Management

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the consequences, from a social science perspective, of various developments in theoretical concepts and research methodology pertaining to management. The theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor, John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner and Abraham Maslow are discussed and analyzed with particular attention paid to the damage caused to the labor force by the theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor.

From the Paper:

"What is fascinating in unraveling how management has tried to understand and use human behavior is to look at the first time that when Frederick Winslow Taylor observed how people behaved and broke those behaviors down into small increments that could be shaped and controlled for the benefit of industry and eventually society. In doing so he became the first Behavioral Manager in history. His work predated the Behavioral Psychologists Watson and Skinner by decades. Unfortunately, Taylor, like Watson and Skinner, was a reductionist. The most brilliant philosopher social scientists had been observing man's behavior for thousands of years and had not reduced man's essence to a few measurements or behaviors. Even though Taylor's work helped bring about the Industrial Revolution, his reductionist elitism cost the world thousands of hours of innovation and creativity that soured under robot like working conditions."

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