The Study of Administration

1887
Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson: “The Study of Administration”
Points to Remember
Characteristics of Public
Administration
• Scientific
• Business-like
• Free of Cultural Influences
• Responsive to its political
superiors
Woodrow Wilson: “The Study of Administration”
Points to Remember
Definition of Public Administration

“Public Administration is detailed

and systematic execution of public
law. Every particular application of
general law is an act of
administration. …. The broad plans
of governmental action are not
administrative, the detailed
execution of such plans is
administrative.”
Frederick Winslow Taylor
1856-1915
Early Life and Family
•March 22, 1856: Frederick
Winslow Taylor is born to an an
affluent Philadelphia family

•His father, Franklin, was a

Princeton University Graduate, a
man of “leisure” who moved his
family to Europe for a period of
Taylor’s youth

•His mother, Emily, was an

abolitionist and feminist, who
worked with the notable Lucretia
Mott; Emily would become one of
Taylor’s most powerful influences
 Education and Career

• 1872: Taylor, 16, is admitted into the Phillips Exeter Academy,

where he is being groomed for the study of law
• 1874: Passes Harvard entrance exam with honors; but decides
to become an apprentice at Enterprise Hydraulic
• Anomaly: Taylor complains of severe headaches and vision
problems to his parents in an effort to avoid Harvard, however
the industrial environment of Taylor’s time was an “unusual”
alternative considering that he would have to read mechanical
drawings
 Machinist > College Student
•

• Taylor associates with the “make-more-while-you-can”

American values of the time rather than the European gentry
ethic of his youth
• More importantly, Taylor enjoys engineering and manual labor
• 1878: Following Enterprise, Taylor joins Midvale Steel Works
where he works as a time clerk, rising up the ranks to “gang
boss”
• 1881: Introduces time study at Midvale, breaking work into
component parts
• 1883: Taylor receives a degree in mechanical engineering from
the Stevens Institute
• 1884: Taylor becomes a Chief Engineer; the foundations of his
movement are formulated
– Attempts to combat systematic soldiering (output
restrictions imposed by laborers)
– Reorganizes shop, implements “functional foremen”
positions
• 1890: Taylor leaves Midvale. Becomes a manager at a wood
pulp and paper manufacturer, leaving after three years to
become a consultant
 Inception of Scientific Management
• 1890s: Dedicated to consulting and the construction of
Scientific Management
• 1895: Taylor writes “A Piece Rate System”, a report proposing
that workers be paid based on their efficiency to meet or
exceed output expectations, eliminating minimum wages and
the need for unions, as workers would represent themselves
based on their output
• Interesting fact: Taylor dressed only for utility, avoided alcohol,
coffee and tea, and had a habit for swearing profusely
 Accomplishments

• Late 1890s works at the Bethlehem Steel Company, where he

receives a patent for the Taylor-White process for heating
steel
• Ironically, Taylor is fired from Bethlehem after a dispute with
management
• Retires in 1901 at age of 45, but fame continues to grow
• Elected President of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers in 1906
• 1909: Taylor completes The Principles of Scientific
Management
 Accomplishments

• President Theodore Roosevelt is influenced by Taylor, calling

on Congress to address “the question of national efficiency”
as a means to decrease wastefulness
 Government Notoriety

• 1912: Congress holds hearings to determine whether the

techniques of Scientific Management should be applied to
federal agencies

– The Army Appropriations Act (1915) is amended to

prohibit use of stop-watches and payment of bonuses in
army arsenals

• 1915: Taylor, 59, dies of pneumonia

 Taylor’s Theory on Management

Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve

industrial efficiency. Taylor is regarded as the father of
scientific management (otherwise called Taylorism)
 High Praise from Peter Drucker

• “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 before, even for the
well-to-do.” –Peter Drucker (Founder of Modern
Management)
 Understanding Scientific Management
Five Principles
What is scientific management and how does it work?

• Scientific management rests on clearly defined rules and

principles. Thus the true science of administration must
replace the traditional ways of rules of thumb
• The scientific selection of workers (Schmidt)
• The scientific training of workers
• Initiate and continue cooperation between workers and
management
• Equal division of work between workers and management
 Taylor's Scientific Management - 4 principles:
(Principles of Scientific Management, 1911)

1. The development of a science for each element of a man's

work to replace the old rule-of-thumb methods.

2. The scientific selection, training and development of workers

instead of allowing them to choose their own tasks and train
themselves as best they could.
 Taylor's scientific management - 4 principles:
(Principles of Scientific Management, 1911)

3. The development of a spirit of hearty cooperation between

workers and management to ensure that work would be
carried out in accordance with scientifically devised
procedures

4. The division of work between workers and the management in

almost equal shares, each group taking over the work for which
it is best fitted instead of the former condition in which
responsibility largely rested with the workers. Self-evident in
this philosophy are organizations arranged in a hierarchy,
systems of abstract rules and impersonal relationships between
staff.
 Expectation of Management
• ‘Scientific management
requires a high level of
managerial control over
employee work practices
and entails a higher ratio of
managerial workers to
laborers than previous
management methods. Such
detail-oriented management
may cause friction between
workers and managers.’
• ‘It is only through enforced
standardization of methods,
enforced adoption of the
best methods and working
condition, 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.’
 Projected Issues for Management

