Caring.
Why does it matter? Does it? Just watch someone do work they don’t care about, and then answer this question. When students take writing courses, they begin with the entirely wrong approach. They don’t care about reading. They don’t care about writing. They don’t care about getting better at either one. They only care about finishing, and about their final grades. That kind of caring leads to a distorted kind of work—product is the only thing that matters, and QUALITY of experience and of craftsmanship is forgotten in the hurry to generate passable material.
The first mode of being for a child is caring. Each child emerges into the world eager to experience and learn. The structure of the mind makes it so. The young child exploring its surroundings cares by definition and by necessity about those surroundings. Parents, of course, should reinforce this mode of being with their own caring, which also provides a model of how to care well.
Somehow, however, caring gets misdirected. Everyone starts to care about grades, and about money, and about outcomes, and about products, more than about the actual work of making and living and relating to others. Caring becomes distorted, misshapen. How does it happen? Part of it is the teenage rebellion against the cares of the parents. Part of it is a culture that teaches children to care about the wrong things. Part of it is an educational system that insists on objectivity and routine more than on student passion and involvement in learning. But the result is devastating. We must learn to care about each moment, each effort, each person we interact with. They are all full of possibility, and life is richer when we recognize this simple fact.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Some reflections on "Principles of Scientific Management"
Reading and commenting on Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (with a jaundiced eye, of course) . . .
THE principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.
The words "maximum prosperity" are used, in their broad sense, to mean not only large dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent.
The ethic of maxima is the beginning, middle, and end for Taylor in this document. And it is so broadly applied! To equate “maximum prosperity” with “development . . .to its highest state of excellence” is unreal. How does maxima equate to optima? Not at all. Especially when two different categories are being compared. “Prosperity” easily translated to “profit” in American business thinking. “Excellence” is another issue altogether. The two may be tangientially related, but to the American business mind “excellence” is always an expense—good employees, good work, slower, more deliberate work, better resources and raw materials. “Excellence” and prosperity are not directly aligned in the account book of Taylorian efficiency. But he aligns them rhetorically, of course!
Taylor then proceeds to act as a “peacemaker” between employers and employees, in this simple way: high wages and low production costs are both possible when efficiency is at its peak. In other words, the productivity per unit labor is very high. Thus, a few well-paid men are satisfied while they do the work of many low-paid men. Hmmm. He sells his position as “liberal” because he is replacing the old model in which laborers blame management for shorting them and taking all the profits and management tries to squeeze as much production out of labor at the lowest possible overhead cost. And his position sounds liberal in its moderation—everyone can “profit” if we operate with “maximum efficiency.” Problem is, “profit” is a relative term. Taylor is not much of a philosopher. To wit:
No one can be found who will deny that in the case of any single individual the greatest prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest state of efficiency; that is, when he is turning out his largest daily output.
This statement is, in a word, stupid. So the artist reaches his greatest prosperity when he “is turning out his largest daily output”? Or the craftsman? Or builder? Or architect? The more plans the better? Creativity and human thoughtfulness are not included in Taylor’s reasoning. And that makes it bad reasoning.
Taylor gives the example of an owner and a workman (there have to be both!) who can turn out two pairs of shoes a day in opposition to their competitors who only produce one pair per day. After selling the shoes, clearly the two-pair team “wins” in terms of profit and the opportunity for higher workman wages. Of course “selling” is part of the picture too. Maximum production does not mean maximum profits. Middle Eastern oil-producing countries could have shown Taylor some important things about supply and demand. Quality of production is important as well. Only if the shoes made are of high quality can they demand the going price for fine shoes. If they are cheapened by “maximum production,” then they are worth less and less likely to sell in a competitive market. Thus Taylor’s argument ignores the law of diminishing returns.
The assumption throughout Taylor’s piece is simple: Our only motivation to do productive work is the payment we receive. Which is interesting, since that was never the case until a money economy evolved. A trade-based economy worked on entirely different principles. And there are many motivations that lead to good work. Money is one. But so is pride in good making (or was, until the use of mass production and assembly lines took this major motivation away in many cases). Another is the pleasure of work (yes, really). And there are more, individually-determined motivators. Money is, of course, part of the picture. But making and working cannot be reduced to a calculus of profits. This was Marx’s central thesis: we are what we produce and we are the work we do. Thus Schumacher’s fundamentally Marxist argument: make work interesting, meaningful, and good for people, and you will have a steady state of productivity!
