Talk:Frederick Winslow Taylor
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[edit] Was Wharton first?
Surely Wharton was the first graduate management school in the US? It was established in 1881 (http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/whartonfacts/). [unsigned]
[edit] "Generally unsuccessful"?
The summary of Taylor's work is summed up as "Generally unsuccessful"? According to the management theory book I had, Taylor got production at the Bethlehem Steel plant up from 7 tonnes of scrap iron per person per day to ~42 tonnes per person per day. Salaries shot up as well. Could this need some clarification? [unsigned]
- I had a similar experience while getting my MBA. Unfortunately, college professors (including those in the Business Department) are anti-industrial leftists. Text book publishers cater to their clients and this is reflected in the texts they use. The fact is that Bethlehem Steel made the steel that built America during the 20th century. Henry Ford used the "Taylor" method to dominate the automotive industry. The mistreatment that Taylor received at the hands of my old Professors is what led me to buy some of his original works and transcribe them for Project Gutenberg. Someday I'll scan my collection and put them on the web in their original form as PDF files so people can print and read their own copies and make up their own minds rather than relying on the drivel they learn in B-School. [unsigned]
- I think your point is correct. (However, it wasn't scrap iron that they were moving, it was pigs of good iron.) Nevertheless, I think your general point is correct. Taylor was neither the god that some pundits claim he was, nor the devil that others claim he was. He was a human being with some very good ideas and some flaws as well. Kanigel 1997 is an awesome book that I believe gets it right, showing the reality instead of either the angel caricature or the devil caricature. I plan to expand this Wikipedia article when I get the time, with plenty of parenthetical citations of Kanigel. We really can give Wikipedia a significantly better article on Taylor. Lumbercutter 19:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reference systems merged to Harvard referencing
Regarding my recent reference heading changes: After reading WP:REF completely, I realized that what we had here was Wikipedia:Harvard referencing mixed with the <ref> tag system. So I merged the few <ref> references into the larger Harvard-style list. For more info on reference systems in Wikipedia, see WP:REF = WP:CITE, which provides good explanations. Thanks! Lumbercutter 19:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Taylor's early motivation
According to my late father, Francis B. Foley, who worked at the Midvale Steel Company from 1907-17 and was Director of Research for the successor Midvale Company for some years following 1928, Taylor began his time and motion study when he observed Midvale machinists. The men were paid by the piece, but Taylor saw that many men were not working at all toward the end of the day. They produced what they considered to be a fair day's output, the amount a less productive man could make working a full day. Taylor watched, and observed that the fast workers did their work in different ways from those used by their less productive coworkers. His study was initially intended to permit him to teach the slower men how to do the work faster with less effort. --Gfoley (talk) 23:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- Taylor's paper, "A Piece Rate System," describes his pioneer method of establishing standards of job performance at the Midvale steel plant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Artem Veremey (talk • contribs) 09:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
