Talk:Scientific management/Archive 1

Scientific management

Scientific management School was found by F.W.Tyalor. The Essence of Scientific management is in four general areas: 1)The discovery, through use of the scientific method of basic elements of man's work to replace the rule of thumb. 2)Identification of management's function of planning work, instead of allowing workmen to choose their own methods. 3)The selection and traning of workers and the development of co-operation, insted of encouraging individualistic efforts by employees. 4)the division of work between management and workers so thet each will perform those duties for which he is best fitted, with the resultant increase in efficency. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.16.239.250 (talk • contribs) 18:59, 23 September 2004

Misrepresentation of Taylor's ideas

[I moved this from Talk:Scientific Management]. --Nick 08:58, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I just read "Scientific Management" for the first time, and I was amazed at how wrong the second hand versions were. So I went to Wikipedia hoping to see an account that "got it right". Unfortunately, this account is wrong as well. I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I will try to get back with more detail. I just wanted to immediately raise a red flag though.

Here are some examples:

"The majority of these men believe that the fundamental interests of employees and employers are necessarily antagonistic. Scientific management, on the contrary, has for its very foundation the firm conviction that the true interests of the two are one and the same; that prosperity for the employer cannot exist through a long term of years unless it is accompanied by prosperity for the employee and vice versa; and that it is possible to give the workman what he most wants-high wages-and the employer what he wants-a low labor cost-for his manufactures.

"Why is it, then, in the face of the self-evident fact that maximum prosperity can exist only as the result of the determined effort of each workman to turn out each day his largest possible day's work, that the great majority of our men are deliberately doing just the opposite, and that even when the men have the best of intentions their work is in most cases far from efficient?

"There are three causes for this condition, which may be briefly summarized as:

"First. The fallacy, which has from time immemorial been almost universal among workmen, that a material increase in the output of each man or each machine in the trade would result in the end in throwing a large number of men out of work.

"Second. The defective systems of management which are in common use, and which make it necessary for each workman to soldier, or work slowly,in order that he may protect his own best interests.

"Third. The inefficient rule-of-thumb methods, which are still almost universal in all trades, and in practicing which our workmen waste a large part of their effort. "

Bottom Line: Contrary to the current entry, Taylor NEVER said that men were naturally lazy, he insisted on employers "gainsharing" with employees, and his "time and motion" advice were only a small part of his "science" of management:

"The body of this paper will make it clear that, to work according to scientific laws, the management must takeover and perform much of the work which is now left to the men; almost every act of the workman should be preceded by one or more preparatory acts of the management which enable him to do his work better and quicker than he otherwise could. And each man should daily be taught by and receive the most friendly help from those who are over him, instead of being, at the one extreme, driven or coerced by his bosses, and at the other left to his own unaided devices.

"This close, intimate, personal cooperation between the management and the men is of the essence of modern scientific or task management." (I forgot to sign this originally. --Nick 08:58, 26 July 2005 (UTC))

So perhaps scientific management and Taylorism are different: the former sticking to Taylor's core notions; the latter to what others attribute to him, rightly or wrongly. A-giau 01:30, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I concur with Nick; having recently read the book for the first time, I was surprise at just how humanistic Taylor's vision of it was in some ways. There are still somewhat scary arch-capitalist overtones and control/manipulation issues that deserve criticism, and certainly a wide divergence between the book and any sort of modern reality, but this article is a significant distortion. Ragesoss 5 Oct 2005

Laziness of workers

I edited the sentence about workers being inherently lazy, to reflect Taylor's observation that they work for their own best interest. I also agree that differentiation ought to be made between Scientific Management and Taylorism (ie, what Taylor thought versus later takes on his ideas). IlluminaFFO 19:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

dehumanization

In light of some of the above comments, it strikes me that it's time to question the use of the term "dehumanization" to describe the effect of Taylorism. We need to withhold judgement in order to describe this objectively. If we jump the gun and introduce stereotypically conservative critiques like this idea of "dehumanization" we won't get anywhere (to be fair, we wouldn't want to superimpose a wildly progressivist interpretation, either...).

