Chapter 1 (pp.42-102)

C H A PT ER I
Classical Organization Theory
N o single date can be pinpointed as the beginning of serious thinking about how organic
zations work and how they should be structured and managed. One can trace writings
about management and organizations as far back as the known origins of commerce. A lot
can be learned from the early organizations of the Muslims, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans.
If we were to take the time, we could make the case that much of what we know about on
ganization theory has its origins in ancient and medieval times. After all, it was Aristotle
who first wrote of the importance of culture to management systems, ibn Taymiyyah who
used the scientific method to outline the principles of administration within the framework
of Islam, and Machiavelli who gave the world the definitive analysis of the use of power.
In order to provide an indication of organization theory’s deep roots in earlier eras, we
offer two examples of ancient wisdom on organization management. The first of our an'
cient examples is from the Book of Exodus, Chapter 18 (see Box 1), in which Jethro,
Moses’ father'indaw, chastises Moses for failing to establish an organization through which
he could delegate his responsibility for the administration of justice. In Verse 25, Moses ac'
cepts Jethro’s advice; he “chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the
people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” Moses
continued to judge the “hard cases,” but his rulers judged “every small matter” themselves.
Frederick Winslow Taylor would later develop this concept of “management by exception”
for modem audiences.
In the second ancient example (see the first selection in this chapter), Socrates an'
ticipates the arguments for “generic management” and “principles of management” as he
explains to Nicomachides that a leader who “knows what he needs, and is able to provide
it, [can] be a good president, whether he have the direction of a chorus, a family, a city, or
an army” (Xenophon, 1869). Socrates lists and discusses the duties of all good presidents
of public and private institutions and emphasizes the similarities. This is the first known
statement that organizations as entities are basically alike — and that a manager who could
cope well with one would be equally adept at coping with others— even though their pur'
poses and functions might be widely disparate.
Although it is always great fun to delve into the wisdom of the ancients, most ana'
lysts of the origins of organization theory view the beginnings of the factory system in
Great Britain in the eighteenth century as the birthplace of complex economic organiza'
tions and, consequently, of the field of organization theory. Classical organization theory,
as its name implies, was the first theory of its kind, is considered traditional, and continues
to be the base upon which other schools of organization theory have built. Thus, an un-
derstanding of classical organization theory is essential not only because of its historical
interest but also, more importantly, because subsequent analyses and theories presume a
knowledge of it.
27
28 Classical Organization Theory
Exodus Chapter 18
13 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people
stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening.
14 And when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said, “What is this
thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by
thee from morning unto even?”
15 And Moses said unto his father-in-law, “Because the people come unto me to inquire of
God:
16 When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another,
and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.”
17 And Moses’ father-in-law said unto him, “The thing that thou doest is not good.
18 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is
too heavy for thee: thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.
19 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be
thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God:
20 And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein
they must walk, and the work that they must do.
21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of
truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of
hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:
22 And let them judge the people at all seasons and it shall be, that every great matter they
shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself,
and they shall bear the burden with thee.
23 If thou shall do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure,
and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.”
24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said.
25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers
of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.
26 And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard cases they brought unto Moses, but
every small matter they judged themselves.
27 And Moses let his father-in-law depart; and he went his way into his own land.*1
The classical school dominated organization theory into the 1930s and remains highly
influential today (Merkle, 1980). Over the years, classical organization theory expanded and
matured. Its basic tenets and assumptions, however, which were rooted in the industrial rev
olution of the 1700s and the professions of mechanical engineering, industrial engineering,
and economics, have never changed. They were only expanded upon, refined, and made
more sophisticated. These fundamental tenets are:
1. Organizations exist to accomplish production-related and economic goals.
2. There is one best way to organize for production, and that way can be found through system
atic, scientific inquiry.
3. Production is maximized through specialization and division of labor.
4. People and organizations act in accordance with rational economic principles.
The evolution of any theory must be viewed in context. The beliefs of early manage
ment theorists about how organizations worked or should work were a direct reflection of
the societal values of their tim es— and the times were harsh. It was well into the twentieth
century before the industrial workers of the United States and Europe began to enjoy even
Classical Organization Theory 29
limited “rights” as organizational citizens. Workers were viewed not as individuals but as
interchangeable parts in an industrial machine in which parts were made of flesh only
when it was impractical to make them of steel.
The advent of power-driven machinery and hence the modem factory system spawned
our current concepts of economic organizations and organization for production. Power-
driven equipment was expensive. Production workers could not purchase and use their own
equipment as they had their own tools. Remember the phrase for being fired, “get the sack,”
comes from the earliest days of the industrial revolution when a dismissed worker literally
was given a sack in which to gather up his tools. Increasingly, workers without their own
tools and often without any special skills had to gather for work where the equipment was —
in factories. Expensive equipment had to produce enough output to justify its acquisition
and maintenance costs.
The advent of the factory system presented managers of organizations with an un
precedented array of new problems. Managers had to arrange for heavy infusions of capi
tal, plan and organize for reliable large-scale production, coordinate and control activities
of large numbers of people and functions, contain costs (this was hardly a concern in “cot
tage industry” production), and maintain a trained and motivated work force.
Under the factory system, organizational success resulted from well-organized produc
tion systems that kept machines busy and costs under control. Industrial and mechanical
engineers— and their machines— were the keys to production. Organizational structures
and production systems were needed to take best advantage of the machines. Organizations,
it was thought, should work like machines, using people, capital, and machines as their
parts, just as industrial engineers sought to design “the best” machines to keep factories pro
ductive, industrial and mechanical engineering-type thinking dominated theories about
“the best way” to organize for production. Thus, the first theories of organizations were
concerned primarily with the anatomy, or structure, of formal organizations. This was the
milieu, or the environment, the mode of thinking, that shaped and influenced the tenets
of classical organization theory.
Centralization of equipment and labor in factories, division of specialized labor, man
agement of specialization, and economic paybacks on factory equipment all were con
cerns of the Scottish economist Adam Sm ith’s work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The historian Arnold Toynbee (1956) identified Adam
Smith (1723-1790) and James Watt (1736-1819) as the two people who were most re
sponsible for pushing the world into industrialization. Watt, of course, invented the steam
engine.
Smith, who is considered the father of the academic discipline of economics, provided
the intellectual foundation for laissez-faire capitalism. The Wealth of Nations devotes its first
chapter, “O f the Division of Labour,” to a discussion of the optimum organization of a pin
factory. Why? Because specialization of labor was one of the pillars of Sm ith’s “invisible
hand” market mechanism in which the greatest rewards would go to those who were the
most efficient in the competitive marketplace. Traditional pin makers could produce only
a few dozen pins a day. When organized in a factory with each worker performing a limited
operation, they could produce tens of thousands a day. Sm ith’s “O f the Division of Labour”
is reprinted here because, coming as it did at the dawn of the industrial revolution, it is the
most famous and influential statement on the economic rationale of the factory sys
tem. Smith revolutionized thinking about economics and organizations. Thus we have
operationally defined 1776, the year in which Wealth of Nations was published, as the be
ginning point of organization theory as an applied science and academic discipline. Besides,
1776 was a good year for other events as well.
In 1856, Daniel C. McCallum (1815-1878), the visionary general superintendent of
the New York and Erie Railroad, elucidated general principles of organization that “may be
regarded as settled and necessary.” His principles included division of responsibilities, power
commensurate with responsibilities, and a reporting system that allowed managers to know
promptly if responsibilities were “faithfully executed” and to identify errors and “delin
quent” subordinates. McCallum, who is also credited with creating the first modem organi
zation chart, had an enormous influence on the managerial development of the American
railroad industry.
In systematizing America’s first big business before the Civil War, McCallum provided
the model principles and procedures of management for the big businesses that would fol
low after the war. He became so much the authority on running railroads that, as a major
general during the Civil War, he was chosen to run the Union’s military rail system. A l
though McCallum was highly influential as a practitioner, he was no scholar, and the only
coherent statement of his general principles comes from an annual report he wrote for the
New York and Erie Railroad. Excerpts from his “Superintendent’s Report” of March 25,
1856, are reprinted here.
During the 1800s, two practicing managers in the United States independently dis
covered that generally applicable principles of administration could be determined through
systematic, scientific investigation— about thirty years before Taylor’s Principles of Sci
entific Management or Fayol’s General and Industrial Management. The first, Captain Henry
Metcalfe (1847—1917) of the United States Army’s Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia,
urged managers to record production events and experiences systematically so that they
could use the information to improve production processes. He published his propositions
in The Cost of Manufactures and the Administration of Workshops, Public and Private (1885),
which also pioneered in the application of “pre-scientific management” methods to the
problems of managerial control and asserted that there is a “science of administration”
based upon principles discoverable by diligent observation. Although Metcalfe’s work is
important historically, it is so similar to that of Taylor and others that it is not included
here as a selection.
The second pre-scientific management advocate of the 1880s was Henry R. Towne
(1844—1924), cofounder and president of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company. In
1886 Towne proposed that shop management was of equal importance to engineering man
agement and that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (A SM E) should take a
leadership role in establishing a multicompany, engineering/management “database” on
shop practices or “the management of works.” The information could then be shared among
established and new enterprises. Several years later, A SM E adopted his proposal. The paper
he presented to the society, “The Engineer as Economist,” was published in Transactions of
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1886) and is reprinted here. Historians have
often considered it the first call for scientific management.
Interestingly, Towne had several significant associations with Frederick Winslow
Taylor. The two of them were fellow draftsmen at the Midvale Steel works during the
1880s. Towne gave Taylor one of his first true opportunities to succeed at applying sci
entific management principles at Yale & Towne in 1904. Towne also nominated Taylor for
the presidency of A SM E in 1906 and thus provided him with an international forum for
advocating scientific management. (Upon election, Taylor promptly reorganized the A SM E
according to scientific management principles.)
While the ideas of Adam Smith, Frederick Winslow Taylor, and others are still dom
inant influences on the design and management of organizations, it was Henri Fayol ( 1841—
1925), a French executive engineer, who developed the first comprehensive theory of man
agement. While Taylor was tinkering with the technology employed by the individual
worker, Fayol was theorizing about all of the elements necessary to organize and manage a
major corporation. Fayol’s major work, Administration Industrielle et Generale (published in
France in 1916), was almost ignored in the United States until Constance Storr’s English
translation, General and Industrial Management, appeared in 1949. Since that time, Fayol’s
theoretical contributions have been widely recognized, and his work is considered fully as
significant as that of Taylor.
Fayol believed that his concept of management was universally applicable to every type
of organization. Whereas he had six principles — technical (production of goods), commer
cial (buying, selling, and exchange activities), financial (raising and using capital), security
(protection of property and people), accounting, and managerial (coordination, control, or
ganization, planning, and command of people)— Fayol’s primary interest and emphasis was
on his final principle, managerial. It addressed such variables as division of work, authority
and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of indi
vidual interest to general interest, remuneration of personnel, centralization, scalar chains,
order, equity, stability of personnel tenure, initiative, and esprit de corps. Reprinted here
is Fayol’s “General Principles of Management,” a chapter from his General and Industrial
Management.
About 100 years after Adam Smith declared the factory to be the most appropriate
means of mass production, Frederick Winslow Taylor and a group of his followers were
“spreading the gospel” that factory workers could be much more productive if their work
were designed scientifically. Taylor, the acknowledged father of the scientific management
movement, pioneered the development of time and motion studies, originally under the
name “Taylorism” or the “Taylor system.” Taylorism, or its successor, scientific management,
was not a single invention but rather a series of methods and organizational arrangements
designed by Taylor and his associates to increase the efficiency and speed of machine-shop
production. Premised upon the notion that there was “one best way” of accomplishing any
given task, Taylor’s scientific management sought to increase output by discovering the
fastest, most efficient, and least fatiguing production methods.
The job of the scientific manager, once the “one best way” was found, was to impose this
procedure on his or her organization. Classical organization theory derives from a corollary
of this proposition. If there was one best way to accomplish any given production task, then
correspondingly, there must also be one best way to accomplish any task of social organi
zation— including organizing firms. Such principles of social organization were assumed to
exist and to be waiting to be discovered by diligent scientific observation and analysis.
Scientific management, as espoused by Taylor, also contained a powerful puritanical
social message. Taylor (1911) offered scientific management as the way for firms to increase
profits, get rid of unions, “increase the thrift and virtue of the working classes,” and raise
productivity so that the broader society could enter a new era of harmony based on higher
consumption of mass-produced goods by members of the laboring classes.
Scientific management emerged as a national movement during a series of events

in 1910. The railroad companies in the eastern states filed for increased freight rates with
the Interstate Commerce Commission. The railroads had been receiving poor press, being
blamed for (among many other things) a cost-price squeeze that was bankrupting farmers,
so the rate hearings received extensive media coverage. Louis D. Brandeis, a self-styled pop
ulist lawyer who would later be a Supreme Court justice, took the case against the railroads
without pay. Brandeis called in Harrington Emerson, a consultant who had “systematized”
the Santa Fe Railroad, to testify that the railroads did not need increased rates: they could
“save a million dollars a day” by using what Brandeis initially called “scientific manage
ment” methods (Urwick, 1956). A t first, Taylor was reluctant to use the phrase because it
sounded too academic. But the IC C hearings meant that the national scientific manage
ment boom was underway, and Taylor was its leader.
Taylor had a profound— almost revolutionary— effect on the fields of business and
public administration. He gained credence for the notion that organizational operations
could be planned and controlled systematically by experts using scientific principles. Many
of Taylor’s concepts and precepts are still in use today. The legacy of scientific management
is substantial. Taylor’s best-known work is his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Man
agement, but he also wrote numerous accounts on the subject. Reprinted here is an article,
also entitled “The Principles of Scientific Management,” which was the summary of an ad
dress given by him on March 3, 1915, two weeks prior to his death.
Several of Taylor’s associates subsequently gained wide recognition, including, for ex
ample, Frank (1868-1924) and Lillian (1878-1972) Gilbreth of Cheaper by the Dozen
(1948) and “therblig” (Spriegel & Myers, 1953) fame; Henry Laurence Gantt (1861-1919),
who invented the Gantt chart for planning work output (Alford, 1932); and Carl O. Barth
(1860-1939), who among his other accomplishments, in 1908 convinced the dean of the
new Harvard Business School to adopt Taylorism as the “foundation concept” of modern
management (Urwick, 1956).
In contrast with the fervent advocates of scientific management, Max Weber (1864 —
1920) was a brilliant analytical sociologist who happened to study bureaucratic organiza
tions. Bureaucracy has emerged as a dominant feature of the contemporary world. Virtually
everywhere one looks in both developed and developing nations, economic, social, and po
litical life is influenced extensively by bureaucratic organizations. Typically, bureaucracy is
used to refer to a specific set of structural arrangements. It is also used to refer to specific
patterns of behavior— patterns that are not restricted to formal bureaucracies. It is widely
assumed that the structural characteristics of organizations properly defined as bureaucratic
influence the behavior of individuals, whether clients or bureaucrats, who interact with
them. Contemporary thinking along these lines began with the work of Max Weber. His
analysis of bureaucracy, first published in 1922, remains the single most influential statement
and the point of departure for all further analyses on the subject (including those of the
“modem” structuralists in Chapter IV).
Drawing upon studies of ancient bureaucracies in Egypt, Rome, China, and the Byzan
tine Empire, as well as on the more modern ones emerging in Europe during the nineteenth
and early part of the twentieth centuries, Weber used an “ideal-type” approach to extrapo
late from the real world the central core of features characteristic of the most fully devel
oped bureaucratic form of organization. Weber’s “Bureaucracy,” which is included here, is
neither a description of reality nor a statement of normative preference. In fact, Weber

feared the potential implications of bureaucracies. Rather, his ideal-type bureaucracy is
merely an identification of the major variables or features that characterize this type of so
cial institution.
Luther Gulick’s “Notes on the Theory of Organization,” which was influenced heav
ily by the work of Henri Fayol, is one of the major statements of the “principles” approach
to managing the functions of organizations. It appeared in Papers on the Science of Admin
istration, a collection that Gulick and Lyndall Urwick edited in 1937. Here Gulick intro
duced his famous mnemonic, PO SD CO RB, which stood for the seven major functions of
executive management— planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting,
and budgeting. Gulick’s principles of administration also included unity of command and
span of control. Overall, Papers was a statement of the “state of the art” of organization the
ory. The study of organizations through analysis of management functions continues within
the field of organization theory.
Daniel A. Wren (1972) once observed that “the development of a body of knowledge
about how to manage has . . . evolved within a framework of the economic, social, and po
litical facets of various cultures. Management thought is both a process in and a product of
its cultural environment.” The selections we have chosen to represent the classical school
of organization theory vividly demonstrate Wren’s thesis. Looking through today’s lenses,
it is tempting to denigrate the contributions of the classicalists — to view them as narrow
and simplistic. In the context of their times, however, they were brilliant pioneers. Their
thinking provided invaluable foundations for the field of organization theory, and their
influence upon organization theory and theorists continues today.
REFERENCES
Al-Buraey, M. A. (1985). Administrative development: An Islamic perspective. London: Kegan Paul
International.
Alford, L. P. (1932). Henry Laurence Gantt: Leader in industry. New York: Harper & Row.
Babbage, C. (1832). On the economy of machinery and manufactures. Philadelphia, PA: Carey & Lea.
Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management. Trans. C. Storrs. London: Pitman. (Originally
published in 1916.)
George, C. S., Jr. (1972). The history of management thought. 2ded. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Gilbreth, F. B., Jr., & E. G. Carey (1948). Cheaper by the dozen. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.
Gulick, L. (1937). Notes on the theory of organization. In L. Gulick & L. Urwick, eds., Papers on the
science of administration (pp. 3-34). New York: Institute of Public Administration.
McCallum, D. C. (1856). Superintendents report, March 25, 1856. In Annual report of the New York
and Erie Railroad Company for 1855. In A. D. Chandler, Jr., ed., The railroads (pp. 101-108).
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Merkle, J. A. (1980). Management and ideology: The legacy of the international scientific management
movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Metcalfe, H. (1885). The cost of manufactures and the administration of workshops, public and private.
New York: Wiley.
Smith, A. (1776). Of the division of labour. In An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of na
tions (chap. 1, pp. 5-15). Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell in the Strand, London, 1776.
Spriegel, W. R., & C. E. Myers, eds. (1953). The writings of the Gilbreths. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York: Norton.
Taylor, F. W. (1916, December). The principles of scientific management: Bulletin of the Taylor Soci-
ety. An abstract of an address given by the late Dr. Taylor before the Cleveland Advertising
Club, March 3, 1915.
Towne, H. R. (1886, May). The engineer as an economist. Transactions of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers, 7, 428-432. Paper presented at a meeting of the Society, Chicago, IL.
Toynbee, A. (1956). The industrial revolution. Boston: Beacon Press. (Originally published in 1884-)
Urwick, L. (1956). The golden book of management. London: Newman, Neame.
Weber, M. (1922). Bureaucracy. In H. Gerth & C. W. Mills, eds., Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Ox
ford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Wren, D. A. (1972). The evolution of management thought. New York: Ronald Press.
Xenophon (1869). The memorabilia of Socrates. Trans. Rev. J. S. Watson. New York: Harper & Row.
i
Socrates Discovers Generic Management
Seeing Nicomachides, one day, coming from “Well, then,” rejoined Socrates, “if he
the assembly for the election of magistrates, finds out and selects the best men in mili
he asked him, “Who have been chosen gen-- tary affairs, as he has done in the conduct of
erals, Nicomachides?” his choruses, he will probably attain superi
“Are not the Athenians the same as ever, ority in this respect also; and it is likely that
Socrates?” he replied; “for they have not he will be more willing to spend money for
chosen me, who am worn out with serving a victory in war on behalf of the whole
on the list, both as captain and centurion, state, than for a victory with a chorus in be
and with having received so many wounds half of his single tribe.”
from the enemy (he then drew aside his “Do you say, then, Socrates,” said he, “that
robe, and showed the scars of the wounds), it is in the power of the same man to manage
but have elected Antisthenes, who has a chorus well, and to manage an army well?”
never served in the heavy-armed infantry, “I say,” said Socrates, “that over whatever
nor done anything remarkable in the cav a man may preside, he will, if he knows what
alry, and who indeed knows nothing, but he needs, and is able to provide it, to be a
how to get m oney” good president, whether he have the direc
“It is not good, however, to know this,” tion of a chorus, a family, a city, or an army.”
said Socrates, “since he will then be able to “By Jupiter, Socrates,” cried N icom ach
get necessaries for the troops?” ides, “I should never have expected to hear
“But merchants,” replied Nicomachides, from you that good managers of a family
“are able to collect money; and yet would would also be good generals.”
not on that account, be capable of leading “Come, then,” proceeded Socrates, “let us
an army” consider what are the duties of each of them,
“Antisthenes, however,” continued Soc that we may understand whether they are
rates, “is given to emulation, a quality nec the same, or are in any respect different.”
essary in a general. Do you not know that “By all means.”
whenever he has been chorus-manager “Is it not, then, the duty of both,” asked
he has gained the superiority in all his Socrates, “to render those under their com
choruses?” mand obedient and submissive to them?”
“But, by Jupiter,” rejoined N icom ach “Unquestionably.”
ides, “there is nothing similar in managing “Is it not also the duty of both to intrust
a chorus and an army.” various employments to such as are fitted to
“Yet Antisthenes,” said Socrates, “though execute them?”
neither skilled in music nor in teaching a “That is also unquestionable.”
chorus, was able to find out the best masters “To punish the bad, and to honor the
in these departments.” good, too, belongs, I think, to each of them.”
“In the army, accordingly,” exclaimed “Undoubtedly.”
Nicomachides, “he will find others to range “And is it not honorable in both to ren
his troops for him, and others to fight der those under them well-disposed toward
for him !” them?”
Xenophon, The A n abasis or Expedition o f C yru s and the M em orabilia o f Socrates, trans. J. S. Watson (New
So u rce:
York: Harper & Row, 1869), 430-433.
35
“That also is certain.” with them, nothing so unprofitable and prej'

