Sarah Ryan

Democracy and Work: Competing Visions

Winter 1998

The conceptual goal is to get students to identify the key elements that make up Taylorism and consider the ways its methods and values live in the modern world, including their cultural impact beyond the workplace.

Taylorism and the modern world

Break up into groups of four, introduce yourselves, and select a timekeeper, a note taker, a facilitator, and someone to be responsible for the physical arrangements. The timekeeper will have to be extremely attentive to her/his job.

1. Each person should describe the things you were required to do on a recent job. What was your task, as the management described it to you? (10 min.)

This workshop discusses the concept of "Taylorism," about which you have just seen the short film, Clockwork." Frederick W. Taylor is known as the father of scientific management, a new discipline that looked for scientific methods in the control of workers for mass production industries. Most of Taylor's work was done in the 1890s and the first two decades of this century. Many business writers and social commentators are saying that Taylorism is outmoded and on the decline.

You have been given some quotes from Taylor's writings and speeches on a separate sheet. Read them carefully. (10 min.)

2. Extract a list from the quotes of Taylor's main principles about how work should be organized in modern industrial society. (10 min.)

3. Now, make two lists from these central ideas, one of concepts you see dying in the modern world, and those you see growing. (10 min.)

4. Refer back to your first list of key elements of Taylorism. What effect do you think computer technologies have on Taylorism? What is the effect of the new technologies’ ability to monitor worker behavior? (5 min.)

5. Does global competition in production industries enhance or counteract Taylorist management techniques? (5 min.)

6. Based on your chart, how do you think Taylorism interacts with other hierarchies in our world? (10 min.)

7. Sociologist Arlie HochschiId says of flight attendants: "Gender defines the job." What do you think this statement means? Could you say race defines some jobs? What would that mean? (5 min.)

8. Some sociologists believe the ethic of Taylorism has spread throughout our culture beyond the workplace. Can your personal life reflect these management ideas? Does family life reflect Taylorism? Has the language of scientific management affected our non-work interactions with others? How? (10 min.)

9. Recently, "team concept," "quality circles," and "Total Quality Management" have become popular programs in many kinds of workplaces. Some versions of these programs are employed by almost 80% of the largest US corporations. The claim is made that the managers using these techniques have rejected Taylorism for methods that honor the importance of worker input.

10. Do these programs contradict Taylorism, or do they refine it? Or do they have some other relationship to social interaction? (5 min.)