CHAPTER 3
Scientific Management, Bureaucracy, and the Emergence of the Modern Organization
In this chapter we will take a historical perspective to make sense of our status as “organizational
beings.” In particular, we will explore the “prehistory” of organizational life and examine some of the
economic, political, and cultural conditions that led to the emergence of the modern corporation. This is
not intended to be a comprehensive history; instead, it will serve to highlight some of the most
important societal transformations that, in the past 200 years or so, have profoundly altered our sense
of what it means to be human.
In addition to this historical perspective, we will examine some of the early theories of management and
organizational communication that—in conjunction with huge shifts in the way we live—emerged early
in the 20th century to explain and regulate the newly emergent organizational life. It is important to
recognize that these theories did not emerge in a vacuum but are closely connected to the kinds of
social and political tensions society was experiencing at the time. The two most influential theories of
this time were scientific management, developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, and bureaucratic theory,
developed by one of the founding figures of sociology, Max Weber. In addition to these two theories, we
will also be examining related theorizing and research that emerged around the same time. Finally, we
will use the critical perspective to assess the strengths and weaknesses of these early theories.
figure THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN ORGANIZATION
While many economic, political, and cultural factors led to the emergence of what we would recognize
today as the modern, corporate organizational form, two factors are particularly worthy of mention—
the emergence of industrial conceptions of time and space. Put simply, the modern organization
depends for its existence on the willingness of its employees to appear together at a specific place and
time. Of course, the recent emergence of the virtual organization complicates this claim, but most of us
still have to “go” to work in a real, rather than a virtual, sense.
This statement is so obvious that it seems barely worthy of mention. In order to survive, organizations
depend on people to come to work and stay for a set period of time. However, this has not always been
the case. Indeed, the very idea that people should work for someone else and thus earn a wage is an
idea of fairly recent invention. As late as the middle of the 19th century, working for an employer (as
opposed to working for oneself) was called “wage slavery.” For the average U.S. citizen, such a notion
directly contradicted the principles of freedom and independence on which the United States was
established. In fact, in the early 19th century around 80% of U.S. citizens were self-employed; by 1970
this number had decreased to a mere 10% (Braverman, 1974). To be described as an “employee”—a
term that came into widespread use only in the late 19th century and was originally used exclusively to
describe railroad workers—was definitely not a compliment. As management scholar Roy Jacques (1996)
argues, “Before the late nineteenth century in the U.S., there were workers, but the employee did not
exist” (p. 68).
This shift from a society consisting of “workers” to one consisting of “managers” and “employees” is key
to understanding the historical transformations that led to the emergence of an “organizational
society.” This shift involves both a change in the kinds of jobs people held and a more fundamental
transformation of collective beliefs, values, and cultural practices. Moreover, a change occurred in the
forms of discipline and control to which people were willing to consent. In Foucault’s (1979, 1980b)
terms, the employee as a particular “subject” (i.e., an object of scrutiny about whom knowledge is
produced) was created as a definable and measurable entity. Similarly, managers as an identifiable
social group were also created to administer and control the newly emergent employee. To understand
our origins as corporate or organizational beings, we will explore the elements of this creation process.
Time, Space, and the Mechanization of Travel
Most of us are familiar with the fact that the Industrial Revolution produced a major transformation in
the structure of Western society. In Europe and the United States, the invention of steam power and the
emergence of mechanical, high-volume production profoundly altered people’s relationship to work.
Broadly speaking, a major shift occurred in which society was transformed relatively rapidly from an
agricultural, mercantile system to an industrial, capitalist system. In Britain—the first nation to
experience an industrial revolution—this process began around 1780. In the United States,
industrialization did not get fully under way until almost 100 years later. In both cases, however, the
changes in how most people lived were profound. The process of mechanization not only enabled the
production of vast quantities of goods but also fundamentally altered the economic, political, and
cultural landscape.
Of course, this process did not happen by accident. Indeed, a whole set of societal changes occurred
that made industrialization possible. One of those changes involved the creation of a mass population of
workers who could be employed in the new factories. As I indicated earlier, self-employment was the
norm; so, what occurred to begin this shift to wage employment? In Britain and other parts of Europe
this shift occurred with the passing of a series of “enclosure” laws. For hundreds of years, many people
in Britain (mostly the poor) had access to “common lands” on which they could raise livestock and grow
food (even today we use the term commons to describe a gathering place open to all, regardless of
social status). The enclosure laws took away such common’s rights, awarding these areas to landowners
who made vast fortunes through rents and sheep farming. Those who were dispossessed could no
longer provide for themselves and thus were forced to sell their labor to others.
In the United States, of course, there was no enclosure system; indeed, the government provided
ordinary people with incentives to colonize the apparently limitless supply of land. The U.S. Industrial
Revolution relied for its labor on the large numbers of immigrants that arrived in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. In fact, many of those immigrants left their home countries as a result of the enclosure
system in Britain and much of Europe.
In addition to these important political developments, the shift to industrial capitalism was rooted in
technological change. The creation and emergence of steam power functioned literally as the engine of
the Industrial Revolution. It made possible the efficient, cheap, mass production of goods and allowed
the development of a national transportation system that could rapidly move people and goods.
However, there were other—equally significant—consequences of the emergence of mechanical power.
In many respects these consequences were just as important in the emergence of the organizational
society in which we all live. Here, I am referring to a profound shift in human consciousness and
perception of reality that accompanied the emergence of railway transportation.
Historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1986) argues that the invention of the railway was a major factor in
the transformation of humans’ experience of time and space. Specifically, he suggests that the
mechanical motion of the steam engine was rooted in regularity, conformity, and potentially unlimited
duration and speed. For the first time in human history, transportation was freed from its natural,
organic limitations, and its relation to the space it covered was changed drastically. With steam power,
“motion was no longer dependent on the conditions of natural space, but on mechanical power that
created its own new spatiality” (p. 10). Schivelbusch points out that a frequently used metaphor in the
early 19th century to describe locomotive power was that it “shoots through like a bullet.” Railroad
tracks crossed rivers, carved through towns, and bored directly through mountains. In the face of such
mechanical power, nature lost its awesome majesty, and the arrival of “the infernal machine” heralded
a new, “rational” way of looking at the world.
From a 19th century perspective, the invention of mechanical forms of transportation was a doubleedged sword. From the point of view of industry, steam-powered transportation represented the
breaking of nature’s fetters on economic development. No longer subject to the unpredictability of
horses and wind power, transportation became much more efficient and predictable for business
purposes. Against this modernist perspective was regret at the loss of a close relationship between
humans and nature. The new travel technology alienated people from the natural relationships among
the traveler, his or her vehicle, and the landscape through which the journey unfolded. Riding a horse or
traveling in a stagecoach had a natural rhythm and sense of exertion, movement, and distance traveled
that was lost in train travel. While such a perspective seems quaint from a 21st century point of view, it
nevertheless indicates the fundamental change that mechanical travel introduced in people’s
experience of the world.
As we shall see, the railway traveler who felt alienated from his or her natural surroundings had much in
common with the worker who experienced alienation from his or her work in the newly industrialized
organization (of course, these were frequently the same people!). In order to better understand this
process, however, we must look more closely at how this new industrial consciousness emerged in the
workplace. That is, we need to examine how the craftsperson of the 18th century became the industrial
employee of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries—the employee about whom so many management and
organization theories have been developed.
