winslow), was an ardent abolitionist and a co-worker with
Lucretia Mott. His father's ancestor, Samuel Taylor, settled in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1677.
His Spouse(s) Louise M. Spooner Children 3 Awards Elliott Cresson Medal mother's ancestor,
Edward Winslow, was one of the fifteen original Mayflower Pilgrims who brought servants or
children, and one of eight who had the honorable distinction of Mister. Winslow served for many
years as the Governor of the Plymouth colony.
Educated early by his mother, Taylor studied for two years in France and Germany and traveled
Europe for 18 months. In 1872, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire,
with the plan of eventually going to Harvard and becoming a lawyer like his father. In 1874, Taylor
passed the Harvard entrance examinations with honors. However, due allegedly to rapidly
deteriorating eyesight, Taylor chose quite a different path. Instead of attending Harvard University,
Taylor became an apprentice patternmaker and machinist, gaining shop floor experience at
Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia (a pump manufacturing company whose proprietors
were friends of the Taylor family).
He left his apprenticeship for six months and represented a group of New England machine-tool
manufacturers at Philadelphia's centennial exposition. Taylor finished his four-year apprenticeship
and in 1878 became a machine-shop laborer at Midvale Steel Works. At Midvale, he was quickly
promoted to time clerk, journeyman machinist, gang boss over the lathe hands, machine shop
foreman, research director, and finally chief engineer of the works (while maintaining his position
as machine shop foreman). Taylor's fast promotions reflected both his talent and his family's
relationship with Edward Clark, part owner of Midvale Steel. (Edward Clark's son Clarence Clark,
who was also a manager at Midvale Steel, married Taylor's sister.)
Early on at Midvale, working as a laborer and machinist, Taylor recognized that workmen were
not working their machines, or themselves, nearly as hard as they could (which at the time was
called "soldiering") and that this resulted in high labor costs for the company. When he became a
foreman he expected more output from the workmen. In order to determine how much work should
properly be expected, he began to study and Midvale Steel Works Aerial View, 1879. Analyze the
productivity of both the men and the machines (although the word "productivity" was not used at
the time, and the applied science of productivity had not yet been developed).
His focus on the human component of production Taylor labeled scientific management. While
Taylor worked at Midvale, he and Clarence Clark won the first tennis doubles tournament in the
1881 US National Championships, the precursor of the US Open. Taylor became a student of
Stevens Institute of Technology, studying via correspondence and obtaining a degree in
mechanical engineering in 1883. On May 3, 1884, he married Louise M. Spooner of Philadelphia.
From 1890 until 1893 Taylor worked as a general manager and a consulting engineer to
management for the Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia, a company that operated
large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin. He was a plant manager in Maine. In 1893, The
Bethlehem Steel plant, 1896. Taylor opened an independent consulting practice in Philadelphia.
His business card read "Consulting Engineer - Systematizing Shop Management and
Manufacturing Costs a Specialty". Through these consulting experiences, Taylor perfected his
management system. His first paper, A Piece Rate System, was presented to the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in June 1895. In 1898 he joined Bethlehem Steel to solve an
expensive machine-shop capacity problem. While at Bethlehem, he discovered the best known and
most profitable of his many patents: between 1898 and 1900 Taylor and Maunsel White conducted
comprehensive empirical tests, and concluded that tungsten cutting-steel doubled or quadrupled
cutting speeds; the inventors received $100,000 (equivalent to $2.5 million today) for the English
patents alone, although the U.S. patent was eventually nullified.
Taylor was forced to leave Bethlehem Steel in 1901 after discord with other managers. Now a
wealthy man, Taylor focused the remainder of his career promoting his management and
machining methods through lecturing, writing, and consulting. In 1910, owing to the Eastern Rate
Case, Frederick Winslow Taylor and his Scientific Management methodologies became famous
worldwide. In 1911, Taylor introduced his The Principles of Scientific Management paper to the
ASME, eight years after his Shop Management paper. On October 19, 1906, Taylor was awarded
an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Pennsylvania. Taylor eventually
became a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. In early spring of 1915
Taylor caught pneumonia and died, one day after his fifty-ninth birthday, on March 21 1915. He
was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
Work
Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as
the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants and director
of a famous firm. In Peter Drucker's description.
Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:
1. Replace rule-of thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to
train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's
discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific
management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
Future US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis coined the term scientific management in the
course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission in
1910. Brandeis argued that railroads, when governed according to Taylor's principles, did not need
to raise rates to increase wages. Taylor used Brandeis's term in the title of his monograph The
Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. The Eastern Rate Case propelled Taylor's
ideas to the forefront of the management agenda. Taylor wrote to Brandeis, "I have rarely seen a
new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this one." Taylor's approach
is also often referred to as Taylor’s Principles, or, frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism.
Managers and workers
Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system:
It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements
and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the
duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management
alone.
Workers were to be selected appropriately for each task. Rests with management alone. One of the
very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he
shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox
than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely
unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character.
Taylor believed in transferring control from workers to management. He set out to increase the
distinction between mental (planning work) and manual labor (executing work). Detailed plans,
specifying the job and how it was to be done, were to be formulated by management and
communicated to the workers.
The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. The
strike at Watertown Arsenal led to the congressional investigation in 1912. Taylor believed the
laborer was worthy of his hire, and pay was linked to productivity. His workers were able to earn
substantially more than those under conventional management, and this earned him enemies
among the owners of factories where scientific management was not in use.
Rhetorical techniques
Taylor promised to reconcile labor and capital.
With the triumph of scientific management, unions would have nothing left to do, and they would
have been cleansed of their most evil feature: the restriction of output. To underscore this idea,
Taylor fashioned the myth that 'there has never been a strike of men working under scientific
management', trying to give it credibility by constant repetition. In similar fashion he incessantly
linked his proposals to shorter hours of work, without bothering to produce evidence of
"Taylorized" firms that reduced working hours, and he revised his famous tale of Schmidt carrying
pig iron at Bethlehem Steel at least three times, obscuring some aspects of his study and stressing
others, so that each successive version made Schmidt's exertions more impressive, more voluntary
and more rewarding to him than the last.
Unlike [Harrington] Emerson, Taylor was not a charlatan, but his ideological message required the
suppression of all evidence of worker's dissent, of coercion, or of any human motives or aspirations
other than those his vision of progress could encompass. Scholarly debate about increased
efficiency moving pig iron at Bethlehem's Iron and Steel Debate about Taylor's Bethlehem study
of workers, particularly the stereotypical laborer "Schmidt", continues to this day. One 2009 study
supports assertions Taylor made about the quite substantial increase in productivity, for even the
most basic task of picking up, carrying and dropping pigs of iron.
Management theory
Taylor thought that by analyzing work, the "one best way" to do it would be found. He is most
remembered for developing the stopwatch time study, which, combined with Frank Gilbreth's
motion study methods, later became the field of time and motion study. He broke a job into its
component parts and measured each to the hundredth of a minute. One of his most famous studies
involved shovels. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined
that the most effective load was 21½ pounds, and found or designed shovels that for each material
would scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful in getting his concepts applied, and
was dismissed from Bethlehem Iron Company/Bethlehem Steel Company.
Nevertheless, Taylor was able to convince workers who used shovels and whose compensation
was tied to how much they produced to adopt his advice about the optimum way to shovel by
breaking the movements down into their component elements and recommending better ways to
perform these movements. It was largely through his disciples' efforts (most notably Henry Gantt's)
that industry came to implement his ideas. Moreover, the book he wrote after parting company
with the Bethlehem Company, Shop Management, sold well.
Relations with ASME
Taylor's written works were designed for presentation to the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME). These include Notes on Belting (1894), A Piece Rate System (1895), Shop
Management (1903), Art of Cutting Metals (1906), and The Principles of Scientific Management
(1911).
Taylor was president of the ASME from 1906 to 1907. While president, he tried to implement his
system into the management of the ASME but met with much resistance. He was only able to
reorganize the publications department and that only partially. He also forced out the ASME's
long-time secretary, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, and replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure
as president was trouble-ridden and marked the beginning of a period of internal dissension within
the ASME during the Progressive Age.
In 1911, Taylor collected a number of his articles into a book-length manuscript, which he
submitted to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the
text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne. The
committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford. Alford
was a critic of the Taylor system and his report was negative. The committee modified the report
slightly, but accepted Alford's recommendation not to publish Taylor's book. Taylor angrily
withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval. Taylor published the trade
book himself in 1912.
Taylor's influence
United States
 Carl G. Barth helped Taylor to develop speed-and-feed-calculating slide rules to a
previously unknown level of usefulness. Similar aids are still used in machine shops today.
Barth became an early consultant on scientific management and later taught at Harvard.
 H. L. Gantt developed the Gantt chart, a visual aid for scheduling tasks and displaying the
flow of work.
