Scientific Management: Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World?

There is a renewed interest in scientific management and the works of F.W. Taylor. This book adds to our understanding of scientific management, which is under radical review because of the changes sweeping the world's industrial activities. It shows that the disciplined engineering approach to manufacturing which underpins scientific management was not uniquely American. Scientific management, as developed by Taylor, spread from America to the rest of the world. Sometimes it was taken up eagerly, sometimes it converged with local initiatives, but in no industrial nation was it ignored.
Scientific Management comprises three parts. The opening chapter focuses on the insights and flaws in Taylor's theory of industrial organization. The nature of Taylor's contributions to engineering and to factory management and some of their effects are explored in the next three chapters. The third part of the book deals with the spread of scientific management throughout the world.
The industrial world is in the midst of profound socio-economic changes which have severely shaken our intellectual grasp of its nature and behavior. Today's managers and management educators cannot move on to the creation of a new post-industrial society without a better appreciation of the influence of scientific management, and of the person who was its principal architect.