Time, Space, and the Industrial Worker
The transformation of society from a primarily agrarian to an industrial system witnessed changes not
only in the way goods were manufactured but also in people’s relationship to and experience of work.
The mass production of goods by mechanical means required a completely different kind of worker from
the craftsperson of preindustrial times. We have already seen how political developments such as the
enclosure system created workers as “raw material” for the new factories. However, the new worker
had to embody a different set of work habits that were necessary for the new form of industrial work
discipline. The development of these new work habits can be traced to the emergence of a new
understanding and measurement of time.
Historian E. P. Thompson (1967) identifies the shift from task time to clock time as being a defining
feature in the emergence of industrial capitalism. Task time refers to an organic sense of time in which
work is shaped by the demands of the tasks to be performed. For example, the lives of the people living
and working in a seaport are shaped by the ebb and flow of the tides, regardless of the “objective” clock
time. Life in a farming community is shaped by the seasons; working long hours in the harvest season
contrasts with the more limited amount of labor in the winter months. Similarly, the lives of
independent craftspeople and artisans are oriented around the tasks they perform and are not dictated
by the hands of the clock.
Thompson (1967) shows how, in preindustrial Britain, little of life was subject to routine, with work
involving “alternate bouts of intense labour and of idleness” (p. 73). For the most part, people worked
when they needed to and thought nothing of mixing leisure with labor. Thompson argues that this task
orientation toward time is more humanly comprehensible than labor dictated by the clock and
represents a lack of demarcation between work and life in general. From the perspective of clock time,
however, such an orientation toward work appears wasteful.
In the struggle between employers and employees in early industrial capitalism, time proved to be the
significant point of contention. As more and more people shifted from self-employment to working for
others, employers attempted to impose a sense of time—clock time—that was alien to most workers
but essential to the development of systematic and synchronized forms of mass production. As such,
under the employer–employee industrial relationship, time was transformed from something that was
passed to something that was spent—time became a form of currency. In this new relationship, it is not
the task that is dominant but the value of the time for which the employer is paying the worker. (See
Critical Technologies 3.1 below.)
However, the introduction of clock time into the workplace marked a period of considerable struggle
between employers and employees, in which the former attempted to erode the old customs and habits
of preindustrial life rooted in task time. For example, in the late 1700s Josiah Wedgwood was the first
employer to introduce a system of “clocking in” for workers (Thompson, 1967, p. 83), dictating the
precise time that employees started and finished work. In addition, early industrialists recognized that
schooling could socialize future workers into the discipline of industrial time. Thus, a number of late18th century social commentators viewed education as “training in the habit of industry,” referring not
to specific skills but to the discipline required for industrial work (Thompson, 1967, p. 84).
The shift from task time to clock time was a key development in industrial capitalism, and political
struggles regarding time were (and still are) a widespread feature of capitalist–labor relations (Stevens &
Lavin, 2007). E. P. Thompson (1967) documents the words of one early 19th century worker who reports
the level of exploitation to which he and his fellow workers were subjected:
The clocks at the factories were often put forward in the morning and back at night, and instead of being
instruments for the measurement of time, they were used as cloak for cheatery and oppression. Though
this was known amongst the hands, all were afraid to speak, and a workman then was afraid to carry a
watch, as it was no uncommon event to dismiss any one who presumed to know too much about the
science of horology [timekeeping]. (p. 86)
Interestingly, it is precisely at the moment when industrialization required a much greater
synchronization of labor that an explosion of watches and clocks occurred amongst the general
population. This played an important role in socializing the average person into the new industrial “time
consciousness.” By the early 1800s watches and clocks were possessed widely and were considered not
only convenient but a mark of prestige. Even today watches are given as gifts to mark long service with a
company.
Along with the introduction of personal timepieces came factory owners’ widespread use of punch
clocks. These devices recorded the precise time that workers “clocked in” and “clocked out” of work.
Again, a great deal of worker–management conflict developed (and still exists) around this technology.
As a college student, I spent my summers working for a company that required hourly workers to clock
in every morning. The punch clock required that we clock in by 7:30 a.m.—if we clocked in at, say, 7:32
a.m., we would not be officially “on the clock” until 7:45 a.m. On the other hand, if we were stupid
enough to clock out at 4:59 p.m., we would get paid only until 4:45 p.m. Theoretically, then, the
company could get 28 minutes of free labor from a worker. Employees would try to “game” the system
by, for example, clocking in for someone else if it looked as though that person might be a couple of
minutes late; or they might drive slowly back to the depot after making a delivery to make sure they
didn’t have to clock out too early.
In Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times, there’s a scene in which Chaplin runs out of the factory where
he works after “losing it.” On the street outside, Chaplin accosts a woman, who calls for help from a
passing police officer. As Chaplin runs back into the factory to escape the pursuing officer, he takes time
to stop and punch his time card. It’s a great example of how the technology of the punch clock helped
instill in workers a sense of industrial time and functioned as an important technology of control in
shaping people’s work lives.
The introduction of clock time, then, was not only crucial for the development of mass-production
techniques but also as a means of controlling a workforce for whom independent work was the norm.
As Thompson (1967, p. 80) points out, the shift to clock time was not simply a technological
advancement but, more significantly, made possible the systematic exploitation of labor. Once time
became a form of currency—something that was paid for—then employers used all possible means to
extract as much labor as possible from their workers. In fact, much of the workplace conflict in the 19th
and early 20th centuries revolved around the length of the working day, with workers’ unions playing a
significant role in reducing the amount of hours employees were required to work. Nevertheless, the
basic principle that workers could be required by employers to work a certain number of hours was
accepted relatively early in the Industrial Revolution.
Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Thinkstock
The creation of “clock time” was closely linked with industrialization and efforts to control factory
workers.
In case this discussion appears rather detached from our early 21st century work experience, let me
illustrate the extent to which time is still intimately connected to issues of power and control in the
workplace. Management scholar Joanne Ciulla (2000) points out that the level of power and prestige a
person holds in his or her job is connected quite closely to the amount of discretionary work time they
possess. Generally speaking, the more one is considered a professional, the less one is tied to clock time
and the more one is invested in the nature of the tasks one performs.
For example, as a university professor, I have a considerable amount of discretion over how I organize
my time. As long as I fulfill my professional obligations (teaching, advising, committee work, research,
etc.), how and where I spend that time is entirely up to me (in fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in a coffee
shop!). I don’t have to clock in when I come to work or clock out when I leave. So, even though I may
work 60 hours in a given week, the clock dictates relatively little of that time. On the other hand, for an
assembly-line worker, the clock and speed of the assembly line dictate the entire working day. Such a
worker has little or no control over how his or her time is spent and, as in the case of the Jim Beam
company (see Chapter 1), he or she may not even have discretion over when bathroom breaks are taken
(Linder & Nygaard, 1998).
Each of these examples demonstrates the close connection between organizational power and one’s
control over clock time. As we will see later in this chapter, the 20th century witnessed a more and more
discriminating measurement of clock time in the workplace. While 19th century owners and managers
considered it a major accomplishment to gather workers together in the same place at the same time,
20th century managers developed much more precise forms of control.
In the first part of this chapter, we have been examining the historical, political, and communication
contexts for the emergence of the modern organizational form. As we can see, the issue of control
figures prominently. In order for organizations to function as collective, coordinated, goal-oriented
social structures, fundamental shifts had to occur in the experience and meaning of work. While it took
a number of decades, the average worker had to be trained to internalize, accept, and maybe even
celebrate the idea of working for someone else in a synchronized, coordinated manner for a specified
time period.