“And do you think it for the interest of udicial as to be defeated, will zealously seek
both to gain for themselves allies and auxib and provide every thing that may conduce
iaries or not?” to victory, will carefully watch and guard
“It assuredly is for their interest.” against whatever tends to defeat, will vigor'
“Is it not proper for both also to be care' ously engage if he sees that his force is likely
ful of their resources?” to conquer, and, what is not the least im'
“Assuredly.” portant point, will cautiously avoid engag'
“And is it not proper for both, therefore, ing if he finds himself insufficiently pre'
to be attentive and industrious in their re' pared. Do not, therefore, Nicomachides,” he
spective duties?” added, “despise men skillful in managing a
“All these particulars,” said Nicom ach' household; for the conduct of private affairs
ides, “are common alike to both; but it is not differs from that of public concerns only in
common to both to fight.” magnitude; in other respects they are simi'
“Yet both have doubtless enemies,” re' lar; but what is most to be observed, is, that
joined Socrates. neither of them are managed without men,
“That is probably the case,” said the other. and that private matters are not managed by
“Is it not for the interest of both to gain one species of men, and public matters by
the superiority over those enemies?” another; for those who conduct public bush
“Certainly; but to say something on that ness make use of men not at all differing in
point, what, I ask, will skill in managing a nature from those whom the managers of
household avail, if it be necessary to fight?” private affairs employ; and those who know
“It will doubtless in that case, be of the how to employ them conduct either public
greatest avail,” said Socrates; “for a good or private affairs judiciously, while those
manager of a house, knowing that nothing who do not know will err in the manage'
is so advantageous or profitable as to get the ment of both.”
better of your enemies when you contend
2
O f the Division of Labour
A dam Sm ith
The greatest improvement in the produce the division of labour has rendered a distinct
tive powers of labour, and the greater part trade), nor acquainted with the use of the
of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with machinery employed in it (to the invention
which it is any where directed, or applied, of which the same division of labour has
seem to have been the effects of the division probably given occasion), could scarce, per
of labour. haps, with his utmost industry, make one
The effects of the division of labour, in pin in a day, and certainly could not make
the general business of society, will be more twenty. But in the way in which this busi
easily understood, by considering in what ness is now carried on, not only the whole
manner it operates in some particular manu work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into
factures. It is commonly supposed to be car a number of branches, of which the greater
ried furthest in some very trifling ones; not part are likewise peculiar trades. One man
perhaps that it really is carried further in draws out the wire, another straights it, a
them than in others of more importance: third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds
but in those trifling manufactures which are it at the top for receiving the head; to make
destined to supply the small wants of but a the head requires two or three distinct oper
small number of people, the whole number ations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to
of workmen must necessarily be small; and whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade
those employed in every different branch of by itself to put them into the paper; and the
the work can often be collected into the important business of making a pin is, in
same workhouse, and placed at once under this manner, divided into about eighteen
the view of the spectator. In those great distinct operations, which, in some man
manufactures, on the contrary, which are ufactories, are all performed by distinct
destined to supply the great wants of the hands, though in others the same man will
great body of the people, every different sometimes perform two or three of them.
branch of the work employs so great a num I have seen a small manufactory of this kind
ber of workmen, that it is impossible to col where ten men only were employed, and
lect them all into the same workhouse. We where some of them consequently per
can seldom see more, at one time, than those formed two or three distinct operations. But
employed in one single branch. Though in though they were very poor, and therefore
such manufactures, therefore, the work may but indifferently accommodated with the
really be divided into a much greater number necessary machine, they could, when they
of parts, than in those of a more trifling na exerted themselves, make among them
ture, the division is not near so obvious, and about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There
has accordingly been much less observed. are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins
To take an example, therefore, from a very of a middling size. Those ten persons, there
trifling manufacture; but one in which the fore, could make among them upwards of
division of labour has been very often taken forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each per
notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a work son, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-
man not educated to this business (which eight thousand pins, might be considered as
Source:Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes o f the xvealth o f nations (1776), Chapter 1. Footnotes
omitted.
37
making four thousand eight hundred pins in a distinct person from the weaver; but the
a day. But if they had all wrought separately ploughman, the harrower, the sower of the
and independently, and without any of seed, and the reaper of the corn, are often
them having been educated to this peculiar the same. The occasions for those different
business, they certainly could not each of sorts of labour returning with the different
them have made twenty, perhaps not one seasons of the year, it is impossible that one
pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two man should be constantly employed in any
hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four one of them. This impossibility of making
thousand eight hundredth part of what they so complete and entire a separation of all
are at present capable of performing, in com the different branches of labour employed
sequence of a proper division and combina in agriculture, is perhaps the reason why
tion of their different operations. the improvement of the productive powers
In every other art and manufacture, the of labour in this art, does not always keep
effects of the division of labour are similar pace with their improvement in manufac
to what they are in this very trifling one; tures. The most opulent nations, indeed,
though, in many of them, the labour can generally excel all their neighbours in ag
neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced riculture as well as in manufactures; but
to so great a simplicity of operation. The di they are commonly more distinguished by
vision of labour, however, so far as it can be their superiority in the latter than in the for
introduced, occasions, in every art, a pro mer. Their lands are in general better culti
portionable increase of the productive pow vated, and having more labour and expence
ers of labour. The separation of different bestowed upon them, produce more in pro
trades and employments from one another, portion to the extent and natural fertility of
seems to have taken place, in consequence the ground. But this superiority of produce
of this advantage. This separation too is is seldom much more than in proportion to
generally carried furthest in those countries the superiority of labour and expence. In
which enjoy the highest degree of industry agriculture, the labour of the rich country
and improvement; what is the work of one is not always much more productive than
man in a rude state of society, being gen that of the poor; or, at least, it is never so
erally that of several in an improved one. much more productive, as it commonly is in
In every improved society, the farmer is manufactures. The corn of the rich country,
generally nothing but a farmer; the manu therefore, will not always, in the same de
facturer, nothing but a manufacturer. The gree of goodness, come cheaper to market
labour too which is necessary to produce any than that of the poor. The corn of Poland,
one complete manufacture, is almost always in the same degree of goodness is as cheap
divided among a great number of hands. as that of France, notwithstanding the su
How many different trades are employed in perior opulence and improvement of the
each branch of the linen and woollen man latter country. The com of France is, in the
ufactures, from the growers of the flax and com provinces, fully as good, and most years
the wool, to the bleachers and smoothers nearly about the same price with the corn of
of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers of England, though, in opulence and improve
the cloth! The nature of agriculture, in ment, France is perhaps inferior to England.
deed, does not admit of so many subdivi The com lands of England, however, are
sions of labour, nor of so complete a sepa better cultivated than those of France, and
ration of one business from another, as the corn lands of France are said to be much
manufactures. It is impossible to separate better cultivated than those of Poland. But
so entirely, the business of the grazier from though the poor country, notwithstanding
that of the corn-farmer, as the trade of the the inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some
carpenter is commonly separated from that measure, rival the rich in the cheapness and
of the smith. The spinner is almost always goodness of its com, it can pretend to no
O f the Division of Labour 39
such competition in its manufactures; at nails, and who, when they exerted them
least if those manufactures suit the soil, cli selves, could make, each of them, upwards
mate, and situation of the rich country. The of two thousand three hundred nails in a
silks of France are better and cheaper than day. The making of a nail, however, is by
those of England, because the silk manufac no means one of the simplest operations.
ture, at least under the present high duties The same person blows the bellows, stirs
upon the importation of raw silk, does not or mends the Ere as there is occasion, heats
so well suit the climate of England as that the iron, and forges every part of the nail:
of France. But the hardware and the coarse In forging the head too he is obliged to
woollens of England are beyond all compar change his tools. The different operations
ison superior to those of France, and much into which the making of a pin, or of a
cheaper too in the same degree of goodness. metal button, is subdivided, are all of them
In Poland there are said to be scarce any much more simple, and the dexterity of the
manufactures of any kind, a few of those person, of whose life it has been the sole
coarser household manufactures excepted, business to perform them, is usually much
without which no country can well subsist. greater. The rapidity with which some of
This great increase of the quantity of the operations of those manufactures are
work, which, in consequence of the division performed, exceeds what the human hand
of labour, the same number of people are ca could, by those who had never seen them,
pable of performing, is owing to three dif be supposed capable of acquiring.
ferent circumstances; first, to the increase of Secondly, the advantage which is gained
dexterity in every particular workman; sec by saving the time commonly lost in passing
ondly, to the saving of the time which is from one sort of work to another, is much
commonly lost in passing from one species greater than we should at Erst view be apt
of work to another; and lastly, to the inven to imagine it. It is impossible to pass very
tion of a great number of machines which quickly from one kind of work to another,
facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one that is carried on in a different place, and
man to do the work of many. with quite different tools. A country weaver,
First, the improvement of the dexterity who cultivates a small farm, must lose a good
of the workman necessarily increases the deal of time in passing from his loom to his
quantity of the work he can perform; and Eeld, and from the field to his loom. When
the division of labour, by reducing every the two trades can be carried on in the same
man’s business to some one simple opera workhouse, the loss of time is no doubt much
tion, and by making this operation the sole less. It is even in this case, however, very
employment of his life, necessarily increases considerable. A man commonly saunters a
very much the dexterity of the workman. A little in turning his hand from one sort of
common smith, who, though accustomed employment to another. When he first be
to handle the hammer, has never been used gins the new work he is seldom very keen
to make nails, if upon some particular occa and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not
sion he is obliged to attempt it, will scarce, go to it, and from some time he rather trifles
I am assured, be able to make above two or than applies to good purpose. The habit of
three hundred nails in a day, and those too sauntering and of indolent careless applica
very bad ones. A smith who has been ac tion, which is naturally, or rather necessar
customed to make nails, but whose sole or ily acquired by every country workman who
principal business has not been that of a is obliged to change his work and his tools
nailer, can seldom with his utmost diligence every half hour, and to apply his hand in
make more than eight hundred or a thou twenty different ways almost every day of his
sand nails in a day. I have seen several boys life, renders him almost always slothful and
under twenty years of age who had never ex lazy, and incapable of any vigorous applica
ercised any other trade but that of making tion even on the most pressing occasions.
Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in machine, the valve would open and shut
point of dexterity, this cause alone must without his assistance, and leave him at lib
always reduce considerably the quantity of erty to divert himself with his playfellows.
work which he is capable of performing. One of the greatest improvements that has
Thirdly, and lastly, every body must be been made upon this machine, since it was
sensible how much labour is facilitated and first invented, was in this manner the dis
abridged by the application of proper ma covery of a boy who wanted to save his own
chinery. It is unnecessary to give any ex labour.
ample. I shall only observe, therefore, that A ll the improvements in machinery,
the invention of all those machines by however, have by no means been the in
which labour is so much facilitated and ventions of those who had occasion to use
abridged, seems to have been originally ow the machines. Many improvements have
ing to the division of labour. Men are much been made by the ingenuity of the makers
more likely to discover easier and readier of the machines, when to make them be
methods of attaining any object, when the come the business of a peculiar trade; and
whole attention of their minds is directed some by that of those who are called philos
towards that single object, than when it is ophers or men of speculation, whose trade it
dissipated among a great variety of things. is not to do any thing, but to observe every
But in consequence of the division of labour, thing; and who, upon that account, are of
the whole of every man’s attention comes ten capable of combining together the pow
naturally to be directed towards some one ers of the most distant and dissimilar ob
very simple object. It is naturally to be ex jects. In the progress of society, philosophy
pected, therefore, that some one or other or speculation becomes, like every other em
of those who are employed in each particu ployment, the principal or sole trade and
lar branch of labour should soon find out occupation of a particular class of citizens.
easier and readier methods of performing Like every other employment too, it is sub
their own particular work, wherever the divided into a great number of different
nature of it admits of such improvement. branches, each of which affords occupation
A great part of the machines made use of in to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers;
those manufactures in which labour is most and this subdivision of employment in phi
subdivided, were originally the inventions losophy, as well as in every other business,
of common workmen, who, being each of improves dexterity, and saves time. Each
them employed in some very simple oper individual becomes more expert in his own
ation, naturally turned their thoughts to peculiar branch, more work is done upon
wards finding out easier and readier meth the whole, and the quantity of science is
ods of performing it. Whoever has been considerably increased by it.
much accustomed to visit such manufac It is the great multiplication of the pro
tures, must frequently have been shewn very ductions of all the different arts, in con
pretty machines, which were the inven sequence of the division of labour, which
tions of such workmen, in order to facilitate occasions, in a well-governed society, that
and quicken their own particular part of the universal opulence which extends itself to
work. In the first fire-engines, a boy was the lowest ranks of the people. Every work
constantly employed to open and shut al man has a great quantity of his own work
ternately the communication between the to dispose of beyond what he himself has
boiler and the cylinder, according as the pis occasion for; and every other workman be
ton either ascended or descended. One of ing exactly in the same situation, he is en
those boys, who loved to play with his com abled to exchange a great quantity of his
panions, observed that, by tying a string own goods for a great quantity, or, what
from the handle of the valve which opened comes to the same thing, for the price of a
this communication to another part of the great quantity of theirs. He supplies them
O f the Division of Labour 41
abundantly with what they have occasion the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the
for, and they accommodate him as amply smith, must all of them join their different
with what he has occasion for, and a general arts in order to produce them. Were we to
plenty diffuses itself through all the differ- examine, in the same manner, all the differ
ent ranks of the society. ent parts of his dress and household furni
Observe the accommodation of the most ture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears
common artificer or day-labourer in a civi next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet,
lized and thriving country, and you will per the bed which he lies on, and all the differ
ceive that the number of people of whose ent parts which compose it, the kitchen
industry a part, though but a small part, grate at which he prepares his victuals, the
has been employed in procuring him his coals which he makes use of for that pur
accommodation, exceeds all computation. pose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and
The woollen coat, for example, which cov brought to him perhaps by a long sea and a
ers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as long land carriage, all the other utensils of
it may appear, is the produce of the joint la his kitchen, all the furniture of his table,
bour of a great multitude of workmen. The the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter
shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool- plates upon which he serves up and divides
comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the his victuals, the different hands employed
spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass
with many others, must all join their dif window which lets in the heat and the
ferent arts in order to complete even this light, and keeps out the wind and the rain,
homely production. How many merchants with all the knowledge and art requisite for
and carriers, besides, must have been em preparing that beautiful and happy inven
ployed in transporting the materials from tion, without which these northern parts of
some of those workmen to others who often the world could scarce have afforded a very
live in a very distant part of the country! comfortable habitation, together with the
How much commerce and navigation in tools of all the different workmen employed
particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, in producing those different conveniences;
sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been if we examine, I say, all these things, and
employed in order to bring together the dif consider what a variety of labour is em
ferent drugs made use of by the dyer, which ployed about each of them, we shall be sen
often come from the remotest corners of the sible that without the assistance and cooper
world! W hat a variety of labour too is nec ation of many thousands, the very meanest
essary in order to produce the tools of the person in a civilized country could not be
meanest of those workmen! To say nothing provided, even according to, what we very
of such complicated machines as the ship falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner
of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even in which he is commonly accommodated.
the loom of the weaver, let us consider only Compared, indeed, with the more extrava
what a variety of labour is requisite in order gant luxury of the great, his accommodation
to form that very simple machine, the shears must no doubt appear extremely simple and
with which the shepherd clips the wool. easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that
The miner, the builder of the furnace for the accommodation of an European prince
smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, does not always so much exceed that of an
the burner of the charcoal to be made use industrious and frugal peasant, as the ac
of in the smelting-house, the brick-maker, commodation of the latter exceeds that of
the brick-layer, the work-men who attend many an African king. . . .
3
Superintendent’s Report
O f f ic e G eneral S u p ’t N .Y . & and any system, however imperfect, may un
E r ieR. R. der such circumstances prove comparatively
N ew Yo r k , M arch 25, 1856 successful.
In the government of a road five hun
H om er R a m sd ell, E sq . dred miles in length a very different state of
Pr e s id e n t of th e N ew Yo r k and things exists. Any system which might be
E r ie R a il r o a d C om pany: applicable to the business and extent of a
short road, would be found entirely inade
S ir : quate to the wants of a long one; and I am
The magnitude of the business of this road, fully convinced, that in the want of a sys
its numerous and important connections, tem perfect in its details, properly adapted
and the large number of employes engaged and vigilantly enforced, lies the true secret
in operating it, have led many, whose opin- of their failure; and that this disparity of cost
ions are entitled to respect, to the conclu per mile in operating long and short roads,
sion, that a proper regard to details, which is not produced by a difference in length, but
enter so largely into the elements of success is in proportion to the perfection of the sys
in the management of all railroads, cannot tem adopted.
possibly be attained by any plan that con Entertaining these views, I had the honor,
templates its organization as a whole; and more than a year since, to submit for your
in proof of this position, the experience consideration and approval a plan for the
of shorter roads is referred to, the business more effective organization of this depart
operations of which have been conducted ment. The system then proposed has to some
much more economically. extent been introduced, and experience,
Theoretically, other things being equal, a so far, affords the strongest assurances that
long road should be operated for a less cost when fully carried out, the most satisfactory
per mile than a short one. This position is results will be obtained.
so clearly evident and so generally admit In my opinion a system of operations, to
ted, that its truth may be assumed without be efficient and successful, should be such
offering any arguments in support of it; and, as to give to the principal and responsible
notwithstanding the reverse, so far as prac head of the running department a complete
tical results are considered, has generally daily history of details in all their minutiae.
been the case, we must look to other causes Without such supervision, the procurement
than the mere difference in length of roads of a satisfactory annual statement must be
for a solution of the difficulty. regarded as extremely problematical. The
A Superintendent of a road fifty miles in fact that dividends are earned without such
length can give its business his personal control does not disprove the position, as in
attention, and may be almost constantly many cases the extraordinarily remunera
upon the line engaged in the direction of its tive nature of an enterprise may ensure sat
details; each employe is familiarly known to isfactory returns under the most loose and
him, and all questions in relation to its busi inefficient management.
ness are at once presented and acted upon; It may be proper here to remark that in
Source: Daniel C. McCallum, “Superintendent’s Report,” March 25, 1856, in A n n u al Report o f the N ew York and
Erie Railroad C om pany for 1855 (New York, 1856).
42
Superintendent’s Report 43
consequence of that want of adaptation be same to be fully carried out, that such
fore alluded to, we cannot avail ourselves to responsibilities may be real in their
any great extent of the plan of organization character.
of shorter lines in framing one for this, nor 3. The means of knowing whether such re
sponsibilities are faithfully executed.
have we any precedent or experience upon
4. Great promptness in the report of all dere
which we can fully rely in doing so. Under lictions of duty, that evils may be at once
these circumstances, it will scarcely be ex corrected.
pected that we can at once adopt any plan 5. Such information, to be obtained through
of operations which will not require amend a system of daily reports and checks
ment and a reasonable time to prove its that will not embarrass principal offi
worth. A few general principles, however, cers, nor lessen their influence with their
may be regarded as settled and necessary in subordinates.
its formation, amongst which are: 6. The adoption of a system, as a whole,
which will not only enable the General Su
1. A proper division of responsibilities. perintendent to detect errors immediately,
2. Sufficient power conferred to enable the but will also point out the delinquent.
4
The Engineer as Economist
H enry R . Towne
The monogram of our national initials, has its highest effectiveness if united in one
which is the symbol of our monetary unit, person, who is thus qualified to supervise,
the dollar, is almost as frequently conjoined either personally or through assistants, the
to the figures of an engineer’s calculations operations of all departments of a business,
as are the symbols indicating feet, minutes, and to subordinate each to the harmonious
pounds, or gallons. The final issue of his development of the whole.
work, in probably a majority of cases, re- Engineering has long been conceded a
solves itself into a question of dollars and place as one of the modem arts, and has
cents, of relative or absolute values. This become a well-defined science, with a large
statement, while true in regard to the work and growing literature of its own, and of
of all engineers, applies particularly to that late years has subdivided itself into numer
of the mechanical engineer, for the reason ous and distinct divisions, one of which is
that his functions, more frequently than that of mechanical engineering. It will prob
in the case of others, include the execu- ably not be disputed that the matter of shop
tive duties of organizing and superintend^ management is of equal importance with
ing the operations of industrial establish^ that of engineering, as affecting the success
ments, and of directing the labor of the ful conduct of most, if not all, of our great
artisans whose organized efforts yield the industrial establishments, and that the man
fruition of his work. agement of works has become a matter of such
To insure the best results, the organiza- great and far-reaching importance as per
tion of productive labor must be directed haps to justify its classification also as one of
and controlled by persons having not only the modem arts. The one is a well-defined
good executive ability, and possessing the science, with a distinct literature, with nu
practical familiarity of a mechanic or en- merous journals and with many associa
gineer with the goods produced and the tions for the interchange of experience; the
processes employed, but having also, and other is unorganized, is almost without lit
equally, a practical knowledge of how to erature, has no organ or medium for the
observe, record, analyze and compare essen- interchange of experience, and is without
tial facts in relation to wages, supplies, ex- association or organization of any kind. A
pense accounts, and all else that enters into vast amount of accumulated experience in
or affects the economy of production and the art of workshop management already
the cost of the product. There are many exists, but there is no record of it available
good mechanical engineers; — there are also to the world in general, and each old enter
many good “business men”;— but the two prise is managed more or less in its own way,
are rarely combined in one person. But this receiving little benefit from the parallel ex
combination of qualities, together with at perience of other similar enterprises, and
least some skill as an accountant, either in imparting as little of its own to them; while
one person or more, is essential to the suc- each new enterprise, starting de novo and
cessful management of industrial works, and with much labor, and usually at much cost
Source: Transactions o f the A m erican Society o f M echanical Engineers, Vol. 7 (Paper presented at May 1886 meeting
of the Society, Chicago), 428-432.
44
The Engineer as Economist 45
for experience, gradually develops a more or upon actual and most extensive experience.
less perfect system of its own, according to What is now needed is a medium for the in
the ability of its managers, receiving little terchange of this experience among those
benefit or aid from all that may have been whom it interests and concerns. Probably
done previously by others in precisely the no better way for this exists than that ob
same field of work. taining in other instances, namely, by the
Surely this condition of things is wrong publication of papers and reports, and by
and should be remedied. But the remedy meetings for the discussion of papers and
must not be looked for from those who interchange of opinions.
are “business men” or clerks and accoun- The subject thus outlined, however dis
tants only; it should come from those whose tinct and apart from the primary functions
training and experience has given them of this society, is, nevertheless, germane to
an understanding of both sides (viz.: the the interests of most, if not all, of its mem
mechanical and the clerical) of the impor- bers. Conceding this, why should not the
tant questions involved. It should origi- function of the society be so enlarged as to
nate, therefore, from those who are also embrace this new field of usefulness? This
engineers, and, for the reasons above in- work, if undertaken, may be kept separate
dicated, particularly from mechanical en- and distinct from the present work of the
gineers. Granting this, why should it society by organizing a new “section” (which
not originate from, and be promoted by might be designated the “Economic Sec
The American Society of Mechanical tion”), the scope of which would embrace
Engineers? all papers and discussions relating to the
To consider this proposition more defi topics herein referred to. The meetings of
nitely, let us state the work which requires this section could be held either separately
to be done. The questions to be considered, from, or immediately following the regular
and which need recording and publication meetings of the society, and its papers could
as conducing to discussion and the dissemi- appear as a supplement to the regular trans
nation of useful knowledge in this specialty, actions. In this way all interference would
group themselves under two principal heads, be avoided with the primary and chief busi
namely: Shop Management, and Shop A c ness of the society, and the attendance at
counting. A third head may be named which the meetings of the new section would nat
is subordinate to, and partly included in urally resolve itself into such portion of the
each of these, namely: Shop Forms and membership as is interested in the objects
Blanks. Under the head of Shop Manage for which it would be organized.
ment fall the questions of organization, re As a single illustration of the class of sub-
sponsibility, reports, systems of contract and jects to be covered by the discussions and
piece work, and all that relates to the execu papers of the proposed new section, and of
tive management of works, mills and facto the benefit to be derived therefrom, there
ries. Under the head of Shop Accounting may be cited the case of a manufacturing
fall the questions of time and wages systems, establishment in which there are now in
determination of costs, whether by piece or use, in connection with the manufactur
day-work, the distribution of the various ex ing accounts and exclusive of the ordinary
pense accounts, the ascertainment of profits, commercial accounts, some twenty various
methods of bookkeeping, and all that enters forms of special record and account books,
into the system of accounts which relates to and more than one hundred printed forms
the manufacturing departments of a busi and blanks. The primary object to which all
ness, and to the determination and record of these contribute is the systematic record
of its results. ing of the operations of the different depart
There already exists an enormous fund of ments of the works, and the computation
information relating to such matters, based therefrom of such statistical information
FIGURE 1
as is essential to the efficient management which he would derive from the experience
of the business, and especially to increased of others.
economy of production. All of these special In the case of the establishment above
books and forms have been the outgrowth referred to, a special system of contract and
of experience extending over many years, piece-work has been in operation for some
and represent a large amount of thoughtful fifteen years, the results from which, in re
planning and intelligent effort at constant ducing the labor cost on certain products
development and improvement. The meth- without encroaching upon the earnings of
ods thus arrived at would undoubtedly be of the men engaged, have been quite striking.
great value to others engaged in similar op- A few of these results selected at random,
erations, and particularly to persons engaged are indicated by the accompanying diagram
in organizing and starting new enterprises. (Figure 1), the diagonal lines on which rep
It is probable that much, if not all, of the in- resent the fluctuations in the labor cost of
formation and experience referred to would certain special products during the time cov
be willingly made public through such a ered by the table, the vertical scale repre
channel as is herein suggested, particularly senting values.
if such action on the part of one firm or cor Undoubtedly a portion of the reductions
poration would be responded to in like man thus indicated resulted from improved ap
ner by others, so that each member could pliances, larger product, and increased expe
reasonably expect to receive some equiva rience, but after making due allowance for
lent for his contributions by the benefit all of these, there remains a large portion of
The Engineer as Economist 47
the reduction which, to the writer’s knowl In conclusion, it is suggested that if the
edge, is fairly attributable to the operation plan herein proposed commends itself favor
of the peculiar piece-work system adopted. ably to the members present at the meeting
The details and operations of this system at which it is presented, the subject had
would probably be placed before the society, best be referred to a special committee, by
in due time, through the channel of the pro whom it can be carefully considered, and by
posed new section, should the latter take whom, if it seems expedient to proceed fur
definite form. Other, and probably much ther, the whole matter can be matured and
more valuable, information and experience formulated in an orderly manner, and thus
relating to systems of contract and piece be so presented at a future meeting as to en
work would doubtless be contributed by able the society then intelligently to act
other members, and in the aggregate a great upon the question, and to decide whether
amount of information of a most valuable or not to adopt the recommendations made
character would thus be made available to by such committee.
the whole membership of the society.
5
General Principles of Management
H en ri Fayol
The managerial function finds its only out' 1. Division of work.

