Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

122 EFFICIENCY METHODS unless you both time its elements and say how each is to be performed. This contention is met by critics with the objection that initiative, i.e., choice and judgment, are taken from the worker ; and the objection is a sound one. The use of the card tends to produce a new kind of worker. It can be urged that his intelligence and initiative are directed into other channels. It is certain that a good deal of specialized intelligence will be necessary to comprehend fully and follow an instruction card. Mr. Gilbreth speaks of the worker learning the scientific way of looking at an operation. The mind of the worker is supposed to be occupied during his work partly by the interest of performing the operation in the right time, and seeing that all the circumstances are as they ought to be for that end ; and partly by his being on the look-out for possible improvements. It is constantly said by scientific managers that suggestions are welcome, and there are often schemes of rewards for suggestions ; but the rule is that suggestions from a worker are not considered before he has performed the task in the standard way. No doubt workers will be very prompt to complain of any hindrance they meet with in getting on with their work, and with this and the other stimuli mentioned it would seem that they would need the qualities of “ mental alertness and physical re- sponsiveness ” which one critic says it is difficult to preserve under this system.1 There seems much to 1 J. C. Frey, Journal of Political Economy, June, 1913.