 Harrington Emerson introduced scientific management to the railroad industry, and
proposed the dichotomy of staff versus line employees, with the former advising the latter.
 Morris Cooke adapted scientific management to educational and municipal organizations.
 Hugo Münsterberg created industrial psychology.
 Lillian Gilbreth introduced psychology to management studies.
 Frank Gilbreth (husband of Lillian) discovered scientific management while working in
the construction industry, eventually developing motion studies independently of Taylor.
These logically complemented Taylor's time studies, as time and motion are two sides of
the efficiency improvement coin. The two fields eventually became time and motion study.
 Harvard University, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in
business management in 1908, based its first year curriculum on Taylor's scientific
management.
 Harlow S. Person, as dean of Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Administration and
Finance, promoted the teaching of scientific management.
 James O. McKinsey, professor of accounting at the University of Chicago and founder of
the consulting firm bearing his name, advocated budgets as a means of assuring
accountability and of measuring performance.
France
In France, Le Chatelier translated Taylor's work and introduced scientific management throughout
government owned plants during World War I. This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol,
who’s 1916 Administration Industrielle ET Génér ale emphasized organizational structure in
management. In the classic Gener al and Industrial Management, Fayol wrote that "Taylor's
approach differs from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the 'bottom up.'
He starts with the most elemental units of activity – the workers' actions – then studies the effects
of their actions on productivity, devises new methods for making them more efficient, and applies
what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy..."
He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at lower levels of
the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency. According to Fayol, the approach
results in a "negation of the principle of unity of command."Fayol criticized Taylor's functional
management in this way: In Shop Management, Taylor said ... the most marked outward
characteristics of functional management lies in the fact that each workman, instead of coming in
direct contact with the management at one point only, receives his daily orders and help from eight
different bosses... these eight were
 1. Route clerks,
2. Instruction card men,
3. Cost and time clerks,
4. Gang bosses,
5. Speed bosses,
6. Inspectors,
7. Repair bosses, and the
8. Shop disciplinarian.
Fayol said that this was an unworkable situation and that Taylor must have reconciled the
differences in some way not described in Taylor's works. Around 1922 the journalist Paulette
Bernège became interested in Taylor's theories, which were popular in France in the post-war
period. Bernège became the faithful disciple of the Domestic Sciences Movement that Christine
Frederick had launched earlier in the United States, which Bernège adapted to French homes.
Frederick had transferred the concepts of Taylorism from the factory to domestic work. These
included suitable tools, rational study of movements and timing of tasks. Scientific standards for
housework were derived from scientific standards for workshops, intended to streamline the work
of a housewife.
The Comité national de l' organisation française (CNOF) was founded in 1925 by a group of
journalists and consulting engineers who saw Taylorism as a way to expand their client base.
Founders included prominent engineers such as Henry Louis Le Châtelier and Léon Guillet.
Bernège's Institute of Housekeeping Organization participated in various congresses on the
scientific organization of work that led up to the founding of the CNOF, and in 1929 led to a section
in CNOF on domestic economy.
Great Britain
Older historical accounts used to suggest that British industry had less interest in Taylor's teachings
than in similarly-sized countries. More recent research has revealed that British engineers and
Managers were as interested as in other countries. This disparity was largely due to what historians
have been analysing: recent research has revealed that Taylor's practices diffused to Britain more
through consultancies, in particular the Bedaux consultancy, than through institutions, as in
Germany and to a lesser extent France, where a mixture was most effective.
Particularly enthusiastic were the Cadbury family, Seebohm Rowntree, Oliver Sheldon and
Lyndall Urwick. In addition to establishing a consultancy to implement Taylor's system, Urwick,
Orr & Partners, Urwick was also a key historian of F.W. Taylor and scientific management,
publishing The Making of Scientific Management trilogy in the 1940s and The Golden Book of
Management in 1956.
Switzerland
In Switzerland, the American Edward Albert Filene established the International Management
Institute to spread information about management techniques. Lyndall Urwick was its Director
until the IMI closed in 1933.
USSR
In the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin was very impressed by Taylorism, which he and Joseph Stalin
sought to incorporate into Soviet manufacturing. Taylorism and the mass production methods of
Henry Ford thus became highly influential during the early years of the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, "Frederick Taylor's methods have never really taken root in the Soviet Union." The
voluntaristic approach of the Stakhanovite movement in the 1930s of setting individual records
was diametrically opposed to Taylor's systematic approach and proved to be counter-productive.