As the 20th century progressed, however, the simple coordination of employee activity was no longer
the ultimate goal of organizations. As numerous management researchers were soon to show, there
were many sources of untapped potential for increasing the productivity of organizational employees. In
the rest of this chapter, we will explore in detail two of the earliest theories that attempted to further
systematize life in the modern organization. First, we turn to scientific management.
Frederick Winslow Taylor’s (1911/1934) theory of scientific management was the first systematic
attempt to develop a set of principles regarding the management of workers. While the organization
and control of workers had been a major preoccupation of employers since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, Taylor’s ideas transformed how control was exerted. However, to appreciate fully
the impact of scientific management on control in the workplace, we need to understand the nature of
work as it had developed under industrial capitalism. With this context, we will be able to see more
clearly the ways in which Taylor’s theory revolutionized management–worker relations.
Sociologist Harry Braverman (1974, p. 52) argues that work within industrial capitalism has three general
features:
As we saw in our discussion of Marx in Chapter 2, workers are separated from the means by which to
engage in the production of goods. As such, they can produce goods only by selling their labor power to
others. Marx calls this process expropriation.
Workers are freed from any legal constraints (such as slavery or serfdom) that prevent them from freely
selling their labor power to capitalists (although the development of company towns in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries tended to put severe limits on a worker’s freedom to sell his or her labor
power).
From the capitalist’s point of view, the purpose of employing workers is the expansion of a unit of
capital that belongs to that capitalist. This is how the capitalist is able to make a profit.
An important principle in operation here is that the worker does not sell an agreed-on amount of labor
but, rather, the power to labor for an agreed-on amount of time. In theory, human labor is infinitely
expandable, and, thus, the capitalist seeks various ways to increase the productivity of the worker
during a given time period (e.g., speeding up the production line).
It has long been established that one of the best ways to increase productivity is through the division of
labor. Adam Smith (1723–1790) provides the most famous analysis of how the division of labor operates
to increase productivity in his famous economic treatise, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations (Smith, 1776/1937). Using the example of the production of pins, Smith shows that,
by dividing pin manufacture into 18 different operations, productivity is increased immensely.
The division of labor, first presented by Adam Smith well over 200 years ago, is an essential feature of all
societies. As Braverman points out, however, the division of labor takes two different forms. First, the
social division of labor divides society into different occupations and has been a feature of all societies
for thousands of years. Second, the manufacturing division of labor is a specific feature of capitalist
society and divides humans. That is, not only are the operations in making a particular product (e.g.,
pins) separated from one another; they are also assigned to different workers. Thus, the skill needed to
make pins is not embodied in a single worker but, rather, is fragmented among many. While the social
division of labor maintains the organic connection between the worker and his or her craft, the
manufacturing division of labor ruptures that connection and turns the craftsperson into an unskilled
detail worker.
In examining scientific management, we will be particularly interested in the manufacturing division of
labor because Taylor concentrates his efforts here in his attempt to transform the nature of work. Let us
now examine his theory more closely.
Taylor’s Principles: The “One Best Way”
As an engineer at the Midvale Steel Company in Pennsylvania, Taylor spent his entire professional career
attempting to develop more efficient ways to work. From shoveling piles of pig iron to the science of
cutting metals in machine shops, Taylor was single-minded in his efforts to develop the “one best way”
to perform various tasks. Starting in 1880, and continuing for 26 years, Taylor performed between
30,000 and 50,000 experiments on steel cutting alone (Taylor, 1911/1934, p. 106).
The development and implementation of the principles of scientific management, however, were by no
means simply a technological issue. More than anything else, Taylor’s system addressed the relations
between employers and employees. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Taylor was confronted
with a work environment characterized by high levels of antagonism between workers and managers.
Much of this conflict revolved around efforts by employers to intensify the work process (i.e., get
workers to work harder) and corresponding attempts by workers to restrict their output. Taylor referred
to this deliberate restriction of output by workers as systematic soldiering—a problem he saw as the
central problem in the workplace. While what he referred to as “natural soldiering” involved “the
natural instinct and inherent tendency of men to take it easy” (Taylor, 1911/1934, p. 19), systematic
soldiering resulted “from a careful study on the part of the workmen of what will promote their best
interests … with the deliberate object of keeping the employers ignorant of how fast work can be done”
(p. 21).
At first glance, systematic soldiering appears to defy logic. Why would workers wish to restrict their
output and at the same time hide from their employers how fast a particular job could actually be done?
This seems especially odd given that most workers in Taylor’s time were paid according to a piece rate
(i.e., a given amount for each “piece” produced) and thus, theoretically, would receive higher wages the
more they produced. As Taylor shows, however, systematic soldiering is a rational response by workers
to the logic of the workplace. For the most part, systematic soldiering occurred because employers
tended to reduce the piece rate as the workers’ output increased. As such, workers had to work harder
to earn the same amount of money. Thus, they would attempt to find the minimally acceptable output
level that would both maintain wages and insulate themselves from employer attempts to reduce labor
costs.
The process of systematic soldiering was not an act by individual workers but, rather, was based on
collective decision making by groups of workers. Workers policed one another to make sure no one was
engaging in “rate busting”—a practice that could jeopardize the piece rate (and, potentially, coworkers’
jobs). Indeed, such collective decision making was possible in part because many workers in the late
19th century were still organized into work groups within factories that reflected the old guild system.
For example, Ciulla (2000) documents the case of “iron rollers” in the Columbus Iron Works who worked
in 12-man teams, with each team negotiating with the employer how much iron they would roll and
their fee. They then made a collective decision regarding what portion of the fee each member would
receive. These groups worked according to a strong moral code, the most important element of which
was an agreement to produce only as much as their union had agreed on. A constant struggle was
waged between these workers and the owners, who wanted increased output. According to Ciulla,
“worker restriction of output symbolized unselfish brotherhood, personal dignity, and cultivation of the
mind” (p. 92).
In developing his principles of scientific management, Taylor’s objective was to replace this old system
of ordinary management—a system he perceived as arbitrary and based on “rules of thumb”—with a
rational system rooted in sound scientific principles. Such a system, he argued, demonstrated
conclusively that the workplace did not have to be rooted in conflict and antagonism between mutually
exclusive interests but, instead, could be based on cooperation and mutual benefit. From his
perspective, scientific management turned a zero-sum game into a win-win situation.
Taylor outlines four basic principles of scientific management:
Scientific job design. Each element of the work task is designed according to scientific principles, thus
replacing the old “rule-of-thumb” method of “ordinary management.”
Scientific selection and training of individual workers. Each worker is matched to the job for which he or
she is best suited and then trained in the necessary skills. This differs from the system of ordinary
management, where workers chose their own work and trained themselves.
Cooperation between management and workers. In order to ensure that all the work being done
corresponds to scientific management principles, managers supply a supportive supervisory
environment that provides workers with a sense of achievement.
Equal division of work between management and workers. Under this principle, management assumes
the responsibility for scientifically designing tasks and planning ahead. Under the old system, workers
were responsible for both the planning and labor of work. Under the new system, managers develop the
laws and formulas necessary to design and plan tasks scientifically.