Taylor observed that some workers were more talented

than others, and that even smart ones were often
unmotivated. He observed that most workers who are
forced to perform repetitive tasks tend to work at the
slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work
was defined as "soldiering.“
Workers are necessarily human: they have personal needs
and interpersonal friction, and they face very real
difficulties introduced when jobs become so efficient that
they have no time to relax, and so rigid that they have no
permission to innovate.
 A Piece Rate System

Taylor theorized that if each employee's compensation was

linked to their output, their productivity would go up. This
was Taylor’s attempt to incentivize the workforce and
discourage a bad relationship between the workforce and
managers to develop.
 Management’s Abuse of Responsibility

Taylor had developed a method for generating the increases,

for the dual purposes of owner/manager profit and worker
profit, realizing that the methods relied on both of those
results in order to work correctly. But many owners and
managers seized upon the methods thinking (wrongly) that
the profits could be reserved solely or mostly for themselves
and the system could endure indefinitely merely through force
of authority.
 Impact of Scientific Management
Scientific management was one of the first attempts to
systematically treat management and process improvement as a
scientific problem. It may have been the first to do so in a
"bottom-up" way and found a lineage of successors that have
many elements in common.

Taylor's impact has been so great because he developed a

concept of work design, work-measurement, production control
and other functions, that completely changed the nature of
industry. Before scientific management, such departments as
work study, personnel, maintenance and quality control did not
exist. What was more his methods proved to be very successful.
 Taylor’s Scientific Management Framework
-A clear delineation of authority and responsibility

-Separation of planning (management) from operations

(laborers)

-Incentive schemes for workers (differential piece rate

system)

-Management by exception (skilled managers to handle

abnormal issues)

-Task specialization
 Foreign Applications
• After just two years in print, Taylors principles were translated
into French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Italian,
Spanish, Japanese and later Chinese.
• Also in France – a foundation was established to promote the
investigation of Taylor’s scientific management through:
– Courses in high-tech universities
– Public lectures
– And through sending young engineers to America to study
the American applications of the system
• In Austria, a periodical Taylor Zeitschrift was devoted to the
system
 Endorsed by Communists
• Vladimir Lenin, communist revolutionary leader of the
Soviet Union, published an article Isvestia, urging the
system on Russians.

• Characterizing the system as a form of Bourgeois

exploitation.

• Lenin later urged its adoption as part of a policy to

centralize authority and as a necessary step on the road
to socialism.
 Social Movements

• A Committee on Economy & Efficiency was appointed by

President W.H. Taft purposed to look at and propose
reforms for the United States Federal government.

• Efficiency committees began to spring up at state and

local levels of government as a result.

• Embraced by women workers’ movement as one of the

ways to stop the exploitation of female labor.

• Influenced Henry Ford and his invention of the assembly

line
 The Taylor Society
• Formed in 1911, was a society to promote Scientific
Management

• Membership included future supreme court justices as well

Mary Parker Follett & Lillian Gilbreth.

• H.L. Gantt – Gantt Chart, Task & Bonus System

• Frank Gilbreth – early advocate scientific management,

contributed to the fields of motion study and human factors
 Modern Day Applications

• The enactment of the Workforce Investment Act (1998)

• No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001)
– Specify performance requirements in substantial policy
areas, and introduce incentive mechanisms similar to
those Taylor prescribed for private firms.
– Introduces a merit system that rewards public managers
and frontline case workers based on the achievement
relative to stated goals.
 New Wave of Policy Evaluation
• Taylor’s Performance Management ideals gave rise to a new wave of policy
evaluation on research in public administration.

– Government Performance Results Act (GPRA, 1993)

• Provided general regulations to hold gov’t accountable for results
• 3 Elements: Agencies must develop 5 year strategic, results-oriented plans
covering each of its major functions; prepare annual budget performance
plans and provide description of how these plans are to be met; prepare
performance reports that detail success/failure

– Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)

• Rates all federal programs on their effectiveness
• By conclusion of GW administration, PART had been applied over 1,000
federal programs representing 98% of the federal budget.
 Outstanding Areas of Research

• Democratic Values: What legitimate roles should and can the public
play in the Taylorism regime?
• Collaborative Governance: How does the dispersed nature of
networks with different goals and interests shape performance
measurement? Is it possible to tie performance measures to
specific actors if responsibility is diffuse? How do we measure
network performance?
• Effects of New Taylorism: Does this regime improve performance?
how do principals respond to gaming (special interest activity) by
individual stakeholders?
• Using Performance Information: To what extent have governments
used the performance information? How can this information help
guide an agency’s planning, budgeting, and management decisions?
 Frederick W. Taylor

“Hardly a competent workman can be found who does not

devote a considerable amount of time to studying just how
slowly he can work and still convince his employer that he
is going at a good pace.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdmNbqtDd
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Ford and Taylor Scientific Management (Edited)