Fixifex (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

discuss the contributions made to scientific management

discuss the contributions made to scientific management —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.193.133.2 (talk) 09:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Moved extensive unsourced edit

Scientific Management- There is four main ideas that Taylor came out with for scientific management.

1. “There is “one best way” to perform any job” (Organizational Communication Perspectives and Trends, Papa, Daniels, Spiker). Through the time and motion study you can figure out the most efficient procedure. 2. “Personnel should be selected scientifically” (Organizational Communication Perspectives and Trends, Papa, Daniels, Spiker). The jobs should be assigned according to the skills of the worker. 3. “Workers should be compensated on an incentive plan that pays them in direct proportion to the work they produce” (Organizational Communication Perspectives and Trends, Papa, Daniels, Spiker). Since people are motivated by money, an incentive plan will cause workers to become more productive. 4. “Labor should be divided so that managers plan the work and workers follow the plan” ” (Organizational Communication Perspectives and Trends, Papa, Daniels, Spiker).

He also came up with a similar idea called “differential piece-rate” that was a wage payment method. “Taylor’s piece-rate plan was based on time-study of each job…use of a stop watch, the time to be allowed for each operation was calculated and a day’s task was set. For completing or exceeding the task, a worker received a piece-rate 50 percent higher than if his output fell short of the designated amount.”(Mass Production and the Beginnings of Scientific Management; Introduction Page 4 Paragraph 4). The idea worked right into the idea of Scientific Management. It goes hand in hand with the incentive plan, which expressed his idea that employees can be manipulated. Also that employees are an interchangeable piece of a company. Also known as a cog in machine of a company. Much of what Taylor learned was through hands on experience. He actually worked in a steal factory for a period of time in 1878. He started out as a lower end employee but due to his background he was quickly promoted, until eventually he became the boss of all of his past fellow employees. The main reasoning for his promotions was the fact that he was well educated and both of his parents were not of the working class. He found out quickly that his former fellow employees didn’t appreciate very much that he got promoted and so quickly. He also found out while he was still working with them that employees will slack off if they are not rewarded for harder work. That is where all of his incentive based ideas came from. He actually witnessed employees breaking machines to cause less work for a day, working slower then they should, and that all the employees stuck together with these ideas. It is called systematic soldiering when the all of the employees work just as slow as one another. This way they can not increase the expectations of the superiors. So when new employees were brought in they were trained by the old employees and trained to this same type of work ethics. He also believed that captains were born and not made. (The principles of Scientific Management New York: Harper 1911) --Jschwab1017 (talk) 04:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)Joe Schwab CMM360 New Paltz RashersTierney (talk) 10:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Homework blues

i real not understand about this Scientific management —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.223.4.181 (talk) 10:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Relationship of Taylorism to Fordism

See Talk:Henry_Ford/Archive_3#Taylorism — ¾-10 20:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Update: I revamped, improved, and shortened that info to polish it for the article namespace. I incorporated it. — ¾-10 01:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Sequestered bulleted lists—likely copy-paste job

This whole section (minus the image and a few word tweaks) smells like a copyvio copy-pasted from someone's management textbook or other course materials. I'm sequestering it here at the talk page until I am moved to incorporate the various points into the article's structure. They are good points; but if they're a copyvio, then we can't keep them in their current form. — ¾-10 01:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Overview

{{Prose|date=January 2010}}

General approach

• Shift in decision making from employees to managers
• Develop the one best way as a standard method for performing each job
• Select workers with appropriate abilities for each job
• Train workers in the standard method previously developed
• Support workers by planning their work and eliminating interruptions (except for planned rest breaks)
• Provide wage incentives to workers for increased output