let through the members of the organiza' 2. Authority and responsibility.
tion (body corporate). Whilst the other 3. Discipline.
functions bring into play material and ma' 4- Unity of command.
5. Unity of direction.
chines the managerial function operates
6. Subordination of individual interest to
only on the personnel. The soundness and
the general interest.
good working order of the body corporate 7. Remuneration of personnel.
depend on a certain number of conditions 8. Centralization.
termed indiscriminately principles, laws, 9. Scalar chain (line of authority).
rules. For preference I shall adopt the term 10. Order.
principles whilst dissociating it from any 11. Equity.
suggestion of rigidity, for there is nothing 12. Stability of tenure of personnel.
rigid or absolute in management affairs, it 13. Initiative.
is all a question of proportion. Seldom do 14. Esprit de corps.
we have to apply the same principle twice
in identical conditions; allowance must be
made for different changing circumstances, 1. D IV ISIO N O F W O RK
for men just as different and changing and
for many other variable elements. Specialization belongs to the natural order;
Therefore principles are flexible and it is observable in the animal world, where
capable of adaptation to every need; it is the more highly developed the creature the
a matter of knowing how to make use of more highly differentiated its organs; it is ob'
them, which is a difficult art requiring h> servable in human societies where the more
telligence, experience, decision and pn> important the body corporate1 the closer
portion. Compounded of tact and experb is the relationship between structure and
ence, proportion is one of the foremost function. As society grows, so new organs
attributes of the manager. There is no limit develop destined to replace the single one
to the number of principles of manage' performing all functions in the primitive
ment, every rule or managerial procedure state.
which strengthens the body corporate or fa' The object of division of work is to pn>
cilitates its functioning has a place among duce more and better work with the same e f
the principles so long, at least, as experb fort. The worker always on the same part, the
ence confirms its worthiness. A change in manager concerned always with the same
the state of affairs can be responsible for matters, acquire an ability, sureness, and ac'
change of rules which had been engendered curacy which increase their output. Each
by that state. change of work brings in its train an adap'
I am going to review some of the prim tation which reduces output. Division of
ciples of management which I have most fre- work permits reduction in the number of ob'
quently had to apply; viz.— jects to which attention and effort must be
Source: Henri Fayol, G en eral and Industrial M anagem ent, trans. Constance Storrs (London: Pitman Publishing,
Ltd., 1949), 19-42. (Original work published 1916.)
48
General Principles of Management 49
directed and has been recognized as the best case of a foreman it is somewhat difficult,
means of making use of individuals and of and proportionately as one goes up the
groups of people. It is not merely applicable scalar chain of businesses, as work grows
to technical work, but without exception more complex, as the number of workers
to all work involving a more or less consid involved increases, as the final result is
erable number of people and demanding more remote, it is increasingly difficult to
abilities of various types, and it results in spe isolate the share of the initial act of author
cialization of functions and separation of ity in the ultimate result and to establish
powers. Although its advantages are uni the degree of responsibility of the manager.
versally recognized and although possibility The measurement of this responsibility and
of progress is inconceivable without the its equivalent in material terms elude all
specialized work of learned men and artists, calculation.
yet division of work has its limits which ex Sanction, then, is a question of kind,
perience and a sense of proportion teach us custom, convention, and judging it one
may not be exceeded. must take into account the action itself,
the attendant circumstances and poten
tial repercussions. Judgment demands high
2. A U T H O R IT Y AND moral character, impartiality and firmness.
R E S P O N S IB IL IT Y If all these conditions are not fulfilled there
is a danger that the sense of responsibility
Authority is the right to give orders and may disappear from the concern.
the power to exact obedience. Distinction Responsibility valiantly undertaken and
must be made between a manager’s official borne merits some consideration; it is a kind
authority deriving from office and personal of courage everywhere much appreciated.
authority, compounded of intelligence, ex Tangible proof of this exists in the salary
perience, moral worth, ability to lead, past level of some industrial leaders, which is
services, etc. In the make up of a good head much higher than that of civil servants of
personal authority is the indispensable com comparable rank but carrying no responsi
plement of official authority. Authority is bility. Nevertheless, generally speaking, re
not to be conceived of apart from responsi sponsibility is feared as much as authority is
bility, that is apart from sanction— reward sought after, and fear of responsibility para
or penalty— which goes with the exercise lyses much initiative and destroys many
of power. Responsibility is a corollary of au good qualities. A good leader should possess
thority, it is its natural consequence and es and infuse into those around him courage
sential counterpart, and wheresoever au to accept responsibility.
thority is exercised responsibility arises. The best safeguard against abuse of au
The need for sanction, which has its ori thority and against weakness on the part of
gin in a sense of justice, is strengthened and a higher manager is personal integrity and
increased by this consideration, that in the particularly high moral character of such
general interest useful actions have to be a manager, and this integrity, it is well
encouraged and their opposite discouraged. known, is conferred neither by election nor
Application of sanction to acts of authority ownership.
forms part of the conditions essential for
good management, but it is generally dif
ficult to effect, especially in large concerns. 3. D ISC IP L IN E
First, the degree of responsibility must be
established and then the weight of the sanc Discipline is in essence obedience, applica
tion. Now, it is relatively easy to establish tion, energy, behaviour, and outward marks
a workman’s responsibility for his acts and of respect observed in accordance with the
a scale of corresponding sanctions; in the standing agreements between the firm and
its employees, whether these agreements out of agreements in dispute or inadequate

have been freely debated or accepted with' legislation.
out prior discussion, whether they be writ' For half a century a considerable change
ten or implicit, whether they derive from has been effected in the mode of agreements
the wish of the parties to them or from rules between a concern and its employees. The
and customs, it is these agreements which agreements of former days fixed by the em-
determine the formalities of discipline. ployer alone are being replaced, in ever in-
Discipline, being the outcome of different creasing measure, by understandings arrived
varying agreements, naturally appears under at by discussion between an owner or group
the most diverse forms; obligations of obe' of owners and workers’ associations. Thus
dience, application, energy, behavior, vary, each individual owner’s responsibility has
in effect, from one firm to another, from been reduced and is further diminished by
one group of employees to another, from one increasingly frequent state intervention in
time to another. Nevertheless, general opin' labour problems. Nevertheless, the setting
ion is deeply convinced that discipline is ab' up of agreements binding a firm and its em-
solutely essential for the smooth running of ployees from which disciplinary formalities
business and that without discipline no en' emanate, should remain one of the chief
terprise could prosper. preoccupations of industrial heads.
This sentiment is very forcibly expressed The well-being of the concern does not
in military hand'books, where it runs that permit, in cases of offence against discipline,
“Discipline constitutes the chief strength of of the neglect of certain sanctions capable of
armies.” I would approve unreservedly of preventing or minimizing their recurrence.
this aphorism were it followed by this Experience and tact on the part of a man-
other, “Discipline is what leaders make ager are put to the proof in the choice and
it.” The first one inspires respect for disci' degree of sanctions to be used, such as re-
pline, which is a good thing, but it tends to monstrances, warning, fines, suspensions,
eclipse from view the responsibility of lead' demotion, dismissal. Individual people and
ers, which is undesirable, for the state of attendant circumstances must be taken
discipline of any group of people depends into account. In fine, discipline is respect
essentially on the worthiness of its leaders. for agreements which are directed at achiev-
When a defect in discipline is apparent or ing obedience, application, energy, and the
when relations between superiors and sub' outward marks of respect. It is incumbent
ordinates leave much to be desired, respon- upon managers at high levels as much as
sibility for this must not be cast heedlessly, upon humble employees, and the best means
and without going further afield, on the poor of establishing and maintaining it are —
state of the team, because the ill mostly 1. Good superiors at all levels.
results from the ineptitude of the leaders. 2. Agreements as clear and fair as possible.
That, at all events, is what I have noted in 3. Sanctions (penalties) judiciously applied.
various parts of France, for I have always
found French workmen obedient and loyal
provided they are ably led. 4. U N IT Y O F CO M M AND
In the matter of influence upon disci'
pline, agreements must set side by side with For any action whatsoever, an employee
command. It is important that they be clear should receive orders from one superior only.
and, as far as possible, afford satisfaction to Such is the rule of unity of command, aris-
both sides. This is not easy. Proof of that ing from general and ever-present necessity
exists in the great strikes of miners, railway' and wielding an influence on the conduct
men, and civil servants which, in these lat' of affairs, which to my way of thinking, is
ter years, have jeopardized national life at least equal to any other principle what
at home and elsewhere and which arose soever. Should it be violated, authority is
undermined, discipline is in jeopardy, order agreement and, save for rare exceptions, the
disturbed and stability threatened. This rule illusion is shortlived. First an awkwardness
seems fundamental to me and so I have makes itself felt, then a certain irritation
given it the rank of principle. As soon as two and, in time, if dual command exists, even
superiors wield their authority over the same hatred. Men cannot bear dual command. A
person or department, uneasiness makes it' judicious assignment of duties would have
self felt and should the cause persist, the dis reduced the danger without entirely ban'
order increases, the malady takes on the ap' ishing it, for between two superiors on the
pearance of an animal organism troubled same footing there must always be some
by a foreign body, and the following conse^ question ilbdefined. But it is riding for a fall
quences are to be observed: either the dual to set up a business organization with two
command ends in disappearance or elimb superiors on equal footing without assign'
nation of one of the superiors and organic ing duties and demarcating authority.
welbbeing is restored, or else the organism (c) Imperfect demarcation of depart'
continues to wither away. In. no case is there ments also leads to dual command: two SU'
adaptation of the social organism to dual periors issuing orders in a sphere which each
command. thinks his own, constitutes dual command.
Now dual command is extremely com' (d) Constant linking up as between dif
mon and wreaks havoc in all concerns, large ferent departments, natural intermeshing of
or small, in home and in state. The evil is functions, duties often badly defined, create
all the more to be feared in that it worms its an everpresent danger of dual command. If
way into the social organism on the most a knowledgeable superior does not put it
plausible pretexts. For instance — in order, footholds are established which
(a) In the hope of being better understood later upset and compromise the conduct of
or gaining time or to put a stop forthwith to affairs.
an undesirable practice, a superior S 2 may In all human associations, in industry,
give orders directly to an employee E with' commerce, army, home, state, dual com'
out going via the superior S b If this mistake mand is a perpetual source of conflicts, very
is repeated there is dual command with its grave sometimes, which have special claim
consequences, viz., hesitation on the part on the attention of superiors of all ranks.
of the subordinate, irritation and dissatis'
faction on the part of the superior set aside,
and disorder in the work. It will be seen later 5. U N IT Y O F D IR E C T IO N
that it is possible to bypass the scalar chain
when necessary, whilst avoiding the draw' This principle is expressed as: one head and
backs of dual command. one plan for a group of activities having the
(b) The desire to get away from the im' same objective. It is the condition essential
mediate necessity of dividing up authority to unity of action, coordination of strength
as between two colleagues, two friends, two and focusing of effort. A body with two
members of one family, results at times in heads is in the social as in the animal sphere
dual command reigning at the top of a con' a monster, and has difficulty in surviving.
cern right from the outset. Exercising the Unity of direction (one head one plan) must
same powers and having the same authority not be confused with unity of command
over the same men, the two colleagues end (one employee to have orders from one sm
up inevitably with dual command and its perior only). Unity of direction is provided
consequences. Despite harsh lessons, in' for by sound organization of the body cor'
stances of this sort are still numerous. New porate, unity of command turns on the func'
colleagues count on their mutual regard, tioning of the personnel. Unity of command
common interest, and good sense to save cannot exist without unity of direction, but
them from every conflict, every serious diS' does not flow from it.
6. SU B O R D IN A T IO N O F Later on in connection with selecting per