Development of American Business
Schools
1880s – 19??
Early Business School Curricula
1880 - 1930
Early Business School Curricula
1880 - 1930
George Elton Mayo
1880 – 1849
Early life and Education
• December 26, 1880 born to a
wealthy Australian family as the
second of seven children
• He had a checkered educational
experiences: initially home
schooled; at age 12 Queen’s
College; at age 16 university of
Adelaide to study medicine; in
1902 to Edinburgh to continue
with medical studies; bored with
medicine and quits school in
1904; returns to U of Adelaide in
1907 to study the new subject of
psychology; graduates in 1910 and
teaches there and U. of
Queensland for about 10 years
• In 1913 married Dorthea
McConnel
 The Early U.S. Years

• In 1922 emigrates to United States to do further

study in industrial and social studies
• Wanders around San Francisco looking for work
to no avail
• In 1923 a friend gets him a position at the
University of Pennsylvania where he secures a
grant from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller
Foundation
 The Early U.S. Years

• Studies work in the Philadelphia textile mills

• Writes up results which appear in Harpers
Magazine and Personnel Journal
• Gets the attention of Harvard and they offer him
a high paying position as Director of Industrial
Research
• Involved in studies at Hawthorne Plant in Cicero
Illinois in late 1920 until 1933
 Later Years

• In 1939 Mayo publishes Management and the

Worker
• In 1940 participates in study of absenteeism in
the aircraft industry in Southern California
• In 1945 publishes his best known work The
Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization
• In 1947 gives his final set of lectures at Harvard
• Dies in 1949 of complications from glaucoma
 Major Studies

1. Philadelphia Textile Mill study

2. Western Electric Researches (Hawthorne Studies)

3. Southern California Aircraft Industry

 Western Eclectic Researches, (Hawthorne Studies)

• 1928-1929 series of inconclusive studies concerning

the effects of lighting on worker productivity
• Whatever levels of lighting were tested productivity
increased. Mayo and his associates at Harvard
speculated that output had been most affected the
expression of management’s concern, the attention
if you will showed to the workers, now known as the
Hawthorne Effect
 Western Eclectic Researches, (Hawthorne Studies)

• Assembly room tests. Small group of 5/6 women

chosen and moved into a separate room. Tested
various lengths of break periods and length of work
day to see if output was affected
• Productivity went up 30%, but not influenced by
either of the above
• Concluded that “the six individuals became a team
and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and
spontaneously in cooperating with the experiment”
 Western Eclectic Researches, (Hawthorne Studies)

• The Interviews. 21,000 conducted. Valuable source

of information about work at the beginning of the
Depression. Supposed to focus on supervisory styles
and work social conditions, but expanded much
beyond that into personal background, family
environment, and broader social conditions outside
the work place. It was a deeply intimate portrait of
the American worker.
 Western Eclectic Researches, (Hawthorne Studies)

• The Bank Wiring Observation Room. Studies social

relationships within the informal group:
 Elton Mayo: Father of the Human Relations School

• Mayo is known as the father of the Human Relations

School of management. Whereas the Scientific
Management School had emphasized the application
of science and technical skill and the systematic
ordering of work tasks, the Human Relations School
focused on the needs of the worker, how to organize
teamwork and sustained cooperation's between
worker and management
Charles Perrow: “The Short and Glorious History of
Organizational Theory”
 “The Forces of Darkness v. The Forces of Light”
Scientific Management
• Inspired by the machine
• Centralized authority
• Clear lines of authority
• Specialization and expertise
• Rules and regulations
• Clear separation of staff and
line
Human Relations
• Inspired by biological systems
• Delegation of authority
• Teamwork
• Employee autonomy
• Trust and openness
• Interpersonal dynamics
• Concerns with the whole
person
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7RHjwmVGhs

Hawthorne Studies
From Mathew Stewart’s
The Management Myth
Bethlehem steel plant
Boxly, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania
Background: Bethlehem Steel and Cast iron pigs
 Core Idea

• “The one best way”

 Four Steps to Taylorism

1. Fundamental management shift from accounting to

accountability
– 47.5 tons
2. Scientific selection of workmen
3. Solution to the labor problem
4. Embed the science of pig iron handling in a new kind
of organization, based on a very clear division of
functions (planning and doing)
Schmidt
 Taylor’s Impact
• Peter Drucker
• Harry Braverman
• Ida Tarbell
• Walter Lippmann
• Louis Brandeis
• Elbert Hubbard
• Vladimir Lenin
• Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth
• Graduate Scholl of
Business at Harvard
University
• Wharton School at the
University of
Pennsylvania
• Amos Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth
College
Hawthorne Electrical Works, Chicago, Illinois
Elton Mayo, 1880 - 1949
Mayo’s early struggles at Harvard: A theory seeking
data
What Mayo had been looking for all his life:
The Palmer House, Chicago, Illinois
 Taylor and Mayo as Raconteurs:
Were their objectives really all that different?
 Charles Perrow, 1973
“The Short and Glorious History of Organizational Theory”

Forces of Darkness Forces of Light

(Mechanical School) (Human Relations School)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdmNbqtDd
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Ford and Taylor Scientific Management (Edited)