Taylor argues that the only way in which these principles can be enacted is through what he calls a
“complete mental revolution” in society in which both workers and managers fully recognize the
benefits of working under the new system. In an argument consistent with Adam Smith’s idea of
“enlightened self-interest,” Taylor claims that scientific management simultaneously increases
productivity, cheapens the cost of consumer goods, and raises the income of workers. As a result, the
population’s real income is greatly increased and the entire country’s general standard of living
improves.
In The Principles of Scientific Management Taylor provides the reader with a series of vivid illustrations
to make his case for “the one best way” to perform work tasks. The most famous example is his
discussion of the “science of shoveling.” In his research at the Bethlehem Steel Company, he shows how
a worker named “Schmidt” increased his daily productivity from 12 ½ tons of pig iron shoveled to 47
tons. Taylor achieved this large increase in productivity by carefully observing the work process for
several days, redesigning the task (e.g., by experimenting with the size of the shovel and varying rest
periods), and choosing an appropriate worker who was physically capable of working at this higher rate.
In this example, Taylor promised to pay Schmidt $1.85 per day instead of his usual $1.15. Thus, under
Taylor’s system, a 60% increase in wages is more than offset by an almost 300% increase in productivity.
From its inception, scientific management was an extremely controversial system. Indeed, in January
1912 Taylor was called to appear before a congressional committee set up to investigate the effects of
his system on workers. While much of the opposition to scientific management came, not surprisingly,
from labor unions, the system also encountered opposition from factory owners and captains of
industry. From the latter’s point of view, the idea that management skills were rooted in scientific
principles rather than being inherent in a superior class of men (“captains of industry”) was difficult to
accept.
However, for Taylor, scientific management was more than just an efficiency system designed to
improve productivity—it was something akin to a moral crusade. Historian Martha Banta (1993) has
pointed out that The Principles of Scientific Management is written not so much like a typical scientific
treatise but rather in a strong moral tone. As such, the principles of scientific management reflected
Taylor’s need “to eliminate immoral waste motion in the workplace and to replace dissonance with
harmony in society at large” (p. 113). Indeed, Taylor’s system was consistent with the progressive
ideology of the time, in which science and efficiency were connected to social harmony (Fry, 1976, p.
125).
This connection between efficiency and societal harmony is a good indication of the extent to which
many of the leading thinkers of the day saw “the question of organization” as the central issue facing
society as a whole. At the turn of the century, mass immigration, African Americans moving north into
industrial areas, women entering the workforce, and labor unrest were all seen as disrupting the smooth
functioning of society. As such, the emergence of the scientific, machine model of organization
appeared to provide a way to assimilate the new worker into the fabric of society. A formula to describe
this historical period might be written as follows:
From a communication perspective, Taylor’s principles encapsulate the idea that a progressive society
rests on the clear and convincing communication of ideas. As becomes clear from reading Taylor’s work,
he is fully convinced that the only thing preventing full adoption of his principles is a lack of clear
understanding of how his system operates. Thus, the provision of information in a clear manner and the
use of vivid practical examples will ensure the wide acceptance of his system. Moreover, the way his
system is practically implemented requires a model of communication consistent with the discourse of
representation discussed in Chapter 1. That is, success of the system depends on the clear transmission
of information about how a specific task should be performed. Taylor even recommended that
managers prepare job cards that gave workers precise instructions for their tasks; in this way, there
could be no misunderstandings or ambiguities about the nature of the work.
Next, we turn to a discussion of two of Taylor’s contemporaries and collaborators—Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth.
The Contributions of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
While Taylor was the principal exponent of scientific management, he was certainly not alone in that
endeavor. Almost as famous in their application of scientific principles to work were the husband and
wife team of Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1868–1924) and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878–1972). Immortalized
in the book Cheaper by the Dozen (Gilbreth & Carey, 1948)—so called because Frank and Lillian had 12
children—the Gilbreths became famous for their development of time and motion studies. Although
they were initially advocates of Taylor’s system, they became rather disillusioned with Taylor’s focus on
time as an indicator of how efficiently a job was being performed (Graham, 1997, p. 547). Instead, they
argued that managers should focus on motion rather than time (Graham, 1999, p. 639).
Smithsonian Institute Archives
Along with her husband, Frank, Lillian Gilbreth refined scientific management and helped introduce its
principles into the home.
Using the new technology of motion pictures, the Gilbreths studied workers’ movements by analyzing
tasks according to Therbligs—the basic units of motion that make up all work tasks (can you spot where
the word Therbligs comes from?). Using this unit of analysis, the goal was to redesign work tasks,
making them more efficient by eliminating any unnecessary movements. The objective was not only to
increase the efficiency of work (the Gilbreths promised a 33% reduction in unnecessary movements in
any task) but to reduce the amount of fatigue experienced by workers. Given that one of the complaints
about Taylor’s system was that it pushed workers beyond limits of physical endurance, this goal caught
the attention of managers, and the Gilbreths were widely sought after as organizational consultants.
A second important difference between the Gilbreths’ system and Taylor’s is that the former paid close
attention to the psychological dimensions of work. While Taylor based his system on the belief that
workers were motivated primarily by economic incentives, the Gilbreths believed that worker
satisfaction in performing tasks was key to achieving optimum performance (Graham, 1997, 1999).
Indeed, the Gilbreths developed the term happiness minutes, referring “both to the reduced fatigue
that efficient workers would experience … and to the greater enthusiasm workers displayed once they
began thinking about their own efficiency challenges” (Graham, 1999, p. 641).
Thus, the Gilbreths argued for the need to increase workers’ job satisfaction by correctly matching
individuals to jobs, minimizing the fatigue experienced in the work process, and giving workers personal
reasons to work efficiently. In addition, they advocated tapping into employee expertise and involving
them in decision making by, among other things, placing suggestion boxes in the workplace. As
sociologist Laurel Graham (1999) points out, “Roughly a decade before Elton Mayo’s famous ‘Hawthorne
Experiments’ at Western Electric [see Chapter 4], Lillian Gilbreth made both the psychological attributes
of the worker and the social characteristics of the work situation central to modern management” (p.
640).
While it would be easy to dismiss the Gilbreths’ system as manipulative and aimed at further exploiting
workers, evidence suggests they had a genuine concern for workers. Their break with Taylor’s system
was due in part to their perception that it treated workers simply as bodies, neglecting the psychological
dimension of work that is necessary for job satisfaction. Indeed, in his consulting work, Frank Gilbreth
had a policy of signing contracts with both managers and unions before taking on a particular job,
suggesting a genuine concern for labor issues (Graham, 1999, p. 640).
However, the story of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth has an interesting twist. In 1924, Frank Gilbreth died
unexpectedly of a heart attack, leaving Lillian as the sole breadwinner for her surviving 11 children.
Despite the fact that they had been equal partners in their consulting business, Lillian found herself
suddenly unable to earn a living this way. Given the climate of the times and the prejudice against
educated women, she had to find alternative ways of supporting her family. Thus, in the years between
1924 and 1930 she remade herself as a nationally renowned expert in the application of scientific
management principles to the home. As she herself explained in a 1925 magazine interview, “The search
for the One Best Way of every activity, which is the keynote today in industrial engineering, applies
equally well to home-keeping and raising a family” (quoted in Graham, 1999, p. 633).
For example, in discussing ways for women to increase their efficiency in the kitchen, Gilbreth
recommended that they plot their movements by carrying a ball of string and pinning the string every
time they changed direction. In this way, a woman’s movements around the kitchen could be “graphed
out” (Gilbreth, 1927). Such information could be used to rearrange the kitchen appliances in order to
minimize unnecessary motion and hence reduce fatigue.
