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Special Book Review Sectionon the Classics of ManagementIntroduction

Allen C. Bluedom, Guest EditorUniversity of Missouri, ColumbiaWhen you receive this issue of the Review, itwill b e 100 ye ar s almost to the da y since m an-agem ent be ga n as a discipl ine. On May 26, 1886,Henry Towne presented the paper , "The Engi-nee r as an Economist" to a me eting of the Am eri-can Society of Mechanical Engineers (Bedeian,1985). While it is always arbitrary to identify soprecisely anything as nebulous as the specificevent that gave birth to an entire discipline, in

this cas e the m ana gem ent h isto rians ha ve donetheir job well ; Towne's paper made a resound-in g ca l l f o r b o th man ag emen t r e sea rch an deducation. He followed up this appeal by usinghis office (President of A.S.M.E.) and his influ-ence to promote the study of management. Ofpart icular note is Towne's support of fel lowA.S.M.E. member, Frederick Taylor , and hiswork on scientific management (Urwick, 1956,pp . 25-26).O ne hundred yea rs hav e now passed , bu t howfar has the f ield advanced? Without debatingwhether management can ever t ru ly be a sc i -ence (this is a separate issue), the centennial ofthe m an ag em en t discipline should give us pa us eto ask: Do w e genuine ly know mo re abo ut m an-age m ent today than w as known 100 year s ago ?And if we do know more, how much more?These ques t ions cannot be answered wi thoutu n d e r s t an d in g wh a t k n o wled g e ex i s t ed wh eninvest igators, del iberately and systematical ly ,b eg an to s tud y an d wr i te ab o u t ma n ag e me n t .For this reaso n, w e prese nt thes e reviews of theworks of eight pioneers: Frederick W. Taylor,Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Mary Parker Follett,Henri Fayol, Chester I . Barnard, F.J. Roethlis-berger, and William J. Dickson. Collectively, their

princ ipal w ritings sp an the first forty ye ar s ofcentury, the formative years of the m an ag emdiscipline. By no means does their work contute every thing of va lue , or eve n the bulk of wwa s produc ed durin g this period. However, twork is co ns ide red to b e a ma jor pa rt of th e fodat ion f rom which modern management g rown.To ga ug e how far we hav e come, sevissues were kept in mind as we read the boand wrote the reviews:1. W hat of the book's conte nt is valid a n d vable within the context of current manment knowledge?2. What of the book's content is not valuor val id given current management knledge?3. What has been lost or forgotten that is tained in the book? Do w e m isattribute t

ideas to later writers?4. What ha s been misinterpreted through erations of secondary citations concerthe book's contents?The specific answers to these questionsfound in the following reviews, but some eral answers apply to these works collectivMost of the content that w as exa m ine d is suringly valid; very little can be considered "proved" by work that has followed it. Despite

quality of these writers' ideas, a disappoinamount has been forgotten, ignored, and mterpreted over the generat ions.I t is fair to conclude that managementexperienced genuine growth since the pionestablished a foundation, but it has not grnear ly as much as they had hoped i t woulw e wou ld like to belie ve it ha s. F ar too oftehave forgotten, ignored, and misunderstooddiscipl ine 's founders. By doing so, w e wasted their efforts as well as our own.The efforts of the reviewers for this project definitely not b ee n w ast ed , a n d I w an t to renize both the quality of their work and thethusiasm they brought to it . Daniel Brasviewed the works of the Gilbreths and DFerry wrote about the collected works of

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d D ickson's acc oun t of the Haw -

f this section thro ug h all of the rev iew s.scientific m an ag em en t.Scientific Management (comprisingMan agement, The Principles offic M anagement, an d Testimony

by Frederick Winslow Taylor.York:Harper & Brothers Publishers,1947, xvi -f 638 pp .

Reviewed by Allen C. Bluedom,Depar tment o f Management ,University of Missouri, Columbia,Columbia , MO.

is a collection of Fred-

was or iginally presented to1903 an d w as pu bli sh ed in that Society 'sand later (1911) was reproduced in

The Principles of Scien-w as pu blished in 1911; an dthird wa s Taylor's testim ony in 1912 before aformed "to investigate th e Taylor an d otherems of shop m an ag em en t." Thus, th is collec-provides the most convenient an d thorough

the following labels will be used to citeon: SM (1903) for Shop Man-(1911) for The Principles of Scien-Management, a n d Testimony (1912) for Tay-

A great deal of redunda ncy exists am ong thethree selections. Of the three. Sh op Managementprovides the most thorough an d detailed descrip-tion of scientific management as Taylor advo-cated it. The Principles of Scientific Ma nagem entis little more than a condensed version of ShopManagement, although it does contain the con-troversial conversation between Taylor andSchmidt concerning the pig-iron loading experi-ments at Bethlehem Steel (see Bluedorn, Keon,& Carter, 1985; Locke, 1982 and Wrege&Perron i ,1974 for material on the dispute over Taylor'saccount of this "experiment') .Taylor's Testimony Before the Special HouseCommittee is a major s upp lem ent to Taylor's ear-lier descriptions of scientific management. SinceTaylor did little more in his opening statementthan repeat his earlier writing, it offers little newto readers familiar with either SM or PSM. Ofvalu e is Taylor 's cross-examination (January 27,30, 1912) by the committee after he concludedhis ope ning state men t. The me m ber s of the com-mittee ask ed Taylor m an y of the sa m e questionswe w ould ask Taylor today. That the mem ber s ofa congressional committee would ask the samequest ions 74 yea rs ag o suggests som e funda-mental similarities, even continuities, betweenTaylor's era an d ou r own. In the foreword HenryTowne wrote for SM, we see a statement of boththe dominant problem facing American business(particularly manufacturing) at the time and itssolution; a sta tem ent a s familiar to the contem po-rary rea der a s if it ha d ap pe ar ed on the editorialpage of the Wall Street Journal.

We ar e justly proud of the high w ag e rate s whichprevail througho ut our country, an d jealo us ofan y interference with them by the produ cts of thech ea pe r labo r of other countries. To ma intain thiscondition, to strength en o ur control of hom e m ar-kets, and , ab ov e all, to bro ade n our opportunitiesin foreign markets where we must compete withthe products of other industrial nations, we shoiildwelcome and encourage every influence tendingto increase the efficiency of our productive pro-cesses (Taylor, 1903, p. 10).

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