IN D IV ID U A L IN T E R E ST sonnel we shall deal with assessing the value
T O G E N E R A L IN T E R E ST of employees; here only the mode of pay
ment is under consideration as a factor op
This principle calls to mind the fact that eration on remuneration. The method of
in a business the interest of one employee or payment can exercise considerable influ
group of employees should not prevail over ence on business progress, so the choice of
that of the concern, that the interest of the this method is an important problem. It is
home should come before that of its mem- also a thorny problem which in practice
bers and that the interest of the state should has been solved in widely different ways, of
have pride of place over that of one citizen which so far none has proved satisfactory.
or group of citizens. W hat is generally looked for in the method
It seems that such an admonition should of payment is th at—
not need calling to mind. But ignorance,
1. It shall assure fair remuneration.
ambition, selfishness, laziness, weakness,
2. It shall encourage keenness by rewarding
and all human passions tend to cause the
well-directed effort.
general interest to be lost sight of in favour of 3. It shall not lead to overpayment going be
individual interest and a perpetual struggle yond reasonable limits.
has to be waged against them. Two interests
of a different order, but claiming equal re- I am going to examine briefly the modes
spect, confront each other and means must of payment in use for workers, junior man
be found to reconcile them. That represents agers, and higher managers.
one of the great difficulties of management.
Means of effecting it are — Workers
1. Firmness and good example on the part of The various modes of payment in use for
superiors. workers are —
2. Agreements as fair as is possible.
3. Constant supervision. 1. Time rates.
2. Job rates.
3. Piece rates.
7. R EM U N ER A T IO N O F
These three modes of payment may be
P E R SO N N E L
combined and give rise to important varia
tions by the introduction of bonuses, profit-
Remuneration of personnel is the price of
sharing schemes, payment in kind, and non-
services rendered. It should be fair and, as
financial incentives.
far as is possible, afford satisfaction both
to personnel and firm (employee and em
ployer). The rate of remuneration depends, 1. Time rates. Under this system the
firstly, on circumstances independent of the workman sells the employer, in return for a
employer’s will and employee’s worth, viz. predetermined sum, a day’s work under defi
cost of living, abundance or shortage of nite conditions. This system has the disad
personnel, general business conditions, the vantage of conducing to negligence and of
economic position of the business, and af demanding constant supervision. It is in
ter that it depends on the value of the evitable where the work done is not suscep
employee and mode of payment adopted. tible to measurement and in effect it is very
Appreciation of the factors dependent on common.
the employer’s will and on the value of em
ployees, demands a fairly good knowledge 2. Job rates. Here payment made turns
of business, judgement, and impartiality. upon the execution of a definite job set in
advance and may be independent of the Bonuses

length of the job. When payment is due To arouse the worker’s interest in the smooth
only on condition that the job be completed running of the business, sometimes an in
during the normal work spell, this method crement in the nature of a bonus is added to
merges into time rate. Payment by daily job the time-, job- or piece-rate: for good time
does not require as close a supervision as keeping, hard work, freedom from ma
payment by the day, but it has the drawback chine breakdown output, cleanliness, etc.
of levelling the output of good workers The relative importance, nature and quali
down to that of mediocre ones. The good fying conditions of these bonuses are very
ones are not satisfied, because they feel that varied. There are to be found the small
they could earn more; the mediocre ones daily supplement, the monthly sum, the an
find the task set too heavy. nual award, shares or portions of shares dis
tributed to the most meritorious, and also
even profit-sharing schemes such as, for ex
3. Piece rates. Here payment is related ample certain monetary allocations distrib
to work done and there is no limit. This sys uted annually among workers in some large
tem is often used in workshops where a large firms. Several French collieries started some
number of similar articles have to be made, years back the granting of a bonus pro
and is found where the product can be meas portional to profits distributed or to extra
ured by weight, length, or cubic capacity, profits. N o contract is required from the
and in general is used wherever possible. It workers save that the earning of the bonus
is criticized on the grounds of emphasizing is subject to certain conditions, for instance,
quantity at the expense of quality and of that there shall be no strike during the year,
provoking disagreements when rates have or that absenteeism shall not have exceeded
to be revised in the light of manufacturing a given number of days. This type of bonus
improvements. Piece-work becomes con introduced an element of profit-sharing
tract work when applied to an important into miners’ wages without any prior discus
unit of work. To reduce the contractor’s risk, sion as between workers and employer. The
sometimes there is added to the contract workman did not refuse a gift, largely gratu
price a payment for each day’s work done. itous, on the part of the employer, that is, the
Generally, piece rates give rise to in contract was a unilateral one. Thanks to a
creased earnings which act for some time successful trading period the yearly wages
as a stimulus, then finally a system pre have been appreciably increased by the op
vails in which this mode of payment gradu eration of the bonus. But what is to happen
ally approximates to time rates for a pre in lean times? This interesting procedure is
arranged sum. as yet too new to be judged, but obviously it
The above three modes of payment are is no general solution of the problem. . . .
found in all large concerns; sometimes time
rates prevail, sometimes one of the other
two. In a workshop the same workman may Profit- Sharing
be seen working now on piece rates, not on 1. Workers. The idea of making workers
time rates. Each one of these methods had share in profits is a very attractive one and
its advantages and drawbacks, and their ef it would seem that it is from there that har
fectiveness depends on circumstances and mony as between Capital and Labour should
the ability of superiors. Neither method nor come. But the practical formula for such
rate of payment absolves management from sharing has not yet been found. Workers’
competence and tact, and keenness of work profit-sharing has hitherto come up against
ers and peaceful atmosphere of the work insurmountable difficulties of application in
shop depend largely upon it. the case of large concerns. Firstly, let us note
that it cannot exist in enterprises having no interested in profits the only reason is that
monetary objective (State services, religion, the basis for participation is difficult to es
philanthropic, scientific societies) and also tablish. Doubtless managers have no need
that it is not possible in the case of bush of monetary incentive to carry out their du
nesses running at a loss. Thus profit-sharing ties, but they are not indifferent to material
is excluded from a great number of con- satisfactions and it must be acknowledged
cerns. There remain the prosperous bush that the hope of extra profit is capable of
ness concerns and of these latter the desire arousing their enthusiasm. So employees at
to reconcile and harmonize workers’ and middle levels should, where possible, be in
employers’ interests is nowhere so great as duced to have an interest in profits. It is rel
in French mining and metallurgical indus atively easy in businesses which are starting
tries. Now, in these industries I know of no out or on trial, where exceptional effort can
clear application of workers’ profitsharing, yield outstanding results. Sharing may then
whence it may be concluded forthwith that be applied to overall business profits or
the matter is difficult, if not impossible. It is merely to the running of the particular
very difficult indeed. Whether a business is department of the employee in question.
making a profit or not the worker must have When the business is of long standing and
an immediate wage assured him, and a sys well run the zeal of a junior manager is
tem which would make workers’ payment scarcely apparent in the general outcome,
depend entirely on eventual future profit is and it is very hard to establish a useful basis
unworkable. But perhaps a part of wages on which he may participate. In fact, profit-
might come from business profits. Let us see. sharing among junior managers in France is
Viewing all contingent factors, the workers’ very rare in large concerns. Production or
greater or lesser share of activity or ability in workshop output bonuses — not to be con
the final outcome of a large concern is im fused with profit-sharing — are much more
possible to assess and is, moreover, quite in common.
significant. The portion accruing to him of
distributed dividend would at the most be a 3. Higher Managers. It is necessary to
few centimes on a wage of five francs for in go right up to top management to find a
stance, that is to say the smallest extra effort,
class of employee with frequent interest
the stroke of a pick or of a file operating diin the profits of large-scale French con
rectly on his wage, would prove of greater cerns. The head of the business, in view
advantage to him. Hence the worker has of his knowledge, ideas, and actions, ex
no interest in being rewarded by a share in erts considerable influence on general re
profits proportionate to the effect he has sults, so it is quite natural to try and provide
upon profits. It is worthy of note that, in him with an interest in them. Sometimes
most large concerns, wages increases, oper it is possible to establish a close connec
ative now for some twenty years, represent tion between his personal activity and its
a total sum greater than the amount of cap effects. Nevertheless, generally speaking,
ital shared out. In effect, unmodified real there exist other influences quite indepen
profit-sharing by workers of large concerns dent of the personal capability of the man
has not yet entered the sphere of practical ager which can influence results to a greater
business politics.2 extent than can his personal activity. If the
manager’s salary were exclusively dependent
2. Junior Managers. Profit-sharing for upon profits, it might at times be reduced
foremen, superintendents, engineers, is to nothing. There are besides, businesses
scarcely more advanced than for workers. being built up, wound up, or merely pass
Nevertheless the influence of these employ ing through temporary crisis, wherein man
ees on the results of a business is quite con agement depends no less on talent than in
siderable, and if they are not consistently the case of prosperous ones, and wherein
profit-sharing cannot be a basis for remu provided that there be discretion and pm-
neration for the manager. In fine, senior dence, that it be sought after rather than im-
civil servants cannot be paid on a profit' posed, be in keeping with the general level
sharing basis. Profit'sharing, then, for either of education and taste of those concerned
higher managers or workers is not a general and that it have absolute respect for their
rule of remuneration. To sum up, then: liberty. It must be benevolent collaboration,
profit'sharing is a mode of payment capable not tyrannical stewardship, and therein lies
of giving excellent results in certain cases, an indispensable condition of success. . . .
but is not a general rule. It does not seem to
me possible, at least for the present, to
count on this mode of payment for appeas' 8. C EN T R A LIZ A T IO N
ing conflict between Capital and Labour.
Fortunately, there are other means which Like division of work, centralization belongs
hitherto have been sufficient to maintain to the natural order; this turns on the fact
relative social quiet. Such methods have that in every organism, animal or social, sen-
not lost their power and it is up to managers sations converge towards the brain or direc-
to study them, apply them, and make them tive part, and from the brain or directive
work well. part orders are sent out which set all parts of
the organism in movement. Centralization
is not a system of management good or bad
Payment in Kind, Welfare Work, Non- of itself, capable of being adopted or dis-
Financial Incentives carded at the whim of managers or of cir-
Whether wages are made up of money only cumstances; it is always present to a greater
or whether they include various additions or less extent. The question of centraliza-
such as heating, light, housing, food, is of tion or decentralization, is a simple question
little consequence provided that the em' of proportion, it is a matter of finding the
ployee be satisfied. optimum degree for the particular concern.
From another point of view, there is no In small firms, where the manager’s orders
doubt that a business will be better served go directly to subordinates there is absolute
in proportion as its employees are more centralization; in large concerns, where a
energetic, better educated, more conscieri' long scalar chain is interposed between
tious and more permanent. The employer manager and lower grades, orders and coun-
should have regard, if merely in the inter- terinformation too, have to go through a
ests of the business, for the health, strength, series of intermediaries. Each employee, in-
education, morale, and stability of his per- tentionally or unintentionally, puts some-
sonnel. These elements of smooth running thing of himself into the transmission and
are not acquired in the workshop alone, execution of orders and of information re-
they are formed and developed as well, and ceived too. He does not operate merely as
particularly, outside it, in the home and a cog in a machine. W hat appropriate share
school, in civil and religious life. Therefore, of initiative may be left to intermediaries
the employer comes to be concerned with depends on the personal character of the
his employees outside the works and here manager, on his moral worth, on the relia-
the question of proportion comes up again. bility of his subordinates, and also on the
Opinion is greatly divided on this point. condition of the business. The degree of
Certain unfortunate experiments have re- centralization must vary according to dif-
suited in some employers stopping short ferent cases. The objective to pursue is the
their interest, at the works gate and at the optimum utilization of all faculties of the
regulation of wages. The majority consider personnel.
that the employer’s activity may be used to If the moral worth of the manager,
good purpose outside the factory confines his strength, intelligence, experience, and
swiftness of thought allow him to have a whose scalar chain is represented by the
wide span of activities he will be able to double ladder G-A-Q thus —
carry centralization quite far and reduce his
seconds in command to mere executive A
agents. If, conversely, he prefers to have
greater recourse to the experience, opinions,
and counsel of his colleagues whilst reserve
ing to himself the privilege of giving gen
eral directives, he can effect considerable
decentralization.
Seeing that both absolute and relative
value of manager and employees are con
stantly changing, it is understandable that
the degree of centralization or decentral
ization may itself vary constantly. It is a
problem to be solved according to circum
stances, to the best satisfaction of the inter
ests involved. It arises, not only in the case
of higher authority, but for superiors at all
levels and not one but can extend or confine,
to some extent, his subordinates’ initiative. By following the line of authority the lad
The finding of the measure which shall der must be climbed from F to A and then
give the best overall yield: that is the prob descended from A to P, stopping at each
lem of centralization or decentralization. rung, then ascended again from P to A, and
Everything which goes to increase the descended once more from A to F, in order
importance of the subordinate’s role is de to get back to the starting point. Evidently
centralization, everything which goes to re it is much simpler and quicker to go directly
duce it is centralization. from F to P by making use of FP as a “gang
plank” and that is what is most often done.
The scalar principle will be safeguarded if
9. SCALAR CHAIN managers E and O have authorized their
respective subordinates F and P to treat di
The scalar chain is the chain of superi rectly, and the position will be fully regular
ors ranging from the ultimate authority to ized if F and P inform their respective supe
the lowest ranks. The line of authority is riors forthwith of what they have agreed
the route followed— via every link in the upon. So long as F and P remain in agree
chain— by all communications which start ment, and so long as their actions are ap
from or go to the ultimate authority. This proved by their immediate superiors, direct
path is dictated both by the need for some contact may be maintained, but from the
transmission and by the principle of unity instant that agreement ceases or there is
of command, but it is not always the swiftest. no approval from the superiors direct con
It is even at times disastrously lengthy in tact comes to an end, and the scalar chain
large concerns, notably in governmental is straightway resumed. Such is the actual
ones. Now, there are many activities whose procedure to be observed in the great ma
success turns on speedy execution, hence jority of businesses. It provides for the usual
respect for the line of authority must be rec exercise of some measure of initiative at all
onciled with the need for swift action. levels of authority. In the small concern, the
Let us imagine that section F has to be general interest, viz. that of the concern
put into contact with section P in a business proper, is easy to grasp, and the employer
is present to recall this interest to those be courageous enough and feel free enough
tempted to lose sight of it. In government to adopt the line dictated by the general in
enterprise the general interest is such a com terest. But for him to be in this frame of
plex, vast, remote thing, that it is not easy mind there must have been previous prece
to get a clear idea of it, and for the majority dent, and his superiors must have set him the
of civil servants the employer is somewhat example— for example must always come
mythical and unless the sentiment of gen from above.
eral interest be constantly revived by higher
authority, it becomes blurred and weakened
and each section tends to regard itself as its 10. O R D E R
own aim and end and forgets that it is only a
cog in a big machine, all of whose parts must The formula is known in the case of material
work in concert. It becomes isolated, clois things “A place for everything and every
tered, aware only of the line of authority. thing in its place.” The formula is the same
The use of the “gang plank” is simple, for human order. “A place for everyone and
swift, sure. It allows the two employees F everyone in his place.”
and P to deal at one sitting, and in a few
hours, with some question or other which Material Order
via the scalar chain would pass through In accordance with the preceding defi
twenty transmissions, inconvenience many nition, so that material order shall prevail,
people, involve masses of paper, lose weeks there must be a place appointed for each
or months to get to a conclusion less satis thing and each thing must be in its ap
factory generally than the one which could pointed place. Is that enough? Is it not also
have been obtained via direct contact as be necessary that the place shall have been well
tween F and P. chosen? The object of order must be avoid
Is it possible that such practices, as ance of loss of material, and for this object to
ridiculous as they are devastating, could be be completely realized not only must things
in current use? Unfortunately there can be in their place suitably arranged but also
be little doubt of it in government de the place must have been chosen so as to fa
partment affairs. It is usually acknowledged cilitate all activities as much as possible. If
that the chief cause is fear of responsibility. this last condition be unfulfilled, there is
I am rather of the opinion that it is in merely the appearance of order. Appearance
sufficient executive capacity on the part of order may cover over real disorder. I have
of those in charge. If supreme authority A seen a works yard used as a store for steel in
insisted that his assistants B and L made use gots in which the material was well stacked,
of the “gang plank” themselves and made evenly arranged and clean and which gave a
its use incumbent upon their subordinates pleasing impression of orderliness. On close
C and M, the habit and courage of taking inspection it could be noted that the same
responsibility would be established and at heap included five or six types of steel in
the same time the custom of using the tended for different manufacture all mixed
shortest path. up together. Whence useless handling, lost
It is an error to depart needlessly from the time, risk of mistakes because each thing was
line of authority, but it is an even greater not in its place. It happens, on the other
one to keep to it when detriment to the hand, that the appearance of disorder may
business ensues. The latter may attain ex actually be true order. Such is the case with
treme gravity in certain conditions. When papers scattered about at a master’s whim
an employee is obliged to choose between which a well-meaning but incompetent
the two practices, and it is impossible for him servant re-arranges and sticks in neat piles.
to take advice from his superior, he should The master can no longer find his way
about them. Perfect order presupposes a jm of will and more persistence than current
diciously chosen place and the appearance instability of ministerial appointments pre^
of order is merely a false or imperfect irm supposes, are required in order to sweep
age of real order. Cleanliness is a corollary away abuses and restore order. . . .
of orderliness, there is no appointed place
for dirt. A diagram representing the entire
premises divided up into as many sections 11. EQUITY
as there are employees responsible facili
tates considerably the establishing and com Why equity and not justice? Justice is
trol of order. putting into execution established convem
tions, but conventions cannot foresee every'
thing, they need to be interpreted or their
Social Order inadequacy supplemented. For the person'
For social order to prevail in a concern there nel to be encouraged to carry out its duties
must, in accordance with the definition, be with all the devotion and loyalty of which
an appointed place for every employee and it is capable it must be treated with kind'
every employee be in his appointed place. liness, and equity results from the com'
Perfect order requires, further, that the place bination of kindliness and justice. Equity
be suitable for the employee and the erm excludes neither forcefulness nor sternness
ployee for the place— in English idiom, and the application of it requires much good
“The right man in the right place.” sense, experience, and good nature.
Thus understood, social order presup' Desire for equity and equality of treat'
poses the successful execution of the two ment are aspirations to be taken into am
most difficult managerial activities: good on count in dealing with employees. In order
ganization and good selection. Once the to satisfy these requirements as much as pos'
posts essential to the smooth running of the sible without neglecting any principle or los'
business have been decided upon and those ing sight of the general interest, the head of
to fill such posts have been selected, each the business must frequently summon up his
employee occupies that post wherein he can highest faculties. He should strive to instil a
render most service. Such is perfect social sense of equity throughout all levels of the
order “A place for each one and each one in scalar chain.
his place.” That appears simple, and natm
rally we are so anxious for it to be so that
when we hear for the twentieth time a gov' 12. STABILITY OF TENURE OF
ernment departmental head assert this prim PERSONNEL
ciple, we conjure up straightway a concept
of perfect administration. This is a mirage. Time is required for an employee to get used
Social order demands precise knowledge to new work and succeed in doing it well,
of the human requirements and resources of always assuming that he possesses the requh
the concern and a constant balance between site abilities. If when he has got used to it,
these requirements and resources. Now this or before then, he is removed, he will not
balance is most difficult to establish and have had time to render worthwhile service.
maintain and all the more difficult the big' If this be repeated indefinitely the work will
ger the business, and when it has been up' never be properly done. The undesirable
set and individual interests resulted in ne^ consequences of such insecurity of tenure
gleet or sacrifice of the general interest, when are especially to be feared in large concerns,
ambition, nepotism, favouritism, or merely where the settling in of managers is genen
ignorance, has multiplied positions without ally a lengthy matter. Much time is needed
good reason or filled them with incompe' indeed to get to know men and things in
tent employees, much talent and strength a large concern in order to be in a position
to decide on a plan of action, to gain confi- the exercise of initiative on the part of sub
dence in oneself, and inspire it in others. ordinates is infinitely superior to one who
Hence it has often been recorded that a cannot do so.
mediocre manager who stays is infinitely
preferable to outstanding managers who
merely come and go. 14. E SP R IT D E C O R P S
Generally the managerial personnel of
prosperous concerns is stable, that of unsuc “Union is strength.” Business heads would
cessful ones is unstable. Instability of tenure do well to ponder on this proverb. Harmony,
is at one and the same time cause and ef union among the personnel of a concern, is
fect of bad running. The apprenticeship of a great strength in that concern. Effort, then,
higher manager is generally a costly matter. should be made to establish it. Among the
Nevertheless, changes of personnel are in countless methods in use I will single out
evitable; age, illness, retirement, death, dis specially one principle to be observed and
turb the human make-up of the firm, certain two pitfalls to be avoided. The principle to
employees are no longer capable of carrying be observed is unity of command; the dan
out their duties, whilst others become fit to gers to be avoided are (a) a misguided inter
assume greater responsibilities. In common pretation of the motto “divide and rule,”
with all the other principles, therefore, sta (b) the abuse of written communications.
bility of tenure and personnel is also a ques
tion of proportion. (a) Personnel must not be split up. Divid
ing enemy forces to weaken them is clever,
but dividing one’s own team is a grave sin
13. IN ITIA TIV E against the business. Whether this error re
sults from inadequate managerial capacity
Thinking out a plan and ensuring its success or imperfect grasp of things, or from egoism
is one of the keenest satisfactions for an in which sacrifices general interest to personal
telligent man to experience. It is also one of interest, it is always reprehensible because
the most powerful stimulants of human harmful to the business. There is no merit
endeavour. This power of thinking out and in sowing dissension among subordinates;
executing is what is called initiative, and any beginner can do it. On the contrary,
freedom to propose and to execute belongs real talent is needed to coordinate effort,
too, each in its way, to initiative. A t all encourage keenness, use each man’s abili
levels of the organizational ladder zeal and ties, and reward each one’s merit without
energy on the part of employees are aug arousing possible jealousies and disturbing
mented by initiative. The initiative of all, harmonious relations.
added to that of the manager, and supple
menting it if need be, represents a great (b) Abuse of written communications. In
source of strength for businesses. This is par dealing with a business matter or giving an
ticularly apparent at difficult times; hence it order which requires explanation to com
is essential to encourage and develop this plete it, usually it is simpler and quicker
capacity to the full. to do so verbally than in writing. Be
Much tact and some integrity are required sides, it is well known that differences and
to inspire and maintain everyone’s initia misunderstandings which a conversation
tive, within the limits imposed, by respect could clear up, grow more bitter in writing.
for authority and for discipline. The man Thence it follows that, wherever possible,
ager must be able to sacrifice some personal contacts should be verbal; there is a gain in
vanity in order to grant this sort of satis speed, clarity and harmony. Nevertheless, it
faction to subordinates. Other things being happens in some firms that employees of
equal, moreover, a manager able to permit neighbouring departments with numerous
points of contact, or even employees with' code which represents the sum total of these
in a department, who could quite easily truths at any given moment.
meet, only communicate with each other in Surprise might be expressed at the outset
writing. Hence arise increased work and that the eternal moral principles, the laws of
complications and delays harmful to the the Decalogue and Commandments of the
business. A t the same time, there is to be Church are not sufficient guide for the man'
observed a certain animosity prevailing be' ager, and that a special code is needed. The
tween different departments or different em' explanation is this: the higher laws of reli'
ployees within a department. The system gious or moral order envisage the individual
of written communications usually brings only, or else interests which are not of this
this result. There is a way of putting an end world, whereas management principles aim
to this deplorable system and that is to for' at the success of associations of individuals
bid all communications in writing which and at the satisfying of economic interests.
could easily and advantageously be replaced Given that the aim is different, it is not
by verbal ones. There again, we come up surprising that the means are not the same.
against a question of proportion. . . . There is no identity, so there is no contra'
There I bring to an end this review of prim diction. Without principles one is in dark'
ciples, not because the list is exhausted — ness and chaos; interest, experience, and
this list has no precise limits — but because proportion are still very handicapped, even
to me it seems at the moment especially with the best principles. The principle is the
useful to endow management theory with a lighthouse fixing the bearings, but it can
dozen or so well'established principles, on only serve those who already know the way
which it is appropriate to concentrate gen' into port.
eral discussion. The foregoing principles are
those to which I have most often had re'
course. I have simply expressed my personal N O TE
opinion in connection with them. Are they
to have a place in the management code 1. “Body co rp o rate Fayol’s term, “corps
which is to be built up? General discussion social,” meaning all those engaged in a
will show. given corporate activity in any sphere,
This code is indispensable. Be it a case of is best rendered by this somewhat urn
usual term because (a) it retains his im.'
commerce, industry, politics, religion, war,
plied biological metaphor; (b) it repre-
or philanthropy, in every concern there is a sents the structure as distinct from the
management function to be performed, and process of organization. The term will be
for its performance there must be principles, retained in all contexts where these two
that is to say acknowledged truths regarded requirements have to be met. (Transla-
as proven on which to rely. And it is the tor’s note.)
6
The Principles of Scientific Management
Frederick Winslow Taylor
By far the most important fact which faces go back into the history of any trade and see
the industries of our country, the industries, it— even though that labor-saving device
in fact, of the civilized world, is that not may turn out ten, twenty, thirty times that
only the average worker, but nineteen out output that was originally turned out by men
of twenty workmen throughout the civi- in that trade, the result has universally been
lized world firmly believe that it is for their to make work for more men in that trade,
best interests to go slow instead of to go fast. not work for less men.
They firmly believe that it is for their inter' Let me give you one illustration. Let us
est to give as little work in return for the take one of the staple businesses, the cotton
money that they get as is practical. The rea- industry. About 1840 the power loom suc
sons for this belief are twofold, and I do not ceeded the old hand loom in the cotton in
believe that the workingmen are to blame dustry. It was invented many years before,
for holding these fallacious views. somewhere about 1780 or 1790, but it came
If you will take any set of workmen in your in very slowly. About 1840 the weavers of
own town and suggest to those men that it Manchester, England, saw that the power
would be a good thing for them in their trade loom was coming, and they knew it would
if they were to double their output in the turn out three times the yardage of cloth
coming year, each man turn out twice as in a day that the hand loom turned out.
much work and become twice as efficient, And what did they do, these five thousand
they would say, “I don’t know anything about weavers of Manchester, England, who saw
other people’s trades; what you are saying starvation staring them in the face? They
about increasing efficiency being a good broke into the establishments into which
thing may be good for other trades, but I those machines were being introduced, they
know that the only result if you come to our smashed them, they did everything possible
trade would be that half of us would be out to stop the introduction of the power loom.
of a job before the year was out.” That to And the same result followed that follows
the average workingman is an axiom; it is every attempt to interfere with the intro
not a matter subject to debate at all. And duction of any labor-saving device, if it is
even among the average business men of really a labor-saving device. Instead of stop
this country that opinion is almost univer- ping the introduction of the power loom,
sal. They firmly believe that that would be their opposition apparently accelerated it,
the result of a great increase in efficiency, just as opposition to scientific management
and yet directly the opposite is true. all over the country, bitter labor opposition
today, is accelerating the introduction of it
instead of retarding it. History repeats itself
T H E E F FE C T O F LA BO R -SA V IN G in that respect. The power loom came right
D EV IC ES straight along.
And let us see the result in Manchester.
Whenever any labor-saving device of any Just what follows in every industry when any
kind has been introduced into any trade — labor-saving device is introduced. Less than
Source: Bulletin of the Taylor Society (December 1916). An abstract of an address given by the late Dr. Taylor
before the Cleveland Advertising Club, March 3, 1915, two weeks prior to his death. It was repeated the follow-
ing day at Youngstown, Ohio, and this presentation was Dr. Taylor’s last public appearance.
a century has gone by since 1840. The pop' THE DEVELOPMENT OF