From the perspective of the scientific and progressive philosophy of the time, Lillian Gilbreth was
fighting against a traditional, romantic view of the home that saw it as a haven from the harsh realities
of modern, industrial life. Any changes in traditional household methods were viewed by many as
undermining the sanctity and morality of the family unit. Thus, Gilbreth’s task was not only to introduce
science and efficiency into the home but also to connect this efficiency with morality. She had to
disassociate morality from household drudgery and show that modernization “would increase job
satisfaction without threatening the ideal of a nuclear family in a private home with a full-time
homemaker” (Graham, 1999, p. 657). Thus, Gilbreth was able to show that a healthy—and, therefore,
moral—home life was made possible only through the scientific achievement of an efficient home. Thus,
once again, we see the connections among efficiency, morality, and social (in this case, family) harmony
that were so prevalent in this era.
How, then, can we assess scientific management? In the next section we examine, from a critical
perspective, some of its problems and limitations.
A Critical Assessment of Scientific Management
Sociologist Harry Braverman provides perhaps the most systematic critique of Taylor’s system. Writing
from a critical perspective, Braverman (1974) argues that scientific management is an “attempt to apply
the methods of science to the increasingly complex problems of the control of labor in a rapidly growing
capitalist enterprise” (p. 86). According to Braverman, Taylor assumes a capitalist perspective,
recognizing the antagonistic relations between capital (represented by the employers) and alienated
labor. His basic goal is to adapt the workers to the needs of capital. However, workers are not
adequately controlled, because they maintain their hold over the labor process, generally knowing more
about how the work is done than do managers. For Taylor, then, control over the labor process must be
placed in the hands of management in order to realize the full potential of labor power.
Braverman claims that Taylor succeeds in his task by making a fundamental division between the
conception of work and its execution. While in the old craft system, conception and execution were
united in a single worker (for example, a shoemaker both designs a shoe and makes it), under Taylor’s
system, the unity of labor is broken in order to control it. By placing all knowledge about work in the
hands of managers, workers lose control over how work gets done. This division between mental labor
and physical labor serves to alienate workers from their jobs, insofar as they become mere appendages
to the work process. Their autonomy and decision-making ability are minimized. Furthermore, as
managers gain a monopoly over work knowledge and work is further divided into different tasks,
workers become increasingly deskilled.
Braverman (1974) summarizes the effects of scientific management in the following, rather poignant,
manner: “In the setting of antagonistic social relations, of alienated labor, hand and brain become not
just separated, but divided and hostile, and the human unity of hand and brain turns into its opposite,
something less than human” (p. 125).
We can argue, then, that for Taylor the focal point of organizational control was the human body. In his
effort to take control of the labor process from workers and place it in the hands of management, he
advocated the development of a vast body of knowledge about work processes, the object of which was
to discipline the worker’s body so it performed work in precise and calculated ways (Foucault, 1979).
This legacy is still with us, as we will see in the next section.
A second, related, criticism of Taylor is that he viewed the individual worker as his basic unit of analysis
and neglected the social dimension of work (a management focus that would emerge in the wake of the
Hawthorne Studies, which produced the human relations movement—see Chapter 4). Indeed, Taylor
saw any kind of communication and cooperation amongst workers as problematic precisely because it
led to such problems as systematic soldiering. For Taylor, then, group communication in the workplace
was dysfunctional because it interfered with the “one best way” of performing tasks. In this sense,
Taylor’s conception of communication is rooted in one-on-one information transmission between
manager and worker.
Third, Taylor had a rather limited view of workers, seeing them as motivated exclusively by economic
incentives. Any notion that workers might fulfill higher-order, psychological needs through satisfying
work was completely absent from Taylor’s model. Furthermore, his descriptions of the workers he
studied suggested a rather paternalistic view of their abilities. He describes “Schmidt,” for example, as
being “so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more clearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than
any other type” (Taylor, 1911/1934), even though, by Taylor’s own account, Schmidt was building his
own house. Certainly, in comparison with Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s psychological model of the worker,
his perspective captures little of the complexity of the worker’s relation to his or her work and the larger
organization.
Fourth, Taylor can be criticized for elevating scientific management to a moral system that had the
ability to cure society’s ills. Certainly, such conceit is consistent with the larger social movement of his
time that equated rationality and efficiency with moral good. However, the idea that society as a whole
should function according to his machine-like “one best way” is somewhat problematic. However, much
of the enthusiasm for scientific management can be explained by the sense that society was disordered
and full of social and political unrest. If everyone followed Taylor’s principles (including in their daily
lives), then order would be restored.
Finally, as I have already suggested, Taylor operated with a very limited conception of communication,
though it was consistent with prevailing views of his time. For him, communication was a largely
mechanical process compatible with the conduit model (Axley, 1984) discussed in Chapter 1. While
Taylor talks about cooperation between management and workers, his conception of organizational
communication seems limited to managers accurately transmitting information about work tasks to
employees.
The Legacy of Scientific Management
The conventional wisdom of management thought suggests that scientific management quickly fell into
disfavor and, with the emergence of human relations theory, largely disappeared as a viable way to
manage employees. The reality, however, is very different. As Braverman (1974) points out, scientific
management disappeared from general visibility not because it was rejected but because it became a
widely accepted, taken-for-granted way of organizing work. Once Taylor’s principles became a defining
feature of the workplace, it was necessary to create various theories and models (such as human
relations theory) to adjust the worker to the alienating nature of the work experience. Indeed, one need
not look far to see the effects of Taylorism in today’s workplace.
The fast-food industry is probably the most visible and successful practitioner of scientific management
principles. There is no better example of this success than McDonald’s, which has elevated the principle
of the “one best way” to new heights (Leidner, 1993; Ritzer, 2000, 2004). Each McDonald’s is run by
closely following a 700-page operations manual, and no aspect of the business of selling hamburgers
escapes careful control and routinization. It would certainly make no sense to walk into a McDonald’s
and ask, “What’s good today?” Neither employees nor customers have much autonomy in the decisions
they make (“value meal” items, for example, cut down on the amount of time it takes for people to
place orders). Ritzer (2000) has argued that the basic features of “McDonaldization” are efficiency,
calculability, predictability, and control—four elements that are highly consistent with Taylor’s vision of
scientific management.
The customer-service industry in general applies scientific management principles in a systematic way.
For example, sales representatives in department stores often receive electronic messages on their cash
registers instructing them to “call the customer by his or her first name.” Many retail stores enforce
strict guidelines about how quickly a customer should be greeted upon entering the store. A student
once told me that the store she worked for required its sales representatives to greet customers within
19 seconds of their entering the store! And we have all experienced annoying telephone sales
techniques in which the caller follows a script carefully designed to limit the kinds of responses the
unlucky recipient of the call can make.
In recent years the power of computer software has taken scientific management of work to new
heights. The grocery chain Meijer, for example, uses a computer system to measure the efficiency and
speed of checkout clerks, with timing beginning automatically when each customer’s first item is
scanned. Each clerk is given a weekly efficiency score, and too many weeks below a baseline 95% score
can result in termination. One of the effects of this efficiency effort (in addition to reducing labor costs)
is that daily pleasantries between customers and checkout clerks have been significantly reduced
(O’Connell, 2008).
figure
Ryan McVay/Digital Vision/Thinkstock
Grocery stores use computer technology to monitor checkout employees’ efficiency in bagging
purchases.
