Australian Financial Review http://www.afr.com.au/content/990310/news/news10.html Mar 10, 1999 Taylorism in an IT world Work Relations, By Stephen Long Frederick Winslow Taylor has a lot to answer for. The man who destroyed the working lives of countless millions by stripping their jobs of autonomy and skill is now being blamed for the failure of modern firms to adapt to the needs of the knowledge economy. According to a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit and Andersen Consulting, companies are risking extinction by stifling the innovation and creativity of high-skill "knowledge workers". It argues that the IT revolution has transformed the nature of work, making knowledge a primary commodity and creating a new breed of high-skill workers who need, and demand, autonomy. Knowledge workers' key attribute is their ability to handle complexity and uncertainty - hallmarks of the age. Yet managers continue to impose a command and control approach, based on the belief that "there is a single best and right way to do anything in order to achieve a standard result". This, the report argues, "is a direct holdover from ... Taylor's principles of scientific management". I do not dispute that Tayloristic management still prevails in many organisations, nor that it places a dead hand on innovation and creativity. (Though it should be noted that high-skilled "knowledge workers" are less subject to this low-trust, control approach than most employees). But is the knowledge workers' struggle to maintain autonomy and discretion over work really something new, or part of an age-old battle between skilled workers and managements keen to maximise labour application? Taylor, readers familiar with labour history may recall, pioneered the late nineteenth century school of "scientific management" which provided the bedrock for management thinking and work design throughout this century. The scion of a well-to-do Philadelphia family, he turned his back on Harvard and a career in law to train as a craft apprentice, before taking a job as a labourer in a steelworks. Armed with this experience, Taylor was able to serve his class far better than he could have as a graduate of Harvard Law. Like today's "knowledge workers", fin de siecle craftsmen were masters of a body of specialist knowledge which they applied with autonomy and discretion. Management assumed that each worker was more skilled in his or her own trade than anyone in management could be, so the details of how the work was best done were left to the worker. Taylor set about to change all that. His principles were that management "gather all of the traditional knowledge possessed by workmen and reduce it to rules, laws and formulae" ... "that all possible brain work should be removed from the shop" ... "and that management plan and specify each task ... not only what is to be done, but how ... and the exact time allowed for doing it". In short, that management secure a monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labour process in order to maximise efficiency. This was the modus operandi of the mass production assembly line. And the logic of Taylorism, together with its ruthless drive for efficiency, still permeate organisations today. It might be harder for managers to appropriate the knowledge of employees whose key skill is abstract thinking. But it's a safe bet they will try. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