ulation of England in that time has now SOLDIERING
more than doubled. Each man in the cot
ton industry in Manchester, England, now The second reason why the workmen of this
turns out, at a restricted estimate ten yards country and of Europe deliberately restrict
of cloth for every yard of cloth that was output is a very simple one. They, for this
turned out in 1840. In 1840 there were reason, are even less to blame than they are
5,000 weavers in Manchester. Now there for the other. If, for example, you are man
are 265,000. Has that thrown men out of ufacturing a pen, let us assume for simplic
work? Has the introduction of labor-saving ity that a pen can be made by a single man.
machinery, which has multiplied the out Let us say that the workman is turning out
put per man by tenfold, thrown men out of ten pens per day, and that he is receiving
work? $2.50 a day for his wages. He has a progres
What is the real meaning of this? All that sive foreman who is up to date, and that
you have to do is to bring wealth into this foreman goes to the workman and suggests,
world and the world uses it. That is the real “Here, John, you are getting $2.50 a day,
meaning. The meaning is that where in and you are turning out ten pens. I would
1840 cotton goods were a luxury to be worn suggest that I pay you 25 cents for making
only by rich people when they were hardly that pen.” The man takes the job, and
ever seen on the street, now every man, through the help of his foreman, through
woman, and child all over the world wears his own ingenuity, through his increased
cotton goods as a daily necessity. work, through his interest in his business,
Nineteen-twentieths of the real wealth through the help of his friends, at the end of
of this world is used by the poor people, the year he finds himself turning out twenty
and not the rich, so that the workingman pens instead of ten. He is happy, he is mak
who sets out as a steady principle to re ing $5, instead of $2.50 a day. His foreman
strict output is merely robbing his own is happy because, with the same room, with
kind. That group of manufacturers which the same men he had before, he has dou
adopts as a permanent principle restriction bled the output of his department, and the
of output, in order to hold up prices, is rob manufacturer himself is sometimes happy,
bing the world. The one great thing that but not often. Then someone on the board
marks the improvement of this world is of directors asks to see the payroll, and he
measured by the enormous increase in out finds that we are paying $5 a day where other
put of the individuals in this world. There is similar mechanics are only getting $2.50,
fully twenty times the output per man now and in no uncertain terms he announces
that there was three hundred years ago. that we must stop ruining the labor market.
That marks the increase in the real wealth We cannot pay $5 a day when the standard
of the world; that marks the increase of the rate of wages is $2.50; how can we hope to
happiness of the world, that gives us the compete with surrounding towns? W hat is
opportunity for shorter hours, for better the result? Mr. Foreman is sent for, and he is
education, for amusement, for art, for mu told that he has got to stop ruining the la
sic, for everything that is worthwhile in bor market of Cleveland. And the foreman
this world— goes right straight back to goes back to his workman in sadness, in de
this increase in the output of the individ pression, and tells his workman, “I am sorry,
ual. The workingmen of today live better John, but I have got to cut the price down
than the king did three hundred years ago. for that pen; I cannot let you earn $5 a day;
From what does the progress the world has the board of directors has got on to it, and it
made come? Simply from the increase in is ruining the labor market; you ought to be
the output of the individual all over the willing to have the price reduced. You can
world. not earn more than $3 or $2.75 a day, and I
The Principles of Scientific Management 63
will have to cut your wages so that you will Now the first step that was taken toward
only get $3 a day.” John, of necessity accepts the development of those methods, of those
the cut, but he sees to it that he never makes principles, which rightly or wrongly have
enough pens to get another cut. come to be known under the name of sci
entific management— the first step that was
taken in an earnest endeavor to remedy the
C H A R A C T E R IST IC S O F T H E U N IO N evils of soldiering; an earnest endeavor to
W ORKM AN make it unnecessary for workmen to be hyp
ocritical in this way, to deceive themselves,
There seem to be two divergent opinions to deceive their employers, to live day in
about the workmen of this country. One is and day out a life of deceit, forced upon
that a lot of the trade unions’ workmen, them conditions — the very first step that
particularly in this country, have become was taken toward the development was to
brutal, have become dominating, careless of overcome that evil. I want to emphasize
any interests but their own, and are a pretty that, because I wish to emphasize the one
poor lot. And the other opinion which those great fact relating to scientific management,
same trade unionists hold of themselves is the greatest factor: namely, that scientific
that they are pretty close to little gods. management is no new set of theories that
Whichever view you may hold of the work has been tried on by any one at every step.
ingmen of this country, and my personal Scientific management at every step has
view of them is that they are a pretty fine lot been an evolution, not a theory. In all cases
of fellows, they are just about the same as the practice has preceded the theory, not
you and I. But whether you hold the bad succeeded it. In every case one measure af
opinion or the good opinion, it makes no dif ter another has been tried out, until the
ference. Whatever the workingmen of this proper remedy has been found. That series of
country are or whatever they are not, they proper eliminations, that evolution, is what
are not fools. And all that is necessary is for is called scientific management. Every ele
a workingman to have but one object les ment of it has had to fight its way against the
son, like that I have told you, and he sol elements that preceded it, and prove itself
diers for the rest of his life. better or it would not be there tomorrow.
There are a few exceptional employers A ll the men that I know of who are in any
who treat their workmen differently, but I way connected with scientific management
am talking about the rule of the country. are ready to abandon any scheme, and the
Soldiering is the absolute rule with all work ory in favor of anything else that could be
men who know their business. I am not say found that is better. There is nothing in sci
ing it is for their interest to soldier. You can entific management that is fixed. There is no
not blame them for it. You cannot expect one man, or group of men, who have in
them to be large enough minded men to vented scientific management.
look at the proper view of the matter. N or is What I want to emphasize is that all of the
the man who cuts the wages necessarily to elements of scientific management are an
blame. It is simply a misfortune in industry. evolution, not an invention. Scientific man
agement is in use in an immense range and
variety of industries. Almost every type of
T H E D EV ELO P M EN T O F industry in this country has scientific man
SC IE N T IF IC M A N A G EM EN T agement working successfully. I think I can
safely say that on the average in those estab
There has been, until comparatively re lishments in which scientific management
cently, no scheme promulgated by which has been introduced, the average workman
the evils of rate cutting could be properly is turning out double the output he was be
avoided, so soldiering has been the rule. fore. I think that is a conservative statement.
THE WORKMEN: THE CHIEF WHAT SCIENTIFIC

BENEFICIARIES MANAGEMENT IS
Three or four years ago I could have said W hat is scientific management? It is no efi
there were about fifty thousand men work' ficiency device, nor is it any group of effi
ing under scientific management, but now I ciency devices. Scientific management is no
know there are many more. Company after new scheme for paying men, it is no bonus
company is coming under it, many of which system, no piecework system, no premium
I know nothing about. Almost universally system of payment; it is no new method of
they are working successfully. This increas- figuring costs. It is no one of the various el
ing of the output per individual in the trade, ements by which it is commonly known, by
results, of course, in cheapening the product; which people refer to it. It is not time study
it results, therefore, in larger profit usually nor man study. It is not the printing of a ton
to the owners of the business; it results also, or two of blanks and unloading them on a
in many cases, in a lowering of the selling company and saying, “There is your system,
price, although that has not come to the ex- go ahead and use it.” Scientific manage
tent it will later. In the end the public gets ment does not exist and cannot exist until
the good. Without any question, the large there has been a complete mental revolu
good which so far has come from scientific tion on the part of the workmen working
management has come to the worker. To under it, as to their duties toward them
the workmen has come, practically right off selves and toward their employers, and a
as soon as scientific management is intro- complete mental revolution in the outlook
duced, an increase in wages amounting from for the employers, toward their duties, to
33 to 100 percent, and yet that is not the ward themselves, and toward their work
greatest good that comes to the workmen men. And until this great mental change
from scientific management. The great good takes place, scientific management does not
comes from the fact that, under scientific exist. Do you think you can make a great
management, they look upon their em- mental revolution in a large group of work
ployers as the best friends they have in the men in a year, or do you think you can make
world; the suspicious watchfulness which it in a large group of foremen and superin
characterizes the old type management, the tendents in a year? If you do, you are very
semi-antagonism, or the complete antago- much mistaken. A ll of us hold mighty close
nism between workmen and employers is to our ideas and principles in life, and we
entirely superseded, and in its place comes change very slowly toward the new, and very
genuine friendship between both sides. That properly too.
is the greatest good that has come under Let me give you an idea of what I mean
scientific management. As a proof of this by this change in mental outlook. If you are
in the many businesses in which scientific manufacturing a hammer or a mallet, into
management has been introduced, I know the cost of that mallet goes a certain amount
of not one single strike of workmen working of raw materials, a certain amount of wood
under it after it had been introduced, and and metal. If you will take the cost of the
only two or three while it was in process raw materials and then add to it that cost
of introduction. In this connection I must which is frequently called by various names
speak of the fakers, those who have said they — overhead expenses, general expense, in
can introduce scientific management into a direct expense; that is, the proper share of
business in six months or a year. That is pure taxes, insurance, light, heat, salaries of offi
nonsense. There have been many strikes cers and advertising — and you have a sum
stirred up by that type of man. N ot one strike of money. Subtract that sum from the sell
has ever come, and I do not believe ever ing price, and what is left over is called the
will come, under scientific management. surplus. It is over this surplus that all of the
labor disputes in the past have occurred. dens which are voluntarily undertaken by
The workman naturally wants all he can those on the management side is the delib
get. His wages come out of that surplus. The erate gathering together of the great mass
manufacturer wants all he can get in the of traditional knowledge which, in the past,
shape of profits, and it is from the division has been in the heads of the workmen, re
of this surplus that all the labor disputes have cording it, tabulating it, reducing it in most
come in the past — the equitable division. cases to rules, laws, and in many cases to
The new outlook that comes under sci mathematical formulae, which, with these
entific management is this: The workmen, new laws, are applied to the cooperation of
after many object lessons, come to see and the management to the work of the work
the management come to see that this sur men. This results in an immense increase
plus can be made so great, providing both in the output, we may say, of the two. The
sides will stop their pulling apart, will stop gathering in of this great mass of traditional
their fighting and will push as hard as they knowledge, which is done by the means of
can to get as cheap an output as possible, motion study, time study, can be truly called
that there is no occasion to quarrel. Each the science.
side can get more than ever before. The ac Let me make a prediction. I have before
knowledgement of this fact represents a me the first book, so far as I know, that has
complete mental revolution. . . . been published on motion study and on time
study. That is, the motion study and time
study of the cement and concrete trades. It
WHAT SC IE N T IF IC M AN AGEM EN T contains everything relating to concrete
W ILL D O I work. It is of about seven hundred pages and
embodies the motions of men, the time and
I am going to try to prove to you that the the best way of doing that sort of work. It is
old style of management has not a ghost the first case in which a trade has been re
of a chance in competition with the prin duced to the same condition that engineer
ciples of scientific management. Why? In ing data of all kinds have been reduced, and
the first place, under scientific management, it is this sort of data that is bound to sweep
the initiative of the workmen, their hard the world.
work, their goodwill, their best endeavors I have before me something which has
are obtained with absolute regularity. There been gathering for about fourteen years, the
are cases all the time where men will soldier, time or motion study of the machine shop.
but they become the exception, as a rule, It will take probably four or five years more
and they give their true initiative under sci before the first book will be ready to pub
entific management. That is the least of the lish on that subject. There is a collection of
two sources of gain. The greatest source of sixty or seventy thousand elements affect
gain under scientific management comes ing machine-shop work. After a few years,
from the new and almost unheard-of duties say three, four or five years more, someone
and burdens which are voluntarily assumed, will be ready to publish the first book giving
not by the workmen, but by the men on the the laws of the movements of men in the
management side. These are the things machine shop — all the laws, not only a few
which make scientific management a suc of them. Let me predict, just as sure as the
cess. These new duties, these new burdens sun shines, that is going to come in every
undertaken by the management have rightly trade. Why? Because it pays, for no other rea
or wrongly been divided into four groups, son. That results in doubling the output in
and have been called the principles of sci any shop. Any device which results in an
entific management. increased output is bound to come in spite
The first of the great principles of sci of all opposition, whether we want it or not.
entific management, the first of the new bur It comes automatically.
THE SELECTION OF THE those who come under scientific manage