What all these examples share is the effort to create an efficient, routinized system that maximizes
control over both employee and customer. Each is consistent with Taylor’s basic goal of separating the
conception of work from its execution and disciplining the worker’s body to perform tasks in a way that
will secure profitability for the company. This is particularly true in the service industry, where the point
of contact between customer and company employee is the primary source of revenue generation.
Finally, perhaps the most troubling legacy of scientific management is the degree to which Taylor’s
principles have entered our personal lives. Society is practically besieged by experts telling us how to
lead “efficient” everyday lives. Every bookstore displays several rows of books written by “experts” who
have a plan for making us more fulfilled people. These “self-help” books are based on the idea that
there is “one best way” for us to conduct our lives. No one seems to notice the paradox of there being
literally dozens of “one best ways.” Books such as Steven Covey’s (1989) Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People preach a gospel that roots happiness in our ability to routinize our lives and locates personal
empowerment in predictability. Ironically, many companies now use the principles of self-help gurus to
train their workers as they search for new ways to incorporate private aspects of the self into work
(Carlone, 2006; Carlone & Larson, 2006).
figure BUREAUCRATIC THEORY: MAX WEBER AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION
Max Weber (1864–1920)—pronounced “Vayber”—is an important figure in the social sciences whose
work is wide-ranging, complex, and difficult to classify (Clegg, 1994). Strangely, though, if you examine
the way his writings have been presented in the fields of organizational communication and
management, the diversity and complexity of Weber’s works disappear. For the most part, he is
presented almost exclusively as the theorist responsible for developing the bureaucratic model of
organizational behavior. Most textbooks give Weber a page or two, restricting themselves to describing
the features of bureaucracy as outlined by Weber (1978).
We will take a somewhat different approach to Weber and paint a broader picture of his work. Indeed,
the first thing you should know about Weber is that he was not really an organizational theorist or
researcher at all but, rather, a sociologist and philosopher. Weber was interested in studying
organizations but only to the extent that they were examples of the broader social, political, and
economic processes he was interested in explaining.
What, then, was Weber’s main focus? In brief, most of his work sought to explain the historical
development of various civilizations through the examination of political, legal, religious, and economic
systems (Morrison, 1995). He asked questions such as, “What is the connection between religious
systems and the development of particular economic structures and organizational forms?” For
example, his famous study titled The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1958)
analyzes the influence of protestant religious doctrine on the development of capitalism in the United
States and Europe. In this study, he shows how work and the “gain spirit” were elevated in the 19th
century to a moral duty in everyday life—accumulating wealth was seen as a means to acquire grace and
salvation.
Weber’s writings can be compared to those of his countryman Karl Marx, in that both were interested in
tracking the historical development of different societal forms. However, Weber differs from Marx in
important ways. First, Weber disagreed with Marx that the job of philosophers was to change the world
by linking theory to political action. Rather, Weber saw the primary goal of scholarship as developing a
descriptive body of historically valid truths (although we will see later that Weber was not averse to
engaging in social critique). Second, Weber rejected Marx’s theory of historical materialism that sought
to explain society through a primarily economic model. Weber argued instead that no single causal
model could explain societal development and change. He saw economics as only one element in a
broader model that included examination of political, legal, and religious elements (Kalberg, 1980;
Morrison, 1995). As such, his writings attempt to show the interconnections amongst these various
features of society.
One of the issues that most interested Weber was the forms of power he identified as having emerged
historically in various societies. Specifically, he was interested in how a particular form of authority
emerged with the modern, capitalist state, replacing earlier forms of authority associated with
monarchies and feudal systems. Below, we will discuss Weber’s forms of authority and address their
importance for understanding contemporary organizations.
Weber’s Types of Authority
In discussing the development of social order in different societies, Weber makes a distinction between
power and authority. Power is a general term used to describe the ability of those in power to exercise
their will, despite resistance by others (Weber, 1978, p. 53). In this sense, it describes the most crude,
overt forms of domination. For example, a professor has the power to give a student a failing grade,
regardless of that student’s protests. This is the form of power in which Weber is least interested. On
the other hand, authority refers to a society’s development of a system of rules, norms, and
administrative apparatus to which people adhere. In such a system, leaders are legitimately able to
exercise authority over others, who are expected to obey. Weber identified three forms of legitimate
authority, which he identified as characteristic of three different forms of social order.
Charismatic Authority
Literally speaking, charisma means “gift of grace,” and Weber argued that one important source of
authority derived from the identification of a particular individual as having exceptional—perhaps even
supernatural—abilities and qualities. Certainly, religious figures such as the Pope and Billy Graham partly
derive their authority from their charismatic abilities. People follow them precisely because they are
seen as having the gift of grace and as transcending the routines of everyday life through their
possession of special powers. Such figures do not have to engage in brute force or coercion; rather, their
authority is rooted in their followers’ belief in the validity and truth of their powers (Morrison, 1995, p.
285).
However, charismatic authority is not limited to religious leaders. History is full of charismatic figures—
both good and evil—such as Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Nelson Mandela. Each
of these figures had a charismatic presence that secured the allegiance of millions of people.
Charismatic authority is also a significant feature of organizational life. In the late 19th and early 20th
century “captains of industry” such as John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan were heroic figures of their
day. In the 21st century, industry leaders such as the late Steve Jobs and Donald Trump are identified as
charismatic figures with magical abilities when it comes to making money.
Weber argues that one of the features of charismatic authority is that it tends to emerge in times of
crisis and social unrest. For example, Hitler came to power as a result of the economic and political
instability experienced in Germany in the 20 years after World War I. Martin Luther King Jr.—by virtue of
his rhetorical powers—was able to unite diverse groups to pursue the goal of civil rights for all. Nelson
Mandela (1995) was a charismatic figure even while in jail under the apartheid system, and in postapartheid South Africa he has been a unifying force, appealing to both white and black South Africans.
figure
© iStockphoto.com/EdStock
Steve Jobs met Weber’s conception of a charismatic leader.
Another feature of charismatic authority is its tendency toward instability and social chaos. Because
such authority is rooted in a single individual, its potential for disruption is quite high. Perhaps the most
extreme example of this is in the case of religious cults, where the actions of mentally unstable
charismatic leaders have led to the deaths of many followers. Jim Jones and David Koresh in the United
States are two examples of such leaders. Similarly, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968
contributed to a period of great civil unrest and political instability in the United States. Many
organizations also experience instability or failure when a charismatic leader is no longer in charge. For
example, many people are wondering how Steve Jobs’ death will affect Apple and its ability to create
iconic, must-have electronic products.
Traditional Authority
In Weber’s second form of authority, legitimacy is derived from tradition and custom. Traditional
authority is rooted largely in the inherited right of an individual to expect obedience and loyalty from
others. The legitimate exercise of authority, then, comes not from any kind of special powers of the
person but from adherence to a tradition that may go back hundreds of years.
Probably the best example of traditional authority is a monarchy. Kings and queens derive their
authority not from any specific skills or individual characteristics but by an accident of birth. While
Weber associates traditional authority with a bygone age (mainly feudal systems), such authority still
exists even in corporate life. For example, in family-owned businesses, sons and daughters frequently
inherit the reins of power from parents. Such appointments may have little to do with expertise; indeed,
even when children are groomed for many years to inherit businesses, developing considerable skill, the
organization is still operating within a traditional system of authority. For example, Australian media
mogul Rupert Murdoch employs two of his children in prominent positions in his company.