Taylor suggest that employers should “help” employees and “work with them.” Which sounds Utopian. Don’t beat them into greater productivity, and don’t expect them to motivate themselves. Instead, “help” them by teaching them “scientific” principles of production. Yeah. This actually sounds like a recipe for controlling and de-personalizing management: early IBM.
“Scientific management” and “task management” are the same thing, according to Winslow. Thus we see the influence on education. Keeping “on task” has become a pre-occupation of the ed establishment.
THE principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.
The words "maximum prosperity" are used, in their broad sense, to mean not only large dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent.
The ethic of maxima is the beginning, middle, and end for Taylor in this document. And it is so broadly applied! To equate “maximum prosperity” with “development . . .to its highest state of excellence” is unreal. How does maxima equate to optima? Not at all. Especially when two different categories are being compared. “Prosperity” easily translated to “profit” in American business thinking. “Excellence” is another issue altogether. The two may be tangientially related, but to the American business mind “excellence” is always an expense—good employees, good work, slower, more deliberate work, better resources and raw materials. “Excellence” and prosperity are not directly aligned in the account book of Taylorian efficiency. But he aligns them rhetorically, of course!
Taylor then proceeds to act as a “peacemaker” between employers and employees, in this simple way: high wages and low production costs are both possible when efficiency is at its peak. In other words, the productivity per unit labor is very high. Thus, a few well-paid men are satisfied while they do the work of many low-paid men. Hmmm. He sells his position as “liberal” because he is replacing the old model in which laborers blame management for shorting them and taking all the profits and management tries to squeeze as much production out of labor at the lowest possible overhead cost. And his position sounds liberal in its moderation—everyone can “profit” if we operate with “maximum efficiency.” Problem is, “profit” is a relative term. Taylor is not much of a philosopher. To wit:
No one can be found who will deny that in the case of any single individual the greatest prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest state of efficiency; that is, when he is turning out his largest daily output.
This statement is, in a word, stupid. So the artist reaches his greatest prosperity when he “is turning out his largest daily output”? Or the craftsman? Or builder? Or architect? The more plans the better? Creativity and human thoughtfulness are not included in Taylor’s reasoning. And that makes it bad reasoning.
Taylor gives the example of an owner and a workman (there have to be both!) who can turn out two pairs of shoes a day in opposition to their competitors who only produce one pair per day. After selling the shoes, clearly the two-pair team “wins” in terms of profit and the opportunity for higher workman wages. Of course “selling” is part of the picture too. Maximum production does not mean maximum profits. Middle Eastern oil-producing countries could have shown Taylor some important things about supply and demand. Quality of production is important as well. Only if the shoes made are of high quality can they demand the going price for fine shoes. If they are cheapened by “maximum production,” then they are worth less and less likely to sell in a competitive market. Thus Taylor’s argument ignores the law of diminishing returns.
The assumption throughout Taylor’s piece is simple: Our only motivation to do productive work is the payment we receive. Which is interesting, since that was never the case until a money economy evolved. A trade-based economy worked on entirely different principles. And there are many motivations that lead to good work. Money is one. But so is pride in good making (or was, until the use of mass production and assembly lines took this major motivation away in many cases). Another is the pleasure of work (yes, really). And there are more, individually-determined motivators. Money is, of course, part of the picture. But making and working cannot be reduced to a calculus of profits. This was Marx’s central thesis: we are what we produce and we are the work we do. Thus Schumacher’s fundamentally Marxist argument: make work interesting, meaningful, and good for people, and you will have a steady state of productivity!
Taylor suggest that employers should “help” employees and “work with them.” Which sounds Utopian. Don’t beat them into greater productivity, and don’t expect them to motivate themselves. Instead, “help” them by teaching them “scientific” principles of production. Yeah. This actually sounds like a recipe for controlling and de-personalizing management: early IBM.
“Scientific management” and “task management” are the same thing, according to Winslow. Thus we see the influence on education. Keeping “on task” has become a pre-occupation of the ed establishment.
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