Contributions

[[File:Slide rule for turning work.png|thumb|A slide rule created by Carl G. Barth, a coworker of Frederick W. Taylor, for turning work, about 1904]]

• Scientific approach to business management and process improvement
• Importance of compensation for performance
• Began the careful study of tasks and jobs
• Importance of selection criteria by management
• Perspective of improving the productivity and efficiency of manual workers

Elements

• Labor is defined and authority/responsibility is legitimised/official
• Positions placed in hierarchy and under authority of higher level
• Selection is based upon technical competence, training or experience
• Actions and decisions are recorded to allow continuity and memory
• Management is professionalized, which generally means being differentiated from the ownership of the organization
• Managers follow rules/procedures to enable reliable/predictable behavior

<end>

Giant Intro

Can I just stop by here and bring up the fact that the intro is way too big? 76.125.248.67 (talk) 18:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I agree entirely, although I can see the point that you're making. The problem is that unless a reader has read all 4 of those paragraphs, they really don't know squat about "what scientific management was". We could consider splitting it into a "lede for dummies" followed by an "overview for big boys and girls", but I'm concerned that this would mislead the dummies into thinking that they "know what it is" after reading only a few sentences. But then again, maybe I'm wrong. We should always shoot for drill-down-ability, and maybe the existing lede can be restructured into a drill-down-able structure whose lowest parts aren't misleadingly oversimplified. Hmmm. I'll ponder that and see about giving it a shot. — ¾-10 23:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the nudge that it took to trigger this next phase in the development of the article. I've implemented the suggestion of filtering most of the detail out of the lede and into the "Overview and context" section. The lede is now short, concise, and high-level (i.e., giving only the broadest abstractions, with narrower details pushed down to the overview). I agree that implementing this idea has resulted in a marked improvement. — ¾-10 17:15, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the work you did on this article ¾-10.Pm master 14:58, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! Maybe not perfect, but continually improving ... — ¾-10 23:31, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Fraud in Taylorism?

In Michael Barone's column today, he casually mentions that Taylor faked a lot of his studies. This is astonishing. The exact quote is "Taylor, as Robert Kanigel makes clear in his excellent biography, "The One Best Way," was something of a charlatan. He faked a lot of his time and motion studies. " Scientific fraud in the advocacy of scientific management is a *big deal* and yet I find nothing about this in the Wikipedia article. I don't have a copy of "The One Best Way" but perhaps someone who has access to it would improve the article? TMLutas (talk) 19:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Sadly it's been 8 years since I read Kanigel 1997. However, from what I remember of my reading, I don't remember discussion of blatant falsification, although I do remember taking away the overall impression that Taylor showed plenty of arrogant bias (my own words) in favor of his own ideas. But I will need to re-read the biography and revisit. I know there are people out there who are more well read, and more recently read, than I am on this topic. I welcome any such contributors to come help further refine the article. — ¾-10 02:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Scientific management or Taylorism?

In German Wikipedia we decided to have both. Scientific Management for the original ideas Taylor's and Taylorism for those developments which criticise this. May be an idea for the English one also? -- Tasma3197 (talk) 18:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I feel that this is also currently true in English usage. Taylor and those inspired by him used the name "scientific management" pretty consistently after 1910. They didn't self-identify (as the social scientists would say) using the word "Taylorism". Their critics used both terms, often interchangeably. I'd say that today the word "Taylorism" can be (and often is) used nonpejoratively, although it is not always used that way. So off the top of my head I'd say the usage in the English article is OK as-is. But you may be right that some occurrences of "Taylorism" therein should be changed to "scientific management" in order to avoid appearance of POV. I'll try to revisit that if the spirit moves me to spend the time! Cheers, — ¾-10 02:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Some strange things in the article