Another good example of traditional authority is the operation of an “old-boy” or “old-school-tie”
network in an organization. Employees gain power based not on their abilities but because they have
gender and racial characteristics that fit the prevailing value system of the organization. Employees not
exhibiting such characteristics tend to be marginalized. For years, women managers have fought against
informal organizational structures where important decisions are made on the golf course or at private
clubs—places from which women have traditionally been excluded. College fraternities and sororities
might also be seen as structured along traditional systems of authority. Organizational structures and
belief systems are rooted in age-old customs and values handed down from generation to generation,
and potential members are closely vetted to make sure they fit the typical member profile (Bird, 1996;
DeSantis, 2007).
Rational–Legal Authority
Weber’s final system of authority is the most important and the one he argues is at the foundation of
the modern form of Western democracy. Rational–legal authority is the form underlying the
bureaucratic model. The term bureaucracy means “rule of the bureau,” or office, and refers to a system
based on a set of rational and impersonal rules that guide people’s behavior and decision making.
People owe allegiance not to a particular individual or set of customs and beliefs but to a set of legally
sanctioned rules and regulations. Amongst the features of bureaucracy identified by Weber (1978, pp.
956–958), the following are the most important for our purposes:
A hierarchically organized chain of command with appropriately assigned responsibilities.
A clearly defined system of impersonal rules that govern the rights and responsibilities of office holders.
The development of written regulations that describe the rights and duties of organization members.
A clearly defined division of labor with specialization of tasks.
Norms of impersonality that govern relations between people in the bureaucracy. Employees behave
and make decisions according to the rules of their positions rather than personal ties to others.
Written documentation and use of a file system that stores information on which decision making is
based.
Weber argued that the bureaucratic system, with its foundation in rational–legal authority, was
technically superior to the other forms of authority in a couple of ways. First, bureaucracy was
democratic insofar as it treated everybody equally and impersonally. While at first glance an
“impersonal” organizational decision-making system might seem lacking in human qualities, it remains
an important feature of most organizations in the Western world and ensures that people are treated
according to their merits and abilities.
Second, Weber argued that the rational–legal authority system and its bureaucratic structure promoted
the development of capitalism (Morrison, 1995). This is because bureaucracy enhances the speed of
business operations by maximizing efficiency and functioning according to a set of calculable rules. In
addition, because of its impersonal structure, business people are increasingly encouraged to make
decisions for economic rather than emotional reasons. As Morrison states, “When fully developed,
bureaucracy adheres to the principle of sine ira et studio—without hatred or passion” (p. 299).
Weber’s three authority systems do not represent three mutually exclusive forms of organization.
Indeed, it is not unusual for all three kinds of authority to be found in a single organization. There are
certainly plenty of examples of organizations that are highly bureaucratic but also employ charismatic
figures and have strong traditions to which members adhere. My own university, the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, is recognized as both a top-notch research university and a powerhouse in the
world of men’s college basketball. As such, it simultaneously embodies rational–legal, traditional, and
charismatic forms of authority. For students, the process of “getting an education” partly involves
figuring out a highly complex system of bureaucratic rules that regulates everything involved in
obtaining a degree. At the same time, the university’s prestige is derived not only from its educational
excellence but also from its history and tradition, not a small part of which is the success of the
university’s men’s basketball team. As such, the team’s former and much-revered coach, Dean Smith,
holds significant charismatic authority, despite having retired many years ago. The current coach, Roy
Williams, is similarly revered (and, not accidentally, a former assistant of Dean Smith), having won two
national championships at UNC—it’s not unusual to see bumper stickers around Chapel Hill that state,
“In Roy We Trust!” Of course, all organizations—even large bureaucracies—have elements of all three
forms of authority. Indeed, an organization based on exclusively rational–legal principles would be an
extremely sterile and soulless place to work.
Weber’s Critique of Bureaucracy and the Process of “Rationalization”
Weber was not simply an uncritical advocate of bureaucracy. As such, it is important to address the
extent to which he was skeptical about the direction in which a bureaucratized, rational society was
heading (Clegg, 1994; Kalberg, 1980). Although he was not a critical theorist in the sense that Marx and
the Frankfurt School researchers were, his model of society nevertheless had a strong critical element.
Much of this critical element centered on Weber’s analysis of what he called the rationalization process
in modern society. For Weber, rationalization referred to the process by which all aspects of the natural
and social world become increasingly subject to planning, calculation, and efficiency. Such
rationalization was an important hallmark of modernity, he argued. But while rationalization was an
efficient process that helped fuel the massive growth of capitalism, it also led to a narrowing of human
vision and limited appreciation of alternative modes of existence. While a rationalized world is a
predictable, efficient, and calculable world, it is not necessarily a fulfilling world in which to live. In
recognizing these negative consequences, Weber referred to the “iron cage of bureaucracy” in which
everyone had become imprisoned.
Innumerable examples of this rationalization process are all around us. The shift from shopping at the
local “mom and pop” store to shopping at department stores and malls is one example of everyday life
being rationalized and stripped of enchantment. While department stores may be cheaper, more
efficient, and offer a wider selection of goods, they undermine our sense of community and destroy our
connections to one another. As we saw earlier in our discussion of the legacy of scientific management,
department stores try to compensate for this process of rationalization by employing greeters and
instructing employees on how to be “friendly” to customers. Of course, the irony is that this kind of
“emotional labor” (Hochschild, 1983) is itself a form of rationalization. Many businesses engage in the
commercialization of human feeling and emotion in order to improve their efficiency and profitability.
The rationalization process is not confined to the corporate world, however. Any social context that can
be subject to rational calculation exhibits such qualities. For example, universities are increasingly
subject to rationalization as administrators look for ways to increase organizational efficiency and
accountability. So, for instance, professors are under increasing pressure to provide quantitative
assessments of their classroom performance. Whether such assessments provide actual evidence of
classroom performance seems less important than the fact that these measures exist as “data”
administrators can use when lobbying the state legislature for funding. In the same vein, many students
adopt a “means–end” approach to education, in which the actual process of learning is viewed as less
important than the grades (and, ultimately, the job) received. In this instance, the educational process is
rationalized to fit within an instrumental worldview.
The Legacy of Bureaucracy
Weber was a theorist who tried to make sense out of the process of modernization as it occurred in the
19th and early 20th centuries. His aim was not to provide a model of organizational life but, rather, to
show how various systems of rationality and authority emerged in different historical and cultural
contexts. Moreover, he was concerned with how these systems of rationality enabled people to make
sense of the world and order it into meaningful regularities (Kalberg, 1980, p. 1174).
Weber, then, was a modernist theorist but not an uncritical advocate of the modernization process.
While he recognized the superiority of bureaucracy and its underlying democratic impulses, he also
expressed great concern about the ways modernity limits the richness and possibilities of human
existence. Indeed, despite Weber’s writing in the early part of the 20th century, the process of
rationalization is arguably even more applicable to current organizational life than in Weber’s own time.
In this sense, Weber’s writings are quite prophetic.
