Table Of Contentcover
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title: Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration
Community : A Reevaluation SUNY Series in Public
Administration
author: Schachter, Hindy Lauer.
publisher: State University of New York Press
isbn10 | asin: 0791401413
print isbn13: 9780791401415
ebook isbn13: 9780585090610
language: English
subject Public administration--History, Industrial management--
History, Taylor, Frederick Winslow,--1856-1915.
publication date: 1989
lcc: JF1341.S32 1989eb
ddc: 350/.0009
subject: Public administration--History, Industrial management--
History, Taylor, Frederick Winslow,--1856-1915.
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Page i
Frederick Taylor
and the Public Administration Community
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Page ii
SUNY series in Public Administration
Peter W. Colby, Editor
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Page iii
Frederick Taylor
and the Public Administration Community
A Reevaluation
Hindy Lauer Schachter
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
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Page iv
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1989 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York
Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N. Y., 12246
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schachter, Hindy Lauer.
Frederick Taylor and the public administration community : A reevaluation / Hindy Lauer Schachter.
p. cm.(SUNY series in public administration)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7914-0140-5.ISBN 0-7914-0141-3 (pbk.)
1. Public administrationHistory. 2. Industrial
managementHistory. 3. Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1856-1915. I. Title.
II. Series.
JF1341.s32 1989
350'.0009dc20
89-4642
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Page v
Once again
to
Irving and Amanda
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Page vii
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter
1. Substance and Reputation 1
2. Taylor in Textbooks 11
3. Early Years 19
4. Scientific Management 37
5. Immediate Reception 49
6. Morris Cooke, a Link between Taylor and Public Administration 71
7. Scientific Management and Public Administration: Act One 91
8. Scientific Management and Public Administration: Act Two 111
Notes 125
Bibliography 153
Index 171
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Page ix
Acknowledgments
This book indirectly results from a Frederick Taylor symposium held at the New Jersey Institute of Technology on
April 16, 1986. Asked to moderate a panel on Taylorism, I rushed to read Shop Management and The Principles of
Scientific Management and discovered that in their entirety these books present a picture of Taylor's ideas that is
much less authoritarian than that offered in the post-World-War-II public administration literature.
My first reaction was to share democratic aspects of Taylor's work with my audience. I entered the auditorium
determined to rescue Taylor's reputation. On the platform, I became convinced that an even more important mission
lay in analyzing why public administration texts give only a part of what Taylor had to say, why modern writers
depict him as an organizational primitive and use him as a foil for classifying later theorists. Thus, this book was
born.
I want to thank the New Jersey Institute of Technology for offering me a research sabbatical in the fall of 1987 to
write the book. Much of the research was done at the Frederick Winslow Taylor collection at Stevens Institute of
Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Taylor would have appreciated Jane Hartye, associate curator of the
collection. She always seemed to find the one best way to handle any request for information.
Additional research was done at the Morris Cooke collection in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library
in Hyde Park, New York, and at the Institute of Public Administration in New York City; I thank their staffs for
assistance.
Some of the material in Chapters 2 and 4 appears in "Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Idea of Worker
Participation," Administration and Society (May 1989). I want to acknowledge the Editorial suggestions of Gary
Walmsley, the journal's editor. I also want to thank my editors at SUNY Press: Peggy Gifford, Dana Foote, and
Malcolm Willison, a meticulous copy editor.
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Page x
Most of all I want to thank my husband, Irving, and my daughter, Amanda, for gracious support. They both know
much more about Frederick Taylor than they ever dreamed possible.
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Page 1
Chapter 1
Substance and Reputation
This book is a case study analysis of how the public administration discipline integrates over time a complex and
controversial theorist. The focus is on selective information transmittal, the differences that emerge between a
writer's intentions and ideasas documented in that person's books, articles, and papersand reputation, in textbooks
and articles by others. The argument is that public administration's current framework of information transmission
facilitates distortion and the undervaluing of early writers, particularly through their use as foils for writers who
came afterwards. A new framework for understanding the discipline's past seems necessary. In this way we can
rescue complex and useful turn-of-the-century substance from attempts to make it appear less intriguing than its
primary sources show it to be.
This case study centers on rescuing from his reputation the substance of the management theorist Frederick
Winslow Taylor. There is no doubt about Taylor's central role in developing management as a discipline. A 1977
survey of management historians ranked him first among the discipline's historical pioneers. 1 Dwight Waldo
regards his work as the most important theoretical influence on public administration.2 Current literature regularly
alludes to him in debates on personnel administration and technological change.
Taylor's ghost hovers ever the modern study of public administration. Although he has been dead for over seventy
years, discussion of his work quickly degenerates into polemics. Much of the modern literature depicts him as
authoritarian, equating motivation with pay incentives. This denigration, however, focuses on a narrow range of
quotations or confuses his own ideas with their purported application by people he specifically repudiated.
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