WORKMAN m ent— better treatment, more kindly treat
ment, more consideration for their wishes,
The next of the four principles of scientific and an opportunity for them to express their
management is the scientific selection of wants freely. That is one side of the “make.”
the workman, and then his progressive de- A n equally important side is, whenever a
velopment. It becomes the duty under sci man will not do what he ought, to either
entific management of not one, but of a make him do it or stop it. If he will not do
group of men on the management side, to it, let him get out. I am not talking of any
deliberately study the workmen who are un mollycoddle. Let me disabuse your minds of
der them; study them in the most careful, any opinion that scientific management is a
thorough and painstaking way; and not just mollycoddle scheme. . . .
leave it to the poor, overworked foreman
to go out and say, “Come on, what do you
want? If you are cheap enough I will give THE PRINCIPLE OF THE DIVISION
you a trial.” OF WORK
That is the old way. The new way is to take
a great deal of trouble in selecting the work The fourth principle is the plainest of all. It
men. The selection proceeds year after year. involves a complete re-division of the work
And it becomes the duty of those engaged in of the establishment. Under the old scheme
scientific management to know something of management, almost all of the work was
about the workmen under them. It becomes done by the workmen. Under the new, the
their duty to set out deliberately to train the work of the establishment is divided into
workmen in their employ to be able to do a two large parts. A ll of that work which for
better and still better class of work than ever merly was done by the workmen alone is di
before, and to then pay them higher wages vided into two large sections, and one of
than ever before. This deliberate selection those sections is handed over to the man
of the workmen is the second of the great agement. They do a whole division of the
duties that devolve on the management un work formerly done by the workmen. It is
der scientific management. this real cooperation, this genuine division
of the work between the two sides, more
than any other element which accounts for
BRINGING TOGETHER THE the fact that there never will be strikes under
SCIENCE AND THE MAN scientific management. When the work
man realizes that there is hardly a thing he
The third principle is the bringing together does that does not have to be preceded by
of this science of which I have spoken and some act of preparation on the part of man
the trained workmen. I say bringing because agement, and when that workman realizes
they don’t come together unless someone when the management falls down and does
brings them. Select and train your workmen not do its part, that he is not only entitled
all you may, but unless there is someone who to a kick, but that he can register that kick
will make the men and the science come to in the most forcible possible way, he can
gether, they will stay apart. The “make” in not quarrel with the men over him. It is
volves a great many elements. They are not teamwork. There are more complaints made
all disagreeable elements. The most impor every day on the part of the workmen that
tant and largest way of “making” is to do the men on the management side fail to do
something nice for the man whom you wish their duties than are made by the manage
to make come together with the science. ment that the men fail. Every one of the
Offer him a plum, something that is worth complaints of the men have to be heeded,
while. There are many plums offered to just as much as the complaints from the
management that the workmen do not do T H E SC IE N C E O F SH O V E LIN G

their share. That is characteristic of scien-
tific management. It represents a democracy, When I went to the Bethlehem Steel Works,
cooperation, a genuine division of work the first thing I saw was a gang of men urn
which never existed before in this world. loading rice coal. They were a splendid set
of fellows, and they shoveled fast. There
was no loafing at all. They shoveled as hard
TH E PRO O F O F TH E TH EO RY as you could ask any man to work. I looked
with the greatest of interest for a long time,
I am through now with the theory. I will try and finally they moved off rapidly down
to convince you of the value of these four into the yard to another part of the yard
principles by giving you some practical illuS' and went right at handling iron ore. One of
trations. I hope that you will look for these the main facts connected with that shovel'
four elements in the illustrations. I shall be' ing was that the work those men were do-
gin by trying to show the power of these four ing was that, in handling the rice coal, they
elements when applied to the greatest kind had on their shovels a load of 3¾ pounds,
of work I know of that is done by man. The and when the same men went to ham
reason I have heretofore chosen pig'iron for dling ore with the same shovel, they had
an illustration is that it is the lowest form of over 38 pounds on their shovels. Is it ask'
work that is known. ing too much of anyone to inquire whether
A pig of iron weighs about ninety'two 3¾ pounds is the right load for a shovel, or
pounds on an average. A man stoops down whether 38 pounds is the right load for a
and, with no other implement than his shovel? Surely if one is right the other must
hands, picks up a pig of iron, walks a few be wrong. I think that is a selTevident fact,
yards with it, and drops it on a pile. A large and yet I am willing to bet that that is what
part of the community has the impression workmen are doing right now in Cleveland.
that scientific management is chiefly ham That is the old way. Suppose we notice
dling pig'iron. The reason I first chose pig' that fact. Most of us do not notice it be'
iron for an illustration is that, if you can cause it is left to the foreman. A t the Mid'
prove to any one the strength, the effect, of vale works, we had to find out these facts.
those four principles when applied to such W hat is the old way of finding them out? The
rudimentary work as handling pig'iron, the old way was to sit down and write ones
presumption is that it can be applied to friends and ask them the questions. They got
something better. The only way to prove it answers from contractors about what they
is to start at the bottom and show those four thought it ought to be, and then they aver-
principles all along the line. I am sorry I cam aged them up, or took the most reliable man,
not, because of the lack of time, give you the and said, “That is all right; now we have a
illustration of handling pig'iron. Many of shovel load of so much.” The more common
you doubt whether there is much of any sci' way is to say, “I want a good shovel foreman.”
ence in it. I am going to try to prove later They will send for the foreman of the shov-
with a high class mechanic that the work' elers and put the job up to him to find what
man who is fit to work at any type of work is is the proper load to put on a shovel. He will
almost universally incapable of understand' tell you right off the bat. I want to show you
ing the principles without the help of some the difference under scientific management.
one else. I will use shoveling because it is Under scientific management you ask no
a shorter illustration, and I will try to show one. Every little trifle,— here is nothing too
what I mean by the science of shoveling, small,— becomes the subject of experiment.
and the power which comes to the man who The experiments develop into a law; they
knows the science of shoveling. It is a high save money; they increase the output of the
art compared with pig'iron handling. individual and make the thing worthwhile.
How is this done? What we did in shoveling shovelfuls thrown in a day. We found with a
experiments was to deliberately select two weight of between thirty-eight and thirty-
first class shovelers, the best we knew how nine pounds on the shovel, the man made a
to get. We brought them into the office and pile of material of a certain height. We then
said, “Jim and Mike, you two fellows are cut off the shovel, and he shoveled again
both good shovelers. I have a proposition to and with a thirty-four pound load his pile
make to you. I am going to pay you double went up and he shoveled more in a day. We
wages if you fellows will go out and do what again cut off the shovel to thirty pounds,
I want you to do. There will be a young chap and the pile went up again. With twenty-six
go along with you with a pencil and a piece pounds on the shovel, the pile again went
of paper, and he will tell you to do a lot of up, and at twenty-one and one-half pounds
fool things, and you will do them, and he the men could do their best. A t twenty
will write down a lot of fool things, and you pounds the pile went down, at eighteen it
will think it is a joke, but it is nothing of the went down, at fourteen it went down, so that
kind. Let me tell you one thing: if you feh they were at the peak of twenty-one and
lows think that you can fool that chap you one-half pounds. There is a scientific fact.
are very much mistaken, you cannot fool A first class shoveler ought to take twenty-
him at all. Don’t get it through your heads one and one-half pounds on his shovel in
you can fool him. If you take this double order to work to the best possible advan
wages, you will be straight and do what you tage. You are not giving that man a chance
are told.” They both promised and did ex- unless you give him a shovel which will hold
actly what they were told. What we told twenty-one pounds.
them was this: “We want you to start in and The men in the yard were run by the old
do whatever shoveling you are told to do fashioned foreman. He simply walked about
and work at just the pace, all day long, that with them. We at once took their shovels
when it comes night you are going to be away from them. We built a large labor tool
good and tired, but not tired out. I do not room which held ten to fifteen different
want you exhausted or anything like that, kinds of shoveling implements so that for
but properly tired. You know what a good each kind of material that was handled in
day’s work is. In other words, I do not want that yard, all the way from rice coals, ashes,
any loafing business or any overwork busi coke, all the way up to ore, we would have
ness. If you find yourself overworked and a shovel that would just hold twenty-one
getting too tired, slow down.” Those men pounds, or average twenty-one. One time it
did that and did it in the most splendid kind would hold eighteen, the next twenty-four,
of way day in and day out. We proved their but it will average twenty-one.
cooperation because they were in different When you have six hundred men labor
parts of the yard, and they both got near ing in the yard, as we had there, it becomes a
enough the same results. Our results were matter of quite considerable difficulty to get,
duplicated. each day, for each one of those six hundred
I have found that there are a lot of men, engaged in a line one and one-half to
schemes among my working friends, but two miles long and a half mile wide, just the
no more among them than among us. They right shovel for shoveling material. That re
are good, straight fellows if you only treat quires organization to lay out and plan for
them right, and put the matter up squarely those men in advance. We had to lay out the
to them. We started in at a pile of material, work each day. We had to have large maps
with a very large shovel. We kept innumer on which the movements of the men were
able accurate records of all kinds, some of plotted out a day in advance. When each
them useless. Thirty or forty different items workman came in the morning, he took out
were carefully observed about the work of two pieces of paper. One of the blanks gave
those two men. We counted the number of them a statement of the implements which
they had to use, and the part of the yard in go ahead and shovel and I will show you
which they had to work. That required on what is the matter with you.” Shoveling is a
ganization planning in advance. pretty big science, it is not a little thing.
One of the first principles we adopted was If you are going to use the shovel right you
that no man in that labor gang could work should always shovel off an iron bottom; if
on the new way unless he earned sixty pen not an iron bottom, a wooden bottom; and
cent higher wages than under the old plan. if not a wooden bottom a hard dirt bottom.
It is only just to the workman that he shall Time and again the conditions are such that
know right off whether he is doing his work you have to go right into the pile. When that
right or not. He must not be told a week is the case, with nine out of ten materials
or month after, that he fell down. He must it takes more trouble and more time and
know it the next morning. So the next slip more effort to get the shovel into the pile
that came out of the pigeon hole was either than to do all the rest of the shoveling. That
a white or yellow slip. We used the two colors is where the effort comes. Those of you again
because some of the men could not read. The who have taught the art of shoveling will
yellow slip meant that he had not earned his have taught your workmen to do this. There
sixty per cent higher wages. He knew that is only one way to do it right. Put your fore
he could not stay in that gang and keep on arm down onto the upper part of your leg,
getting yellow slips. and when you push into the pile, throw
your weight against it. That relieves your
arm of work. You then have an automatic
T E A C H IN G T H E M EN push, we will say, about eighty pounds, the
weight of your body thrown on to it. Time
I want to show you again the totally different and again we would find men whom we had
outlook there is under scientific manage- taught to shovel right were going at it in the
ment by illustrating what happened when same old way, and of course, they could not
that man got his yellow slips. Under the old do a day’s work. The teacher would simply
scheme, the foreman could say to him, “You stand over that fellow and say, “There is
are no good, get out of this; no time for what is the matter with you, Jim, you have
you, you cannot earn sixty percent higher forgotten to shovel into the pile.”
wages; get out of this! G o !” It was not done You are not interested in shoveling, you
politely, but the foreman had no time to pa- are not interested in whether one way or the
laver. Under the new scheme what hap other is right, but I do hope to interest you
pened? A teacher of shoveling went down in the difference of the mental attitude of
to see that man. A teacher of shoveling is a the men who are teaching under the new
man who is handy with a shovel, who has system. Under the new system, if a man falls
made his mark in life with a shovel, and yet down, the presumption is that it is our fault
who is a kindly fellow and knows how to at first, that we probably have not taught the
show the other fellow what he ought to do. man right, have not given him a fair show,
When that teacher went there he said, “See have not spent time enough in showing him
here, Jim, you have a lot of those yellow how to do his work.
slips, what is the matter with you? What is Let me tell you another thing that is char
up? Have you been drunk? Are you tired? acteristic of scientific management. In my
Are you sick? Anything wrong with you? Be day, we were smart enough to know when
cause if you are tired or sick we will give you the boss was coming, and when he came
a show somewhere else.” “Well, no, I am all up we were apparently really working. U n
right.” “Then if you are not sick, or there der scientific management, there is none of
is nothing wrong with you, you have forgot that pretense. I cannot say that in the old
ten how to shovel. I showed you how to days we were delighted to see the boss com
shovel. You have forgotten something, now ing around. We always expected some kind
of roast if he came too close. Under the in that yard, and when we got through there
new, the teacher is welcomed; he is not an were about one hundred and forty. Each
enemy, but a friend. He comes there to try one was earning a great deal more money.
to help the man get bigger wages, to show We made careful investigation and found
him how to do something. It is the great they were almost all saving money, living
mental change, the change in the outlook better, happier; they are the most contented
that comes, rather than the details of it. set of laborers to be seen anywhere. It is only
by this kind of justification, justification of
a profit for both sides, an advantage to both
D O E S SC IE N T IF IC sides, that scientific management can exist.
M A N A G EM EN T PAY? I would like to give you one more illustra
tion. I want to try to prove to you that even
It took the time of a number of men for about the highest class mechanic cannot pos
three years to study the art of shoveling in sibly understand the philosophy of his work,
that yard at the Bethlehem Steel Works cannot possibly understand the laws under
alone. They were carefully trained college which he has to operate. There is a man
men, and they were busy all the time. That who has had a high school education, an in
costs money, the tool room costs money, the genious fellow who courts variety in life, to
clerks we had to keep there all night figur whom it is pleasant to change from one kind
ing up how much the men did the day before of work to another. He is not a cheap man,
cost money, the office in which the men laid he is rather a high grade man among the ma
out and planned the work cost money. The chinists of this country. The case of which
very fair and proper question, the only ques I am going to tell you is one in which my
tion to ask is “Does it pay?” because if sci friend Barth went to introduce scientific
entific management does not pay in dollars management in the works of an owner, who,
and cents, it is the rankest kind of nonsense. at between 65 and 70 years of age, had built
There is nothing philanthropic about it. It up his business from nothing to almost five
has got to pay, because business which can thousand men. They had a squabble, and af
not be done on a profitable basis, ought not ter they got through, Mr. Barth made the
to be done on a philanthropic basis, for it proposition, “I will take any machine that
will not last. At the end of three and one- you use in your shop, and I will show you
half years we had a very good chance to that I can double the output of that ma
know whether or not it paid. chine.” A very fair machine was selected. It
Fortunately in the Bethlehem Steel was a lathe on which the workman had
Works they had records of how much it cost been working about twelve years. The prod
to handle the materials under the old sys uct of that shop is a patented machine with
tem, where the single foreman led a group a good many parts, 350 men working mak
of men around the works. It costs them be ing those parts year in and year out. Each
tween seven and eight cents a ton to handle man had ten or a dozen parts a year.
materials, on an average throughout the The first thing that was done was in the
year. After paying for all this extra work I presence of the foreman, the superinten
have told you about, it cost between three dent and the owner of the establishment.
and four cents a ton to handle materials, and Mr. Barth laid down the way in which all
there was a profit of between seventy-five of the parts were to be machined on that
and eighty thousand dollars a year in that machine by the workman. Then Mr. Barth,
yard by handling those materials in the new with one of his small slide rules, proceeded
way. What the men got out of it was this: U n to analyze the machine. With the aid of this
der the old system there were between four analysis, which embodies the laws of cutting
and six hundred men handling the material metals, Mr. Barth was able to take his turn
at the machine; his gain was from two and men knew about ten times as much as I did
one^half times to three times the amount of about doing the work. I set out deliberately
work turned out by the other man. This is to get on our side some of that knowledge
what can be done by science as against the that those workmen had.
old rule of thumb knowledge. That is not Mr. William Sellers was the president,
exaggeration; the gain is as great as that in and he was a man away beyond his genera'
many cases. tion in progress. I went to him and said, “I
Let me tell you something. The machines want to spend quite a good deal of money
of this country, almost universally in the ma- trying to educate ourselves on the manage'
chine shops of our country, are speeded two ment side of our works. I do not know much
or three hundred percent wrong. I made that of anything, and I am just about in the same
assertion before the tool builders in Atlantic condition as all the rest of the foremen
City. I said, “Gentlemen, in your own shops, around here.” Very reluctantly, I may say,
many of your machines are two and three he allowed us to start to spend money.
hundred percent wrong in speeds. Why? Be' That started the study of the art of cutting
cause you have guessed at it.” I am trying to metals. A t the end of six months, from the
show you what are the losses under the old standpoint of how to cut the metal off faster,
opinions, the difference between knowledge the study did not amount to anything, but
on the one hand and guesswork on the other. we unearthed a gold mine of information.
In 1882, at the end of a long fight with Mr. Sellers laughed at me, but when I was
the machinists of the Midvale Steel Works, able to show him the possibilities that lay
I went there as a laborer, and finally became ahead of us, the number of things we could
a machinist after serving my apprentice' find out, he said, “Go ahead.” So until 1889,
ship outside. I finally got into the shop, and that experiment went straight ahead day in
worked up to the place of a clerk who had and day out. That was done because it paid
something wrong with him. I then did a in dollars and cents.
little bit more work than the others were do' After I left the Midvale Steel Works, we
ing, not too much. They came to me and had no means of figuring those experiments
said, “See here, Fred, you are not going to except the information which we had ah
be a piecework hog.” I said, “You fellows ready gotten. Ten different machines were
mean that you think I am not going to try built to develop the art of cutting metals,
to get any more work off these machines? I so that almost continuously from 1882 for
certainly am. Now I am on the other side, twenty'six years, all sorts of experiments
and I am going to be straight with you, and went on to determine the twelve great ele'
I will tell you so in advance.” They said, ments that go to make up the art of cut'
“All right then, we will give you fair notice ting metals. I am trying to show you just
you will be outside the fence inside of six what is going to take place in every indus'
weeks.” Let me tell you gentlemen, if any of try throughout this world. You must know
you have been through a fight like that, try' those facts if you are going to manufacture
ing to get workmen to do what they do not cheaply, and the only way to know them is
want to do, you will know the meanness of to pay for them. . . .
it, and you will never want to go into an'
other one. I never would have gone into it
if I had known what was ahead of me. After T H E E F F E C T O N T H E W ORKM AN
the meanest kind of a bitter fight, at the end
of three years, we fairly won out and got a Almost every one says, “Why, yes, that may
big increase in output. I had no illusion at be a good thing for the manufacturer, but
the end of that time as to my great ability how about the workmen? You are taking all
or anything else. I knew that those work' the initiative away from that workman, you
are making a machine out of him; what are ing to outstrip us, but we will show you how.
you doing for him? He becomes merely a You shall not use a single implement in a
part of the machine.” That is the almost single way until you know just which one to
universal impression. Again let me try to use, and we will tell you which one to use,
sweep aside the fallacy of that view by an ib and until you know how to use it, we will
lustration. The modern surgeon without a tell you how to use that implement, and afi
doubt is the finest mechanic in the world. ter you have learned to use that implement
He combines the greatest manual dexterity our way, if you then see any defects in the
with the greatest knowledge of implements implements, any defects in the method,
and the greatest knowledge of materials on then invent; but, invent so that you can in-
which he is working. He is a true scientist, vent upwards. Do not go inventing things
and he is a very highly skilled mechanic. which we discarded years ago.”
How does the surgeon teach his trade to That is just what we say to our young
the young men who come to the medical men in the shops. Scientific management
school? Does he say to them, “Now, young makes no pretense that there is any finality
men, we belong to an older generation than in it. We merely say that the collective work
you do, but the new generation is going to of thirty or forty men in this trade through
far outstrip anything that has been done in eight or ten years has gathered together a
our generation; therefore, what we want of large amount of data. Every man in the es-
you is your initiative. We must have your tablishment must start that way, must start
brains, your thought, with your initiative. O f our way, then if he can show us any better
course, you know we old fellows have cen way, I do not care what it is, we will make
tain prejudices. For example, if we were go- an experiment to see if it is better. It will be
ing to amputate a leg, when we come down named after him, and he will get a prize for
to the bone we are accustomed to take a having improved on one of our standards.
saw, and we use it in that way and saw the There is the way we make progress under
bone off. But, gentlemen, do not let that fact scientific management. There is your justb
one minute interfere with your originality, fication for all this. It does not dwarf ink
with your initiative, if you prefer an axe or tiative, it makes true initiative. Most of our
a hatchet.” Does the surgeon say this? He progress comes through our workmen, but
does not. He says, “You young men are go^ comes in a legitimate way.
7
Bureaucracy
M a x Weber
1. C H A R A C T E R IST IC S O F in large political structures such as those