Sociologist George Ritzer’s (2000) work, mentioned earlier in the chapter, takes up Weber’s notion of
“rationalization,” showing how this process has come to pervade every aspect of our lives,
organizational and otherwise. Like Weber, Ritzer is concerned that rationalization has led to the
“disenchantment” of everyday life, with everyone subject to a daily diet of calculated, mass-produced,
carefully controlled, predictable experiences.
figure Critical Case Study 3.1 Rationalizing Emotions
My oldest brother hates the service in U.S. restaurants. Sure, he thinks the service is fast and efficient,
but he can’t stand the way servers try to create a synthetic connection with the customer (“Hi, my name
is Julie, and I’ll be your server—how are you guys this evening?!”). He feels manipulated, arguing that
it’s simply an effort to sell more food and increase the size of the tip. He much prefers the service in
Spain, where being a server can be a career, the pay is good, and service is discreet, knowledgeable, and
professional.
But one of the legacies of both scientific management and bureaucracy is efforts to micromanage and
rationalize social interaction, and emotional labor in the service industry is part of that legacy. In recent
years, scholars have documented how for-profit organizations increasingly co-opt employees’ emotional
expressions as a way to increase profitability (Raz, 2002; Tracy, 2000, 2005). Sociologist Arlie Hochschild
(1983) coined the term emotional labor to describe this process of putting emotion to work for profit. In
describing Hochschild’s study of flight attendants’ use of emotional labor, Kathy Ferguson (1984) states:
The flight attendant’s smile is like her makeup; it is on her, not of her. The rules about how to feel and
how to express feelings are set by management, with the goal of producing passenger contentment.
Company manuals give detailed instructions on how to provide a “sincere” and “unaffected” facial
expression, how to seem “vivacious but not effervescent.” Emotional laborers are required to take the
arts of emotional management and control that characterize the intimate relations of family and friends
… and package them according to the “feeling rules” laid down by the organization. (p. 53)
In her ethnographic, participant-observation study aboard a cruise ship, organizational communication
scholar Sarah Tracy (2000) describes similar control efforts, discussing in detail how she became a
“character for commerce,” largely forfeiting any rights to personal emotions not expressed in the service
of the cruise line.
The reality is that in a 21st century service economy we all expect efficient, friendly, and helpful service
from employees. We generally give little thought to the stresses and strains the employee might be
experiencing as we revel in the knowledge that the customer is “king.” On the other hand, many of you
have worked or currently work in such positions and so have intimate knowledge of the kinds of
emotional labor employers expect of you to ensure that customers have a positive experience. You
know what it’s like to work a long shift, all the time having to maintain a sunny and positive disposition
as you interact with customers who are often demanding and surly.
In class or group discussion, address the following questions related to emotional labor:
Discuss your own experiences both giving and receiving emotional labor in service contexts. What
limitations, if any, should be placed on employers’ ability to use employees’ emotions as a way to sell
their products and services? What are the limits of customer rights to demand friendly and attentive
service from employees?
Discuss the following comment by Herb Kelleher, former CEO of Southwest Airlines, responding to the
question, Aren’t customers always right?: “No, they are not. And I think that’s one of the biggest
betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry
those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”
(Freiberg & Freiberg, 1996, p. 268).
There are numerous examples of rationalization, but let me just briefly provide two:
“Theme” restaurants such as Applebee’s, Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, etc., all of which have rationalized the
process of creating a “unique” dining experience for customers. Think about how Jennifer Aniston’s
manager criticizes her for not exhibiting enough “flair” in the movie Office Space and you’ll get the
picture of how creativity gets rationalized and bureaucratized.
The conduit model of education discussed in Chapter 1 certainly fits the process of rationalization.
Education focuses less on the engaged learning process and more on the efficient and calculated
production of graduates with marketable skill sets.
Lest I leave you with the wrong impression, the legacy of bureaucracy is by no means all bad. Although
Weber worried about rationalization and the iron cage of bureaucracy, he still saw the bureaucratic
institution as the bedrock of Western democracies. And, to a large degree, this is still the case. While we
will see in later chapters that many commentators have criticized the bureaucratic organization for
being too cumbersome and inflexible in times of rapid change and fast, global capitalism, some theorists
have argued that it remains an essential feature of our organizational society (Du Gay, 2000; Perrow,
1986). In fact, one might argue that the emergence in the past 20 years of “postbureaucratic”
organizations with flexible structures, decentralized decision making, rapid adaptability to changing
environments, and so forth (see Chapter 8) has created greater opportunities for corporate malfeasance
(e.g., think about the various corporate and financial institution scandals in the past few years) as well as
a more unstable work environment for employees. The idea of “sine ira et studio—without hatred or
passion” is still an essential characteristic of organizational life that helps create greater opportunities
for everyone’s advancement.
figure CONCLUSION: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF “CLASSIC” THEORIES OF ORGANIZATION
The classic theories of scientific management and bureaucracy have both made significant contributions
to the nature of organizational life as we know it today. Although both theories are widely regarded as
limited in their conception of organizational behavior, the effects of each are still felt in the modern
organization, with both scientific management principles and rationalization processes widely applied.
The machine metaphor of order, efficiency, and predictability underlying both perspectives has by no
means been abandoned, although it is practiced in a more sophisticated manner than in the days of
Taylor and Weber. Table 3.1 provides a summary comparison of these two important theories.
From a critical perspective, how might we characterize the relationship between Taylor’s and Weber’s
views of organizations and society? First, Taylor’s writings can be described as prescriptive, while
Weber’s are largely descriptive. In other words, Taylor is arguing vigorously for the adoption of his
principles as a way to improve work performance. Weber, on the other hand, is providing a comparative
analysis of the systems of authority and rationality that emerged in various societies. In some ways,
Taylor’s model is less about social science than it is about promoting a set of work principles. In contrast,
Weber is a trained social scientist interested in the systematic exploration and analysis of human social
behavior.
Table 3.1 Comparing Scientific Management and Bureaucratic Theory
figure
Second, Taylor and Weber differ greatly in terms of the levels of analysis at which they are working. We
might describe Taylor’s work as operating at the “micro level,” focusing on the individual worker (or,
more specifically, the individual worker’s body). Weber, in contrast, has a “macro-level” focus; his
interest lies in explaining the conditions underlying the development of whole societies.
Third, both Taylor and Weber are modernist theorists insofar as they believe in the role of science and
rationality in human progress and liberation from oppression. However, Taylor’s belief in the “one best
way” suggests his uncritical equation of science and truth. For him, science and rationality are the only
roads to truth and social harmony. For Weber, science and rationality are viewed with much greater
skepticism. While the rationality of modern human society reflected liberation from myth and
superstition, it also signaled entrapment in the iron cage of bureaucracy and rationalization. The
accompanying “disenchantment” of the world led to an impoverished sense of community and human
identity. Thus, Weber is much more critical of the path that modernization and capitalism have taken
than is Taylor.
Finally, we can compare their conceptions of communication. In comparison with some of the theories
we will discuss in later chapters, both Taylor and Weber have relatively crude models of communication.
For Taylor, communication involves merely the correct transmission of information to employees about
how a particular task should be performed. In this sense, he adopts a simplistic transmission model of
communication. Weber’s model of bureaucracy contains a similar conception, in that communication is
conceived as the task of transmitting information amongst employees through a formal organizational
structure. However, Weber’s perspective is a little more complex if we view his larger theory of society
as an examination of how people develop a system of values with which to make sense of our world. In
studying the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism, for example, Weber is examining how a
particular value system was used to order the world in a particular way.
Having examined closely two of the earliest theories of management and organization, in the next
chapter we turn our attention to the human relations school of organization. As we will see, this next
perspective introduced an important shift in how organizing processes were understood.
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