Frederick W. Taylor is known as the father of Scientific Management, a major theory of management and administration that has been utilized in both the private and the public sectors. Taylor was a mechanical engineer whose writings on efficiency and scientific management were widely read, and he was also the founder of "systems engineering." Taylor's influence is still felt in the structure and operation of management and in bureaucracies both public and private around the world, and much of the development of public and private sector administration in this century owes a debt to Taylor and his writings. His approach has had psychological consequences in terms of the way we view and respond to management issues as well as considerable influence on ideas about efficiency. Scientific management itself was a form of industrial engineering that established the organization of work as in Henry Ford's assembly line. This discipline, along with the industrial psychology established by others at the Hawthorne Works of Western Electric in the 1920s, altered management theory from early time and motion studies to the latest total quality control ideas.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in Philadelphia in 1856. He prepared for college at Philips Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and was accepted at Harvard. After his eyesight failed, he became an industrial apprentice in the depression of 1873, one of the two major depressions in this country prior to the Great Depression in the 1930s. At Exeter, he was influenced by the classification system invented by Melvil Dewey in 1872 (known today as the Dewey Decimal System). In 1878, Taylor became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Company. He wrote a book in which he described some of his promotions to gang boss, foreman, and finally, chief engineer. He introduced time motion studies in 1881 following ideas of Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth, strong personalities who immortalize...