The Principles of Scientific Management

About this book

Frederick Winslow Taylor argues that the great waste of industry is the inefficiency of human work, and that it can be cured by science. Instead of leaving each worker to his own rule of thumb, managers should study every task with a stopwatch, find the one best way to do it, choose and train the right workers, and pay them for higher output. His famous examples include a labourer at a steel works whom he trained to load forty-seven tons of pig iron a day instead of twelve and a half, and the redesign of shovels for different materials.

Context and significance

Taylor (1856–1915) published the book in 1911, and his 'scientific management' transformed factories and offices around the world, from Henry Ford's to Lenin's Russia, while critics accused it of turning workers into machines. It is a founding text of modern management. Read it with Henry Ford's My Life and Work.

About the author