Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

MANAGEMENT : A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION 25 thing thoroughly. Taylor was proposing to increase the supervision over each activity, therefore he classified and divided the functions of supervising, and arranged for different men to take each class. Wherever he desired special knowledge of and attention to a certain activity, he placed a com- petent man with special qualifications in charge. His motto for assigning work was “ function, not position." A foreman, described by position, is a general intermediary for all purposes between shop-superintendent and workman; a functional foreman’s duty may be the starting of each man’s job and seeing that he has everything he wants, or the regulating of the speeds of the machines, or the repairing of them, or so on. The idea of function, or some amount of specializa- tion, is to be carried through every department. Mr. W. Kent, in his book “ Investigating an Industry,” sketches the application of the scheme to the formation of “ functional directors,” who, in very small committees, undertake to keep in touch with certain aspects of the business, and to be responsible f°r paying them proper attention. It is not difficult to keep functional management clearly distinguished from the other type, which Taylor called “ military.” But this is not an accurate description of it nowadays. By “ mili- tary ” he meant an organization in which each man had his exact position, and discharged manifold functions of a somewhat similar kind for each position, merely differing in range; whereas army