The stop and go of the production process workers having nothing to do at the beginning of a
month and 'storming' during illegal extra shifts at the end of the month which prevailed even in the
1980s had nothing to do with the successfully taylorized plants e.g., of Toyota which are
characterized by continuous production processes (heijunka) which are continuously improved
(kaizen). "The easy availability of replacement labor, which allowed Taylor to choose only 'first
class men,' was an important condition for his system's success."
The situation in the Soviet Union was very different. "Because work is so unrhythmic, the rational
manager will hire more workers than he would need if supplies were even in order to have enough
for storming. Because of the continuing labor shortage, managers are happy to pay needed workers
more than the norm, either by issuing false job orders, assigning them to higher skill grades than
they deserve on merit criteria, giving them 'loose' piece rates, or making what is supposed to be
'incentive' pay, premia for good work, effectively part of the normal wage. As Mary Mc Auley has
suggested under these circumstances piece rates are not an incentive wage, but a way of justifying
giving workers whatever they 'should' be getting, no matter what their pay is supposed to be
according to the official norms." Taylor and his theories are also referenced (and put to practice)
in the 1921 dystopian novel we by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Canada
In the early 1920s, the Canadian textile industry was re-organized according to scientific
management principles. In 1928, workers at Canada Cotton Ltd. in Hamilton, Ontario went on
strike against newly introduced Taylorist work methods. Also, Henry Gantt, who was a close
associate of Taylor, re-organized the Canadian Pacific Railway. With the prevalence of US branch
plants in Canada and close economic and cultural ties between the two countries, the sharing of
business practices, including Taylorism, has been common.
The Taylor Society and its legacy
The Taylor Society was founded in 1912 by Taylor's allies to promote his values and influence. A
decade after Taylor's death in 1915 the Taylor Society had 800 members, including many leading
U.S. industrialists and managers. In 1936 the Society merged with the Society of Industrial
Engineers, forming the Society for Advancement of Management, which still exists today.
Criticism of Taylor
Many of the critiques of Taylor come from Marxists. The earliest was by Antonio Gramsci, an
Italian Communist, in his Prison Notebooks (1937). Gramsci argued that Taylorism subordinates
the workers to management. He also argued that the repetitive work produced by Taylorism might
actually give rise to revolutionary thoughts in workers' minds. Harry Braverman's work, Labor and
Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, published in 1974, was
critical of scientific management and of Taylor in particular. This work pioneered the field of Labor
Process Theory as well as contributing to the historiography of the workplace. Management
theorist Henry Mintzberg is highly critical of Taylor's methods. Mintzberg states that an obsession
with efficiency allows measureable benefits to overshadow less quantifiable social benefits
completely, and social values get left behind. Taylor's methods have also been challenged by
socialists. Their arguments relate to progressive defanging of workers in the workplace and the
subsequent degradation of work as management, powered by capital, uses Taylor's methods to
render work repeatable and precise yet monotonous and skill-reducing.
James W. Rinehart argued that Taylor's methods of transferring control over production from
workers to management, and the division of labor into simple tasks, intensified the alienation of
workers that had begun with the factory system of production around the period 1870 to 1890.
Tennis and golf accomplishments
Taylor was an accomplished tennis and golf player. He and Clarence Clark won the inaugural
United States National tennis doubles championship at Newport Casino in 1881, defeating
Alexander Van Rensselaer and Arthur New bold in straight Tennis and golf accomplishments sets.
In the 1900 Summer Olympics, Taylor finished fourth in golf.
Discussion
Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of
systematic observation and study. On Taylor’s scientific management rests, above all, the
tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses
in the developed countries well above any level recorded, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though
the Isaac Newton the science of work, laid only foundation, however. Not much has been added
to them since even though he has been dead all of sixty years. In Taylor seminal work, the principle
of scientific management, he put forward his ideas of scientific management which differed from
traditional initiative and incentive methods of management. Although Taylor passed the
examination for Harvard College, failing eyesight meant that he could not take up his place.
Instead, in 1874, he took the unusual step for someone of his upper-class, almost aristocratic,
background of becoming an apprentice patternmaker and machinist at the Enterprise Hydraulic
Works. Following his apprenticeship, Taylor took up an unskilled job at the Midvale Steel Works
in 1878 and after several different jobs and master’s degree in mechanical engineering he was
appointed chief engineer there. In 1890 he became general manager of Manufacturing Investment
Company (MIC), eventually becoming an independent consulting engineer to management. By
1910, Taylor and his management methods had become well known.