Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

INTRODUCTION ii a standard best method for an activity has been worked out, as in the art of cutting metals, it must be taught; the people who wish to impose it on workers must be teachers and demonstrators in- stead of drivers. The organization takes on what may be called an academic aspect. Specializing becomes valuable, a foreman or overseer may be chosen for special instead of general capacity, and the fostering of a special skill in the worker is the first aim of the management. Inevitably the worker is brought in contact with more than one authority, and the reply to the objection that a man cannot work under half a dozen masters is that he can certainly be helped by half a dozen teachers, each attending to a different part of his activity. The scientific method aims at creating a manage- ment well informed as to the best thing to do, the best way to do it, and the best rate at which to do it. The transference of this information is a matter for demonstration as well as instruction, and therefore sound educational method calls on the management to do, as well as to give carefully-planned orders. Whence a committee of engineers in their report1 on the new methods epitomized them as, finally, a process of “ transference of skill "from management to worker. A management, therefore, should initially include skilled workers, as well as observers, and men capable of scientific analysis and generalization. 1 ” The Present State of the Art of Industrial Management.” Majority Report. Trans. of Amer. Soc. of Mechanical Engineers, 1911.