Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration Community: A Re-Evaluation PDF
Preview Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration Community: A Re-Evaluation
cover cover next page > title: Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration Community : A Reevaluation SUNY Series in Public Administration author: Schachter, Hindy Lauer. publisher: State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin: 0791401413 print isbn13: 9780791401415 ebook isbn13: 9780585090610 language: English subject Public administration--History, Industrial management-- History, Taylor, Frederick Winslow,--1856-1915. publication date: 1989 lcc: JF1341.S32 1989eb ddc: 350/.0009 subject: Public administration--History, Industrial management-- History, Taylor, Frederick Winslow,--1856-1915. cover next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...derick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/cover.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:20 PM] page_i < previous page page_i next page > Page i Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration Community < previous page page_i next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...erick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_i.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:20 PM] page_ii < previous page page_ii next page > Page ii SUNY series in Public Administration Peter W. Colby, Editor < previous page page_ii next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...erick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_ii.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:21 PM] page_iii < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration Community A Reevaluation Hindy Lauer Schachter STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS < previous page page_iii next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...rick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_iii.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:21 PM] page_iv < previous page page_iv next page > Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1989 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N. Y., 12246 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schachter, Hindy Lauer. Frederick Taylor and the public administration community : A reevaluation / Hindy Lauer Schachter. p. cm.(SUNY series in public administration) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-7914-0140-5.ISBN 0-7914-0141-3 (pbk.) 1. Public administrationHistory. 2. Industrial managementHistory. 3. Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1856-1915. I. Title. II. Series. JF1341.s32 1989 350'.0009dc20 89-4642 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 < previous page page_iv next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...rick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_iv.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:21 PM] page_v < previous page page_v next page > Page v Once again to Irving and Amanda < previous page page_v next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...erick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_v.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:22 PM] page_vii < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Chapter 1. Substance and Reputation 1 2. Taylor in Textbooks 11 3. Early Years 19 4. Scientific Management 37 5. Immediate Reception 49 6. Morris Cooke, a Link between Taylor and Public Administration 71 7. Scientific Management and Public Administration: Act One 91 8. Scientific Management and Public Administration: Act Two 111 Notes 125 Bibliography 153 Index 171 < previous page page_vii next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...rick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_vii.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:22 PM] page_ix < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix Acknowledgments This book indirectly results from a Frederick Taylor symposium held at the New Jersey Institute of Technology on April 16, 1986. Asked to moderate a panel on Taylorism, I rushed to read Shop Management and The Principles of Scientific Management and discovered that in their entirety these books present a picture of Taylor's ideas that is much less authoritarian than that offered in the post-World-War-II public administration literature. My first reaction was to share democratic aspects of Taylor's work with my audience. I entered the auditorium determined to rescue Taylor's reputation. On the platform, I became convinced that an even more important mission lay in analyzing why public administration texts give only a part of what Taylor had to say, why modern writers depict him as an organizational primitive and use him as a foil for classifying later theorists. Thus, this book was born. I want to thank the New Jersey Institute of Technology for offering me a research sabbatical in the fall of 1987 to write the book. Much of the research was done at the Frederick Winslow Taylor collection at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Taylor would have appreciated Jane Hartye, associate curator of the collection. She always seemed to find the one best way to handle any request for information. Additional research was done at the Morris Cooke collection in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York, and at the Institute of Public Administration in New York City; I thank their staffs for assistance. Some of the material in Chapters 2 and 4 appears in "Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Idea of Worker Participation," Administration and Society (May 1989). I want to acknowledge the Editorial suggestions of Gary Walmsley, the journal's editor. I also want to thank my editors at SUNY Press: Peggy Gifford, Dana Foote, and Malcolm Willison, a meticulous copy editor. < previous page page_ix next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...rick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_ix.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:22 PM] page_x < previous page page_x next page > Page x Most of all I want to thank my husband, Irving, and my daughter, Amanda, for gracious support. They both know much more about Frederick Taylor than they ever dreamed possible. < previous page page_x next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...erick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_x.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:23 PM] page_1 < previous page page_1 next page > Page 1 Chapter 1 Substance and Reputation This book is a case study analysis of how the public administration discipline integrates over time a complex and controversial theorist. The focus is on selective information transmittal, the differences that emerge between a writer's intentions and ideasas documented in that person's books, articles, and papersand reputation, in textbooks and articles by others. The argument is that public administration's current framework of information transmission facilitates distortion and the undervaluing of early writers, particularly through their use as foils for writers who came afterwards. A new framework for understanding the discipline's past seems necessary. In this way we can rescue complex and useful turn-of-the-century substance from attempts to make it appear less intriguing than its primary sources show it to be. This case study centers on rescuing from his reputation the substance of the management theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor. There is no doubt about Taylor's central role in developing management as a discipline. A 1977 survey of management historians ranked him first among the discipline's historical pioneers. 1 Dwight Waldo regards his work as the most important theoretical influence on public administration.2 Current literature regularly alludes to him in debates on personnel administration and technological change. Taylor's ghost hovers ever the modern study of public administration. Although he has been dead for over seventy years, discussion of his work quickly degenerates into polemics. Much of the modern literature depicts him as authoritarian, equating motivation with pay incentives. This denigration, however, focuses on a narrow range of quotations or confuses his own ideas with their purported application by people he specifically repudiated. < previous page page_1 next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/...erick%20Taylor%20and%20the%20Public%20Administration%20Comm%20A%20Re-Evaluation/files/page_1.html[23-Nov-11 3:26:47 PM]
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