Participatory Management in Libraries

THE PERSON who deserves the credit or blame, depending upon your perspective, for establishing the first modern management technique was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1856.1 Frederick Winslow Taylor intended to become an engineer, but in his youth he suffered a nervous breakdown which prevented him from entering college. Upon his recovery, Taylor elected to become a machinist with the Midvale Iron Works in Philadelphia.

Distressed by what he felt was a lack of productivity, he was brought to the point of developing several tenets that were to form the foundation for his philosophy of management. These were:
To examine each and every element of a person’s work; To carefully hire and educate the employee, based on the analysis of the work; To establish a cooperative agreement between the employee and the supervisor which would ensure the most effective method of accomplishing the work; To carefully break the work down into equally sized, manageable tasks.
Up until this time, the usual procedure was to hire anyone deemed able-bodied and let them decide which job they wanted, and let them do it as they or their supervisor decided was best. The most memorable product to evolve from Taylor’s tenets was the time-and-motion study, which was the method he designed to analyze the tasks, and reorganize them into a more efficient working pattern.

Bethlehem Steel Company soon hired Taylor to help in reorganization of its operations. In one classic example, Taylor demonstrated through time and-motion study and his management tenets that he could increase the productivity of a laborer named Schmidt. Prior to Taylor’s arrival, Schmidt had been able to load only 12½ tons of pig iron a day. However, as a result of careful analysis and supervision, Schmidt was able to increase his productivity to 47½ tons of pig iron per day. No one is quite certain of Schmidt’s reaction to this change in his work habits, or the tangible rewards he received. Taylor, on the other hand, advanced rapidly at Bethlehem until he was finally fired over a dispute regarding Taylor’s advocacy of greater pay for workers in return for increased productivity. Despite that major heresy, Taylor succeeded in following years through his writings and service as a consultant to industry. His texts established the basis for “scientific management,” and gave birth to management as a recognized academic discipline. In fact, in 1915, only five management courses were offered by colleges and universities anywhere in the United States. In less than a decade, every college and university of any pretension offered an array of courses on the subject.