BU R EA U C R A C Y of the ancient Orient, the Germanic and
Mongolian empires of conquest, or of many
Modern officialdom functions in the follow- feudal structures of state. In all these cases,
ing specific manner: the ruler executes the most important
L There is the principle of fixed and of measures through personal trustees, table-
ficial jurisdictional areas, which are gener companions, or courtservants. Their com
ally ordered by rules, that is, by laws or ad missions and authority are not precisely de
ministrative regulations. limited and are temporarily called into
being for each case.
1. The regular activities required for the
purposes of the bureaucratically governed II. The principles of office hierarchy
structure are distributed in a fixed way as of and of levels of graded authority mean a
ficial duties. firmly ordered system of super- and sub
2. The authority to give the commands ordination in which there is a supervision
required for the discharge of these duties is of the lower offices by the higher ones. Such
distributed in a stable way and is strictly a system offers the governed the possibility
delimited by rules concerning the coercive of appealing the decision of a lower office to
means, physical, sacerdotal, or otherwise, its higher authority, in a definitely regulated
which may be placed at the disposal of manner. With the full development of the
officials. bureaucratic type, the office hierarchy is
3. Methodical provision is made for the monocratically organized. The principle of
regular and continuous fulfillment of these hierarchical office authority is found in all
duties and for the execution of the corre bureaucratic structures: in state and ecclesi
sponding rights; only persons who have the astical structures as well as in large party or
generally regulated qualifications to serve ganizations and private enterprises. It does
are employed. not matter for the character of bureaucracy
In public and lawful government these whether its authority is called “private” or
three elements constitute “bureaucratic “public.”
authority.” In private economic domina When the principle of jurisdictional
tion, they constitute bureaucratic “manage “competency” is fully carried through, hier
ment.” Bureaucracy, thus understood, is fully archical subordination— at least in public
developed in political and ecclesiastical office— does not mean that the “higher”
communities only in the modern state, and, authority is simply authorized to take over
in the private economy, only in the most the business of the “lower.” Indeed, the
advanced institutions of capitalism. Per opposite is the rule. Once established and
manent and public office authority, with having fulfilled its task, an office tends to
fixed jurisdiction, is not the historical rule continue in existence and be held by an
but rather the exception. This is so even other incumbent.
Source:From From M a x Weber: E ssay s in Sociology edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds.
Copyright © 1946 by Oxford University Press, Inc.; renewed 1973 by Hans H. Gerth. Reprinted by permission of
the publisher. Footnotes omitted.
73
III. The management of the modern of modem executive and employee of private
fice is based upon written documents (“the enterprises, in the same manner as it holds
files”), which are preserved in their origi for the state official.
nal or draught form. There is, therefore, a
staff or subaltern officials and scribes of V When the office is fully developed,
all sorts. The body of officials actively en- official activity demands the full working
gaged in a “public” office, along with the re capacity of the official, irrespective of the
spective apparatus of material implements fact that his obligatory time in the bureau
and the files, make up a “bureau.” In private may be firmly delimited. In the normal case,
enterprise, “the bureau” is often called “the this is only the product of a long develop
office.” ment, in the public as well as in the private
In principle, the modern organization of office. Formerly, in all cases, the normal state
the civil service separates the bureau from of affairs was reversed: official business was
the private domicile of the official, and, in discharged as a secondary activity.
general, bureaucracy segregates official ac
tivity as something distinct from the sphere V I. The management of the office fol
of private life. Public monies and equip lows general rules, which are more or
ment are divorced from the private property less stable, more or less exhaustive, and
of the official. This condition is everywhere which can be learned. Knowledge of these
the product of a long development. Nowa rules represents a special technical learning
days, it is found in public as well as in pri which the officials possess. It involves ju
vate enterprises; in the latter, the principle risprudence, or administrative or business
extends even to the leading entrepreneur. management.
In principle, the executive office is sepa The reduction of modem office manage
rated from the household, business from ment to rules is deeply embedded in its very
private correspondence, and business assets nature. The theory of modem public admin
from private fortunes. The more consis istration, for instance, assumes that the au
tently the modem type of business manage thority to order certain matters by decree —
ment has been carried through the more are which has been legally granted to public
these separations the case. The beginnings authorities— does not entitle the bureau to
of this process are to be found as early as the regulate the matter by commands given for
Middle Ages. each case, but only to regulate the matter
It is the peculiarity of the modern entre abstractly. This stands in extreme contrast
preneur that he conducts himself as the “first to the regulation of all relationships through
official” of his enterprise, in the very same individual privileges and bestowals of favor,
way in which the ruler of a specifically mod which is absolutely dominant in patrimoni-
ern bureaucratic state spoke of himself as alism, at least in so far as such relationships
“the first servant” of the state. The idea that are not fixed by sacred tradition.
the bureau activities of the state are in
trinsically different in character from the
management of private economic offices is 2. T H E P O SIT IO N O F T H E O FFIC IA L
a continental European notion and, by way
of contrast, is totally foreign to the Ameri All this results in the following for the inter
can way..IV nal and external position of the official:
IV. Office management, at least all I. Office holding is a “vocation.” This is

specialized office management— and such shown, first, in the requirement of a firmly
management is distinctly modern — usu prescribed course of training, which de
ally presupposes thorough and expert mands the entire capacity for work for a
training. This increasingly holds for the long period of time, and in the generally
Bureaucracy 75
prescribed and special examinations which II. The personal position of the official
are prerequisites of employment. Further is patterned in the following way:
more, the position of the official is in the 1. Whether he is in a private office or
nature of a duty. This determines the in a public bureau, the modern official always
ternal structure of his relations, in the fol strives and usually enjoys a distinct social es
lowing manner: Legally and actually, office teem as compared with the governed. His so
holding is not considered a source to be cial position is guaranteed by the prescrip
exploited for rents or emoluments, as was tive rules of rank order and, for the political
normally the case during the Middle Ages official, by special definitions of the criminal
and frequently up to the threshold of recent code against “insults of officials” and “con
times. Nor is office holding considered a tempt” of state and church authorities.
usual exchange of services for equivalents, The actual social position of the official
as is the case with free labor contracts. En is normally highest where, as in old civilized
trance into an office, including one in the countries, the following conditions pre
private economy, is considered an accep vail: a strong demand for administration by
tance of a specific obligation of faithful trained experts; a strong and stable social
management in return for a secure exis differentiation, where the official predomi
tence. It is decisive for the specific nature of nantly derives from socially and economi
modem loyalty to an office that, in the pure cally privileged strata because of the social
type, it does not establish a relationship to distribution of power; or where the cost
a person, like the vassal’s or disciple’s faith liness of the required training and status
in feudal or in patrimonial relations of au conventions are binding upon him. The
thority. M odem loyalty is devoted to im possession of educational certificates — to
personal and functional purposes. Behind be discussed elsewhere— are usually linked
the functional purposes, of course, “ideas of with qualification for office. Naturally, such
culture-values” usually stand. These are er certificates or patents enhance the “status
satz for the earthly or supra-mundane per element” in the social position of the of
sonal master: ideas such as “state,” “church,” ficial. For the rest this status factor in indi
“community,” “party,” or “enterprise” are vidual cases is explicitly and impassively
thought of as being realized in a commu acknowledged; for example, in the prescrip
nity; they provide an ideological halo for tion that the acceptance or rejection of
the master. an aspirant to an official career depends
The political official— at least in the fully upon the consent (“election”) of the mem
developed modern state — is not considered bers of the official body. This is the case in
the personal servant of a ruler. Today, the the German army with the officer corps.
bishop, the priest, and the preacher are in Similar phenomena, which promote this
fact no longer, as in early Christian times, guild-like closure of officialdom, are typ
holders of purely personal charisma. The ically found in patrimonial and, particu
supra-mundane and sacred values which larly, in prebendal officialdoms of the past.
they offer are given to everybody who seems The desire to resurrect such phenomena
to be worthy of them and who asks for them. in changed forms is by no means infre
In former times, such leaders acted upon quent among modem bureaucrats. For in
the personal command of their master; in stance, they have played a role among the
principle, they were responsible only to him. demands of the quite proletarian and expert
Nowadays, in spite of the partial survival of officials (the tretyj element) during the Rus
the old theory, such religious leaders are sian revolution.
officials in the service of a functional pur Usually the social esteem of the officials
pose, which in the present-day “church” as such is especially low where the demand
has become routinized and, in turn, ideo for expert administration and the domi
logically hallowed. nance of status conventions are weak. This
is especially the case in the United States; to expert considerations but to the services
it is often the case in new settlements by a follower renders to the party boss. This
virtue of their wide fields for profitmak holds for all kinds of procurement of officials
ing and the great instability of their social by elections, for the designation of formally
stratification. free, elected officials by party bosses when
2. The pure type of bureaucratic official is they determine the slate of candidates, or
appointed by a superior authority. A n official the free appointment by a chief who has
elected by the governed is not a purely bu himself been elected. The contrast, how
reaucratic figure. O f course, the formal ex ever, is relative: substantially similar con
istence of an election does not by itself mean ditions hold where legitimate monarchs and
that no appointment hides behind the elec their subordinates appoint officials, except
tion — in the state, especially, appointment that the influence of the followings are then
by party chiefs. Whether or not this is the less controllable.
case does not depend upon legal statutes Where the demand for administration
but upon the way in which the party mech by trained experts is considerable, and the
anism functions. Once firmly organized, the party followings have to recognize an intel
parties can turn a formally free election into lectually developed, educated, and freely
the mere acclamation of a candidate desig moving “public opinion,” the use of un
nated by the party chief. As a rule, however, qualified officials falls back upon the party
a formally free election is turned into a in power at the next election. Naturally,
fight, conducted according to definite rules, this is more likely to happen when the
for votes in favor of one of two designated officials are appointed by the chief. The
candidates. demand for a trained administration now
In all circumstances, the designation of exists in the United States, but in the large
officials by means of an election among the cities, where immigrant votes are “cor
governed modifies the strictness of hier ralled,” there is, of course, no educated pub
archical subordination. In principle, an of lic opinion. Therefore, popular elections of
ficial who is so elected has an autonomous the administrative chief and also of his sub
position opposite the superordinate official. ordinate officials usually endanger the ex
The elected official does not derive his po pert qualification of the official as well as
sition “from above” but “from below,” or at the precise functioning of the bureaucratic
least not from a superior authority of the mechanism. It also weakens the dependence
official hierarchy but from powerful party of the officials upon the hierarchy. This
men (“bosses”), who also determine his fur holds at least for the large administrative
ther career. The career of the elected official bodies that are difficult to supervise. The
is not, or at least not primarily, dependent superior qualification and integrity of fed
upon his chief in the administration. The of eral judges, appointed by the President, as
ficial who is not elected but appointed by a over against elected judges in the United
chief normally functions more exactly, from States is well known, although both types
a technical point of view, because, all other of officials have been selected primarily
circumstances being equal, it is more likely in terms of party considerations. The great
that purely functional points of consider changes in American metropolitan ad
ation and qualities will determine his selec ministrations demanded by reformers have
tion and career. As laymen, the governed proceeded essentially from elected mayors
can become acquainted with the extent to working with an apparatus of officials who
which a candidate is expertly qualified for of were appointed by them. These reforms
fice only in terms of experience, and hence have thus come about in a “Caesarist” fash
only after his service. Moreover, in every ion. Viewed technically, as an organized
sort of selection of officials by election, par form of authority, the efficiency of “Caesar-
ties quite naturally give decisive weight not ism,” which often grows out of democracy,
Bureaucracy 77
rests in general upon the position of the ficer or the administrative official can be re
“Caesar” as a free trustee of the masses (of moved from office at any time, or at least far
the army or of the citizenry), who is unfet- more readily than the “independent judge,”
tered by tradition. The “Caesar” is thus the who never pays with loss of his office for
unrestrained master of a body of highly even the grossest offense against the “code
qualified military officers and officials whom of honor” or against social conventions
he selects freely and personally without of the salon. For this very reason, if other
regard to tradition or to any other consider things are equal, in the eyes of the master
ations. This “rule of the personal genius,” stratum the judge is considered less qualified
however, stands in contradiction to the for for social intercourse than are officers and
mally “democratic” principle of a univer administrative officials, whose greater de
sally elected officialdom. pendence on the master is a greater guaran
3. Normally, the position of the official is tee of their conformity with status conven
held for life, at least in public bureaucracies; tions. O f course, the average official strives
and this is increasingly the case for all simi for a civil-service law, which would materi
lar structures. As a factual rule, tenure for life ally secure his old age and provide increased
is presupposed, even where the giving of guarantees against his arbitrary removal
notice or periodic reappointment occurs. from office. This striving, however, has its
In contrast to the worker in a private en limits. A very strong development of the
terprise, the official normally holds tenure. “right to the office” naturally makes it more
Legal or actual life-tenure, however, is not difficult to staff them with regard to techni
recognized as the official’s right to the pos cal efficiency, for such a development de
session of office, as was the case with many creases the career opportunities of am
structures of authority in the past. Where bitious candidates for office. This makes
legal guarantees against arbitrary dismissal for the fact that officials, on the whole,
or transfer are developed, they merely serve do not feel their dependency upon those at
to guarantee a strictly objective discharge of the top. This lack of a feeling of depen
specific office duties free from all personal dency, however, rests primarily upon the
considerations. In Germany, this is the case inclination to depend upon one’s equals
for all juridical and, increasingly, for all ad rather than upon the socially inferior and
ministrative officials. governed strata. The present conservative
Within the bureaucracy, therefore, the movement among the Badenia clergy, oc
measure of “independence,” legally guaran casioned by the anxiety of a presumably
teed by tenure, is not always a source of in threatening separation of church and state,
creased status for the official whose position has been expressly determined by the desire
is thus secured. Indeed, often the reverse not to be turned “from a master into a ser
holds, especially in old cultures and com vant of the parish.”
munities that are highly differentiated. In 4- The official receives the regular pe
such communities, the stricter the subordi cuniary compensation of a normally fixed
nation under the arbitrary rule of the mas salary and the old age security provided by a
ter, the more it guarantees the maintenance pension. The salary is not measured like a
of the conventional seigneurial style of liv wage in terms of work done, but according
ing for the official. Because of the very ab to “status,” that is, according to the kind of
sence of these legal guarantees of tenure, function (the “rank”) and, in addition, pos
the conventional esteem for the official may sibly, according to the length of service.
rise in the same way as, during the Middle The relatively great security of the official’s
Ages, the esteem of the nobility of office rose income, as well as the rewards of social es
at the expense of esteem for the freemen, teem, make the office a sought-after posi
and as the king’s judge surpassed that of the tion, especially in countries which no longer
people’ s judge. In Germany, the military of provide opportunities for colonial profits.
In such countries, this situation permits reh fects on his career. To this is joined the de
atively low salaries for officials. sire to qualify the right to office and the in
5. The official is set for a “career” within creasing tendency toward status group clo
the hierarchical order of the public service. sure and economic security. A ll of this makes
He moves from the lower, less important, for a tendency to consider the offices as
and lower paid to the higher positions. The “prebends” of those who are qualified by ed
average official naturally desires a mechanic ucational certificates. The necessity of tak
cal fixing of the conditions of promotion: ing general personal and intellectual quali
if not of the offices, at least of the salary fications into consideration, irrespective of
levels. He wants these conditions fixed in the often subaltern character of the educa
terms of “seniority,” or possibly according to tion certificate, has led to a condition in
grades achieved in a developed system of which the highest political offices, especially
expert examinations. Here and there, such the positions of “ministers,” are principally
examinations actually form a character in- filled without reference to such certificates.
delebilis of the official and have lifelong ef
8
Notes on the Theory of Organization
L uth er Gulick
Every large-scale or complicated enterprise a box. It might take two days to do the job.
requires many men to carry it forward. One thousand men would make 500 pairs of
Wherever many men are thus working to shoes a day. It would also be possible to di
gether the best results are secured when vide the work among these same men, using
there is a division of work among these men. the identical hand methods, in an entirely
The theory of organization, therefore, has to different way. One group of men would be
do with the structure of co-ordination im assigned to cut the leather, another to put
posed upon the work-division units of an ting in the eyelets, another to stitching up
enterprise. Hence it is not possible to deter the tops, another to sewing on the soles, an
mine how an activity is to be organized with other to nailing on the heels, another to in
out, at the same time, considering how the serting the laces and packing the pairs of
work in question is to be divided. Work di shoes. We know from common sense and ex
vision is the foundation of organization; in perience that there are two great gains in
deed, the reason for organization. this latter process: first, it makes possible
the better utilization of the varying skills
and aptitudes of the different workmen, and
1. T H E D IV ISIO N O F W O RK encourages the development of specializa
tion; and second, it eliminates the time that
It is appropriate at the outset of this discus is lost when a workman turns from a knife,
sion to consider the reasons for and the effect to a punch, to a needle and awl, to a hammer,
of the division of work. It is sufficient for our and moves from table to bench, to anvil, to
purpose to note the following factors. stool. Without any pressure on the workers,
they could probably turn out twice as many
Why Divide Work? shoes in a single day. There would be ad
Because men differ in nature, capacity and ditional economies, because inserting laces
skill, and gain greatly in dexterity by spe and packing could be assigned to unskilled
cialization; Because the same man cannot and low-paid workers. Moreover, in the cut
be at two places at the same time; Because ting of the leather there would be less spoil
the range of knowledge and skill is so great age because the less skillful pattern cutters
that a man cannot within his life-span know would be eliminated and assigned to other
more than a small fraction of it. In other work. It would also be possible to cut a dozen
words, it is a question of human nature, time, shoe tops at the same time from the same
and space. pattern with little additional effort. All of
In a shoe factory it would be possible to these advances would follow, without the
have 1,000 men each assigned to making introduction of new labor saving machinery.
complete pairs of shoes. Each man would The introduction of machinery accentu
cut his leather, stamp in the eyelets, sew up ates the division of work. Even such a simple
the tops, sew on the bottoms, nail on the thing as a saw, a typewriter, or a transit
heels, put in the laces, and pack each pair in requires increased specialization, and serves
Source: Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick, eds., Papers on the Science o f A dm inistration (New York: Institute of
Public Administration, 1937), 3-13. Reprinted with permission.
79
to divide workers into those who can and The Limits of Division
those who cannot use the particular im There are three clear limitations beyond
strument effectively. Division of work on which the division of work cannot to ad-
the basis of the tools and machines used vantage go. The first is practical and arises
in work rests no doubt in part on aptitude, from the volume of work involved in man-
but primarily upon the development and hours. Nothing is gained by subdividing
maintenance of skill through continued work if that further subdivision results in set'
manipulation. ting up a task which requires less than the
Specialized skills are developed not alone full time of one man. This is too obvious
in connection with machines and tools. to need demonstration. The only exception
They evolve naturally from the materials arises where space interferes, and in, such
handled, like wood, or cattle, or paint, or cases the part'time expert must fill in his
cement. They arise similarly in activities spare time at other tasks, so that as a matter
which center in a complicated series of in- of fact a new combination is introduced.
terrelated concepts, principles, and tech' The second limitation arises from tech-
niques. These are most clearly recognized nology and custom at a given time and place.
in the professions, particularly those based In some areas nothing would be gained by
on the application of scientific knowledge, separating undertaking from the custody
as in engineering, medicine, and chemistry. and cleaning of churches, because by custom
They are none the less equally present in the sexton is the undertaker; in building
law, ministry, teaching, accountancy, navi' construction it is extraordinarily difficult
gation, aviation, and other fields. to redivide certain aspects of electrical and
The nature of these subdivisions is essen' plumbing work and to combine them in a
tially pragmatic, in spite of the fact that more effective way, because of the jurisdic'
there is an element of logic underlying them. tional conflicts of craft unions; and it is
They are therefore subject to a gradual evo clearly impracticable to establish a division
lution with the advance of science, the in' of cost accounting in a field in which no
vention of new machines, the progress of technique of costing has yet been developed.
technology and the change of the social sys' This second limitation is obviously elas-
tern. In the last analysis, however, they ap- tic. It may be changed by invention and
pear to be based upon differences in indi' by education. If this were not the fact,
vidual human beings. But it is not to be we should face a static division of labor. It
concluded that the apparent stability of should be noted, however, that a marked
“human nature,” whatever that may be, change has two dangers. It greatly restricts
limits the probable development of special' the labor market from which workers may
ization. The situation is quite the reverse. be drawn and greatly lessens the opportune
As each field of knowledge and work is ties open to those who are trained for the
advanced, constituting a continually larger particular specialization.
and more complicated nexus of related The third limitation is that the subdivk
principles, practices and skills, any individ' sion of work must not pass beyond physical
ual will be less and less able to encompass it division into organic division. It might seem
and maintain intimate knowledge and fa- far more efficient to have the front half of
cility over the entire area, and there will the cow in the pasture grazing and the rear
thus arise a more minute specialization be' half in the barn being milked all of the
cause knowledge and skill advance while time, but this organic division would fail.
man stands still. Division of work and inte' Similarly there is no gain from splitting a
grated organization are the bootstraps by single movement or gesture like licking an
which mankind lifts itself in the process of envelope, or tearing apart a series of inti-
civilization. mately and intricately related activities.
Notes on the Theory of Organization 81
It may be said that there is in this an ele- 2. T H E C O -O R D IN A T IO N O F W O RK

