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The Frederick Winslow Taylor manuscript collection
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The Frederick Winslow Taylor manuscript collection
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Letter to John S. Phillips, editor of the American magazine
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Item number
004B027
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Taylor, F.W. - Articles : "Principles of scientific management" - American magazine, 1911 - Letters from readers
Author
Gorrig, Charles
Title
Letter
to
John
S
.
Phillips
,
editor
of the
American
magazine
Date
1911
Mar
.
11
Physical Description
1 item (2 sheets) ; 29 cm.
Subject
Industrial management
Description
Author
New York, March 11, 1911. John S. Phillips, Esq., The American Magazine, 31 East 17th Street, New York City. Dear Mr. Phillips: Thank you for the prompt responsive suggestion in your letter of March 10th. Probably anything I have to say apropos of the conception of Scientific Management expressed by your articles can wait an opportunity for oral presentation after Mr. Baker's return. It will be premature to write on the subject before your presentation is completed. Perhaps in any case I ought to be confined to the professional discussion of the matter which we have been developing in The Engineering Magazine for fifteen years past. Briefly, and as a personal and friendly communication only, I am totally unwilling to consider the efficiency movement, scientific management, and the Taylor system as identical concepts or synonymous terms. I should dissent most emphatically from the proposition implied in your March number that the Taylor system is a "gospel of efficiency," it is not improper for me to feel and to express this dissent. Mr. Taylor did some work that was remarkable in its time (eight years ago) in defining certain scientific principles of management
but as I see it, it has developed so enormously since that time, as a science and an incipient philosophy, that the part Mr. Taylor saw (and the only part he still sees or will recognize) is to the whole subject no more than the work of Keppler or Tycho Brahe was to the whole of modern astronomy--perhaps not so much. Because Mr. Taylor persistently refuses to recognize more than a limited number of conditions, his system in my estimate is very incompletely scientific. It lacks vitality because it ignores the most important psychical factors. It dies out where Taylor's own energizing and supporting power is not constantly supplied. It has gone out of the plants from which Taylor's illustrations are drawn. The only examples he ever quotes are instances that existed from ten to thirty years ago and no longer exist at all. The important work--the vital work--is being done by men who see far more broadly and make their science far more inclusive than Mr. Taylor is constitutionally able to do. I think you will find that from top to bottom the result of his system would be at most to select a very few of the most fit. My idea of a "gospel of efficiency" is a body of doctrine and practice that increases as far as possible the fitness of the largest number possible. The reason I think the identification of efficiency work with the Taylor system is unfortunate is that the work of Mr. Taylor, and of the lieutenants who adhere to his advice, demands as a pre-requisite conditions that only an infinitesimal fraction of industrial managers would ever grant. They (the Taylor school) have no interest in what Mr. Taylor calls
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Letter to John S. Phillips, editor of the American magazine
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Letter to John S. Phillips, editor of the American magazine
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