ment of reasoning in a circle; that the test
here applied as to whether an activity is If subdivision of work is inescapable, coordi
organic or not is whether it is divisible or nation becomes mandatory. There is, how
n ot— which is what we set out to de- ever, no one way to co-ordination. Experi
fine. This charge is true. It must be a prag- ence shows that it may be achieved in two
matic test. Does the division work out? Is primary ways. These are:
something vital destroyed and lost? Does 1. By organization, that is, by interrelating
it bleed? the subdivisions of work by allotting them
to men who are placed in a structure of
The Whole and the Parts authority, so that the work may be co
It is axiomatic that the whole is equal to ordinated by orders of superiors to subordi
nates, reaching from the top to the bottom
the sum of its parts. But in dividing up any
of the entire enterprise.
“whole,” one must be certain that every
2. By the dominance of an idea, that is, the
part, including unseen elements and rela- development of intelligent singleness of
tionships, is accounted for. The marble purpose in the minds and wills of those
sand to which the Venus de Milo may be re who are working together as a group, so
duced by a vandal does not equal the statue, that each worker will of his own accord
though every last grain be preserved; nor is fit his task into the whole with skill and
a thrush just so much feathers, bones, flesh enthusiasm.
and blood; nor a typewriter merely so much These two principles of co-ordination are
steel, glass, paint, and rubber. Similarly a not mutually exclusive, in fact, no enterprise
piece of work to be done cannot be subdi is really effective without the extensive uti
vided into the obvious component parts lization of both.
without great danger that the central de Size and time are the great limiting fac
sign, the operating relationships, the im tors in the development of coordination. In
prisoned idea, will be lost. . . . a small project, the problem is not difficult;
When one man builds a house alone he the structure of authority is simple, and the
plans as he works; he decides what to do first central purpose is real to every worker. In
and what next, that is, he “co-ordinates the a large complicated enterprise, the organi
work.” When many men work together to zation becomes involved, the lines of au
build a house this part of the work, the co thority tangled, and there is danger that the
ordinating, must not be lost sight of. workers will forget that there is any central
In the “division of the work” among the purpose, and so devote their best energies
various skilled specialists, a specialist in only to their own individual advancement
planning and coordination must be sought and advantage.
as well. Otherwise, a great deal of time may The interrelated elements of time and
be lost, workers may get in each other’s way, habit are extraordinarily important in coor
material may not be on hand when needed, dination. Man is a creature of habit. When
things may be done in the wrong order, and an enterprise is built up gradually from small
there may even be a difference of opinion beginnings the staff can be “broken in” step
as to where the various doors and windows by step. And when difficulties develop, they
are to go. It is self-evident that the more the can be ironed out, and the new method fol
work is subdivided, the greater is the dan lowed from that point on as a matter of
ger of confusion, and the greater is the need habit, with the knowledge that that par
of overall supervision and coordination. C o ticular difficulty will not develop again.
ordination is not something that develops Routines may even be mastered by drill as
by accident. It must be won by intelligent, they are in the army. When, however, a
vigorous, persistent, and organized effort. large new enterprise must be set up or
altered overnight, then the real difficulties It is this fourth step which is the central
of co-ordination make their appearance. concern of the theory of organization. It is
The factor of habit, which is thus an impor the function of this organization (IV) to en
tant foundation of co-ordination when time able the director (II) to co-ordinate and en
is available, becomes a serious handicap ergize all of the subdivisions of work (III) so
when time is not available, that is, when that the major objective (I) may be achieved
rules change. The question of co-ordination efficiently.
therefore must be approached with different
emphasis in small and in large enterprises; in The Span of Control
simple and in complex situations; in stable In this undertaking we are confronted at the
and in new or changing organizations. start by the inexorable limits of human na
ture. Just as the hand of man can span only
Coordination through Organization a limited number of notes on the piano, so
Organization as a way of coordination re the mind and will of man can span but a lim
quires the establishment of a system of au ited number of immediate managerial con
thority whereby the central purpose or ob tacts. The problem has been discussed bril
jective of an enterprise is translated into liantly by Graicunas in his paper included in
reality through the combined efforts of many this collection. The limit of control is partly
specialists, each working in his own field at a matter of the limits of knowledge, but even
a particular time and place. more is it a matter of the limits of time and
It is clear from long experience in human of energy. As a result the executive of any
affairs that such a structure of authority re enterprise can personally direct only a few
quires not only many men at work in many persons. Fie must depend upon these to di
places at selected times, but also a single di rect others, and upon them in turn to direct
recting executive authority.1 The problem still others, until the last man in the orga
of organization thus becomes the problem of nization is reached. . . .
building up between the executive at the But when we seek to determine how many
center and the subdivisions of work on the immediate subordinates the director of an
periphery of an effective network of com enterprise can effectively supervise, we en
munication and control. ter a realm of experience which has not been
The following outline may serve further brought under sufficient scientific study to
to define the problem: furnish a final answer. Sir Ian Hamilton says,
“The nearer we approach the supreme head
I. First Step: Define the job to be done, of the whole organization, the more we
such as the furnishing of pure water to
ought to work towards groups of three; the
all of the people and industries within a
given area at the lowest possible cost; closer we get to the foot of the whole organi
II. Second Step: Provide a director to see zation (the Infantry of the Line), the more
that the objective is realized; we work towards groups of six.” 2
III. Third Step: Determine the nature and The British Machinery of Government
number of individualized and specialized Committee of 1918 arrived at the con
work units into which the job will have clusions that “The Cabinet should be small
to be divided. As has been seen above, in number— preferably ten or, at most,
this subdivision depends partly upon the twelve.” 3
size of the job (no ultimate subdivision
Henri Fayol said “ [In France] a minister
can generally be so small as to require
has twenty assistants, where the Adm inis
less than the full time of one worker) and
upon the status of technological and so trative Theory says that a manager at the
cial development at a given time; head of a big undertaking should not have
IV. Fourth Step: Establish and perfect the more than five or six.” 4
structure of authority between the direc Graham Wallas expressed the opinion
tor and the ultimate work subdivisions. that the cabinet should not be increased
“beyond the number of ten or twelve at vise but three, or five, or eight, or twelve
which organized oral discussion is most immediate subordinates.
efficient.” 5 These considerations do not, however,
Leon Blum recommended for France a dispose of the problem. They indicate rather
prime minister with a technical cabinet the need for further research. But without
modelled after the British War Cabinet, further research we may conclude that the
which was composed of five members.6 chief executive of an organization can deal
It is not difficult to understand why there with only a few immediate subordinates;
is this divergence of statement among am that this number is determined not only
thorities who are agreed on the fundamen- by the nature of the work, but also by the
tals. It arises in part from the differences nature of the executive; and that the num
in the capacities and work habits of in- ber of immediate subordinates in a large,
dividual executives observed, and in part diversified and dispersed organization must
from the noncomparable character of the be even less than in a homogeneous and uni
work covered. It would seem that insufffi fied organization to achieve the same mea
cient attention has been devoted to three sure of coordination.
factors: first, the element of diversification
of function; second, the element of time; One Master
and third, the element of space. A chief of From the earliest times it has been recog
public works can deal effectively with more nized that nothing but confusion arises
direct subordinates than can the general of under multiple command. “A man cannot
the army, because all of his immediate sub serve two masters” was adduced as a theo
ordinates in the department of public works logical argument because it was already
will be in the general field of engineering, accepted as a principle of human relation
while in the army there will be many dif in everyday life. In administration this is
ferent elements, such as communications, known as the principle of “unity of com
chemistry, aviation, ordinance, motorized mand.”7 The priniciple may be stated as
service, engineering, supply, transportation, follows: A workman subject to orders from
etc., each with its own technology. The el several superiors will be confused, ineffi
ement of time is also of great significance as cient, and irresponsible; a workman subject
has been indicated above. In a stable orga to orders from but one superior may be me
nization the chief executive can deal with thodical, efficient, and responsible. Unity
more immediate subordinates than in a new of command thus refers to those who are
or changing organization. Similarly, space commanded, not to those who issue the
influences the span of control. A n organiza commands.8
tion located in one building can be super The significance of this principle in the
vised through more immediate subordi process of co-ordination and organization
nates than can the same organization if must not be lost sight of. In building a struc
scattered in several cities. When scattered ture of co-ordination, it is often tempting to
there is not only need for more supervision, set up more than one boss for a man who is
and therefore more supervisory personnel, doing work which has more than one rela
but also for a fewer number of contacts with tionship. Even as great a philosopher of
the chief executive because of the increased management as Taylor fell into this error in
difficulty faced by the chief executive in setting up separate foremen to deal with
learning sufficient details about a far-flung machinery, with materials, with speed, etc.,
organization to do an intelligent job. The each with the power of giving orders di
failure to attach sufficient importance to rectly to the individual workman.9The rigid
these variables has served to limit the sci adherence to the principle of unity of com
entific validity of the statements which mand may have its absurdities; these are,
have been made that one man can super however, unimportant in comparison with
the certainty of confusion, inefficiency and department directly as they can be when
irresponsibility which arise from the viola- set up independently in a separate depart
tion of the principle. ment, or at least in a bureau with an exten
sive autonomy, and it is generally agreed
Technical Efficiency that public welfare administration and po
There are many aspects of the problem lice administration require separation, as do
of securing technical efficiency. Most of public health administration and welfare
these do not concern us here directly. They administration, though both of these com
have been treated extensively by such au binations may be found in successful opera
thorities as Taylor, Dennison, and Kimball, tion under special conditions. N o one would
and their implications for general organiza think of combining water supply and public
tion by Fayol, Urwick, Mooney, and Reiley. education, or tax administration and public
There is, however, one efficiency concept recreation. In every one of these cases, it
which concerns us deeply in approaching will be seen that there is some element ei
the theory of organization. It is the prin ther of work to be done, or of the technol
ciple of homogeneity. ogy used, or of the end sought which is non-
It has been observed by authorities in homogeneous.
many fields that the efficiency of a group Another phase of the combination of in
working together is directly related to the compatible functions in the same office may
homogeneity of the work they are perform be found in the common American practice
ing, of the processes they are utilizing, and of appointing unqualified laymen and poli
of the purposes which actuate them. From ticians to technical positions or to give tech
top to bottom, the group must be unified. It nical direction to highly specialized serv
must work together. ices. As Dr. Frank ]. Goodnow pointed out
It follows from this (1) that any organiza a generation ago, we are faced here by two
tional structure which brings together in a heterogeneous functions, “politics” and “ad
single unit work divisions which are non- ministration,” the combination of which
homogeneous in work, in technology, or in cannot be undertaken within the structure
purpose will encounter the danger of fric of the administration without producing
tion and inefficiency; and (2) that a unit inefficiency.
based on a given specialization cannot be
given technical direction by a layman. Caveamus Expertum
In the realm of government it is not diffi A t this point a word of caution is necessary.
cult to find many illustrations of the unsat The application of the principle of homo
isfactory results of non-homogeneous ad geneity has its pitfalls. Every highly trained
ministrative combinations. It is generally technician, particularly in the learned pro
agreed that agricultural development and fessions, has a profound sense of omnis
education cannot be administered by the cience and a great desire for complete inde
same men who enforce pest and disease con pendence in the service of society. When
trol, because the success of the former rests employed by government he knows exactly
upon friendly co-operation and trust of the what the people need better than they do
farmers, while the latter engenders resent themselves, and he knows how to render
ment and suspicion. Similarly, activities like this service. He tends to be utterly oblivious
drug control established in protection of the of all other needs, because, after all, is not his
consumer do not find appropriate homes in particular technology the road to salvation?
departments dominated by the interests Any restraint applied to him is “limitation
of the producer. In the larger cities and in of freedom,” and any criticism “springs from
states it has been found that hospitals can ignorance and jealousy.” Every budget in
not be so well administered by the health crease he secures is “in the public interest,”
while every increase secured elsewhere is “a 3. O RG A N IZA TIO N A L PA TTER N S

sheer waste.” His efforts and maneuvers to
expand are “public education” and “civic Organization Up or Doom?
organization,” while similar efforts by others One of the great sources of confusion in the
are “propaganda” and “politics.” discussion of the theory of organization is
Another trait of the expert is his tendency that some authorities work and think pri
to assume knowledge and authority in fields marily from the top down, while others work
in which he has no competence. In this and think from the bottom up. This is per
particular, educators, lawyers, priests, admi fectly natural because some authorities are
rals, doctors, scientists, engineers, account interested primarily in the executive and in
ants, merchants and bankers are all the the problems of central management, while
sam e— having achieved technical compe others are interested primarily in individ
tence or “success” in one field, they come ual services and activities. Those who work
to think this competence is a general qual from the top down regard the organization
ity detachable from the field and inherent as a system of subdividing the enterprise
in themselves. They step without embar under the chief executive, while those who
rassment into other areas. They do not work from the bottom up, look upon orga
remember that the robes of authority of nization as a system of combining the indi
one kingdom confer no sovereignty in an vidual units of work into aggregates which
other; but that there they are merely a mas are in turn subordinated to the chief execu
querade. tive. It may be argued that either approach
The expert knows his “stuff.” Society leads to a consideration of the entire prob
needs him, and must have him more and lem, so that it is of no great significance
more as man’s technical knowledge be which way the organization is viewed. C er
comes more and more extensive. But his tainly it makes this very important practical
tory shows us that the common man is a difference: those who work from the top
better judge of his own needs in the long down must guard themselves from the dan
run than any cult of experts. Kings and rul ger of sacrificing the effectiveness of the in
ing classes, priests and prophets, soldiers and dividual services in their zeal to achieve
lawyers, when permitted to rule rather than a model structure at the top, while those
serve mankind, have in the end done more who start from the bottom, must guard
to check the advance of human welfare themselves from the danger of thwarting
than they have to advance it. The true co-ordination in their eagerness to develop
place of the expert is, as A. E. said so well, effective individual services.
“on tap, not on top.” The essential validity In any practical situation the problem of
of democracy rests upon this philosophy, for organization must be approached from both
democracy is a way of government in which top and bottom. This is particularly true in
the common man is the final judge of what the reorganization of a going concern. May
is good for him. it not be that this practical necessity is like
Efficiency is one of the things that is good wise the sound process theoretically? In that
for him because it makes life richer and safer. case one would develop the plan of an orga
That efficiency is to be secured more and nization or reorganization both from the top
more through the use of technical special downward and from the bottom upward, and
ists. These specialists have no right to ask would reconcile the two at the center. In
for, and must not be given freedom from planning the first subdivisions under the
supervisory control, but in establishing that chief executive, the principle of the limita
control, a government which ignores the tion of the span of control must apply; in
conditions of efficiency cannot expect to building up the first aggregates of specialized
achieve efficiency. functions, the principle of homogeneity
must apply. If any enterprise has such an Directing, that is the continuous task of mak
array of functions that the first subdivisions ing decisions and embodying them in spe
from the top down do not readily meet the cific and general orders and instructions and
first aggregations from the bottom up, then serving as the leader of the enterprise;
Co-ordinating, that is the all important duty
additional divisions and additional aggre-
of interrelating the various parts of the work;
gates must be introduced, but at each fur-
Reporting, that is keeping those to whom
ther step there must be a less and less rig the executive is responsible informed as to
orous adherence to the two conflicting what is going on, which thus includes keep
principles until their juncture is effected---- ing himself and his subordinates informed
through records, research, and inspection;
Organizing the Executive Budgeting, with all that goes with budgeting
The effect of the suggestion presented above in the form of fiscal planning, accounting,
and control.
is to organize and institutionalize the execu
tive function as such so that it may be more This statement of the work of a chief
adequate in a complicated situation. This is executive is adapted from the functional
in reality not a new idea. We do not, for ex analysis elaborated by Henri Fayol in his
ample, expect the chief executive to write “Industrial and General Administration.” It
his own letters. We give him a private sec is believed that those who know adminis
retary, who is part of his office and assists tration intimately will find in this analysis a
him to do this part of his job. This secretary valid and helpful pattern, into which can be
is not a part of any department, he is a sub fitted each of the major activities and duties
division of the executive himself. In just of any chief executive.
this way, though on a different plane, other If these seven elements may be accepted
phases of the job of the chief executive may as the major duties of the chief executive, it
be organized. follows that they may be separately orga
Before doing this, however, it is neces nized as subdivisions of the executive. The
sary to have a clear picture of the job it need for such subdivision depends entirely
self. This brings us directly to the question, on the size and complexity of the enterprise.
“W hat is the work of the chief executive? In the largest enterprises, particularly where
What does he do?” the chief executive is as a matter of fact un
The answer is PO SDCO RB. able to do the work that is thrown upon him,
PO SD CO RB is, of course, a made-up it may be presumed that one or more parts
word designed to call attention to the vari of PO SD CO R B should be suborganized.
ous functional elements of the work of a
chief executive because “administration”
and “management” have lost all specific N O TES
content.10 PO SD CO RB is made up of
the initials and stands for the following 1. I.e., when organization is the basis of coordi
activities: nation. Wherever the central executive au
thority is composed of several who exercise
Planning, that is working out in broad out their functions jointly by majority vote, as
line the things that need to be done and the on a board, this is from the standpoint of
methods for doing them to accomplish the organization still a “single authority”; where
purpose set for the enterprise; the central executive is in reality composed
Organizing, that is the establishment of the of several men acting freely and indepen
formal structure of authority through which dently, then organization cannot be said to
work subdivisions are arranged, defined and be the basis of co-ordination; it is rather the
co-ordinated for the defined objective; dominance of an idea and falls under the
Staffing, that is the whole personnel function second principle stated above.
of bringing in and training the staff and 2. Sir Ian Hamilton, “The Soul and Body of
maintaining favorable conditions of work; an Army.” Arnold, London, 1921, p. 230.
3. Great Britain. Ministry of Reconstruction. ministration.” English translation by J. A.

Report of the Machinery of Government Coubrough. International Management
Committee. H. M. Stationery Office, Lon Association, Geneva, 1930.
don, 1918, p. 5. 8. Fayol terms the latter “unity of direction.”
4- Henri Fayol, “The Administrative Theory 9. Frederick Winslow Taylor, “Shop Manage
in the State.” Address before the Second ment;” Harper and Brothers, New York and
International Congress of Administrative London, 1911, p. 99.
Science at Brussels, September 13, 1923. 10. See Minutes of the Princeton Conference
Paper IV in this collection. on Training for the Public Service, 1935,
5. Graham Wallas, “The Great Society.” p. 35. See also criticism of this analysis in
Macmillan, London and New York, 1919, Lewis Meriam, “Public Service and Special
p. 264. Training,” University of Chicago Press,
6. Leon Blum, “La Reforme Gouvememen- 1936, pp. 1,2, 10 and 15, where this func
tale.” Grasset, Paris, 1918. Reprinted in tional analysis is misinterpreted as a state
1936, p. 59. ment of qualifications for appointment.
7. Henri Fayol, “Industrial and General A d

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C H A PT ER I

Classical Organization Theory

Scientific management emerged as a national movement during a series of events

neither a description of reality nor a statement of normative preference. In fact, Weber

“That also is certain.” with them, nothing so unprofitable and prej'

The managerial function finds its only out' 1. Division of work.

its employees, whether these agreements out of agreements in dispute or inadequate

6. SU B O R D IN A T IO N O F Later on in connection with selecting per

advance and may be independent of the Bonuses

a century has gone by since 1840. The pop' THE DEVELOPMENT OF

THE WORKMEN: THE CHIEF WHAT SCIENTIFIC

THE SELECTION OF THE those who come under scientific manage

management that the workmen do not do T H E SC IE N C E O F SH O V E LIN G

1. C H A R A C T E R IST IC S O F in large political structures such as those

IV. Office management, at least all I. Office holding is a “vocation.” This is

It may be said that there is in this an ele- 2. T H E C O -O R D IN A T IO N O F W O RK

while every increase secured elsewhere is “a 3. O RG A N IZA TIO N A L PA TTER N S

3. Great Britain. Ministry of Reconstruction. ministration.” English translation by J. A.

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Chapter 1 (pp.42-102)

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Chapter 1 (pp.42-102)

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Chapter 1 (pp.42-102)

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C H A PT ER I

Classical Organization Theory

Scientific management emerged as a national movement during a series of events

neither a description of reality nor a statement of normative preference. In fact, Weber

“That also is certain.” with them, nothing so unprofitable and prej'

The managerial function finds its only out' 1. Division of work.

its employees, whether these agreements out of agreements in dispute or inadequate

6. SU B O R D IN A T IO N O F Later on in connection with selecting per­

advance and may be independent of the Bonuses

a century has gone by since 1840. The pop' THE DEVELOPMENT OF

THE WORKMEN: THE CHIEF WHAT SCIENTIFIC

THE SELECTION OF THE those who come under scientific manage­

management that the workmen do not do T H E SC IE N C E O F SH O V E LIN G

1. C H A R A C T E R IST IC S O F in large political structures such as those

IV. Office management, at least all I. Office holding is a “vocation.” This is

It may be said that there is in this an ele- 2. T H E C O -O R D IN A T IO N O F W O RK

while every increase secured elsewhere is “a 3. O RG A N IZA TIO N A L PA TTER N S

3. Great Britain. Ministry of Reconstruction. ministration.” English translation by J. A.

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6. SU B O R D IN A T IO N O F Later on in connection with selecting per

THE SELECTION OF THE those who come under scientific manage