• Just at the beginning: Why "was"? Even if the theory is "obsolete", and I don't share this idea, then Scientific Management has still that specific meaning and not something else, a new thing. You can't say Scientific Management was ... and today Scientific management is ...
• There is a source needed which tells that it was a "school of thought was obsolete by the 1930". There have been Scientific Management Conferences at least up to 1947, and it was this 1947 conference which came out with the meaning that Scientific Management is no longer linked closely to Taylor's original ideas but now means every kind of productivity increasing methods (Bloemen, Eric: The Moevement for Scientific Management in Europe between the Wars. In: Spender, John-Christopher (Ed.); Kijne, Hugo J. (Ed.): Scientific Management : Fredrick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World? Norwell, Mass.: Kluwer, 1996. - ISBN 0-7923-9758-4)
• Especially the chapter "Taylor's view of workers" reads more like a novel than an encyclopaedia and citations are missing - naturally, because a lot is not true.
• Chapter "Early decades: making jobs unpleasant": Taylor stopped "working for money" at 1901 (Copley, Frank Barkley: Frederick W. Taylor, Father of Scientific Management. New York: Harper, 1923). He did NOT work on Watertown Arsenal personally in 1911. This was Dwight V. Merrick, who used to work at Bethlehem Steel and Link Belt with Taylor. Merrick did not talk to the foundryman before he started time studies, and the foundryman didn't want to work while there were watched (Copley also).

There is much more to say, the article is full of citations and ideas from publishing people who obviously never read Taylor themselves and dammed something, what they think it's Scientific Management, but this never was. Sorry, I don't have more time, to tell it here at the moment ;-) -- Tasma3197 (talk) 10:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

• Overall response: Feel free to improve. I prefer that wholesale deletion not happen (because it would not be any improvement) but rather only point-by-counterpoint improvement, because I stand by the idea that there's nothing horrible about the content. There are only specific points to be refined if you are able. I've done the best I could so far without being an expert on the topic. I just thought it was sad that no one had done any real justice to the topic at all before I came along. In all of my comments that follow, please don't take any of my rhetorical questions or irritation personally; they're about the challenges of being a Wikipedian, rather than being intended as snarky toward you personally (not at all—I appreciate your interest in helping). Here goes. One thing I find depressing is that many people (not singling you out at all) complain about the huge gaps in Wikipedia content, yet where are the people who are perfectly capable of improving this article more than I could (university professors, grad students, etc)? They leave it to the dust and the amateurs (like me), because of various reasons. I understand many of them. They don't want to work pro bono; and it's sometimes a time-and-effort drain to collaborate with amateurs on WP (true); and they're already busy (true, but if one devotes one's working life to an academic field, I find it strange that one wouldn't use some of one's own time to improve the public's understanding of the field—i.e., you don't find it irritating that laypeople are profoundly ignorant of the info that you know more deeply? You don't want to change that even one little bit?); and I believe that they're also a little afraid of what the world might turn into if Wikipedia's content really became excellent and comprehensive, i.e., would they put themselves out of work? I don't share the fear that Wikipedia will put anyone out of work. An encyclopedia never could; its scope is too small. Even if this article were excellent and so were 5 million others, we would still need university professors doing what they do for a living. So the point is (thank God for the point finally, I hear you saying), not just in this article but in others, someone complains that my efforts weren't good enough, but yet I haven't seen anyone do anything better yet. I'm just saying, not whining. But this is a digression. Responses to specific points are as follows:
  • "Just at the beginning: Why "was"? Even if the theory is "obsolete", and I don't share this idea, then Scientific Management has still that specific meaning and not something else, a new thing. You can't say Scientific Management was ... and today Scientific management is ... There is a source needed which tells that it was a "school of thought was obsolete by the 1930[s]". There have been Scientific Management Conferences at least up to 1947, and it was this 1947 conference which came out with the meaning that Scientific Management is no longer linked closely to Taylor's original ideas but now means every kind of productivity increasing methods (Bloemen, Eric: The Moevement for Scientific Management in Europe between the Wars. In: Spender, John-Christopher (Ed.); Kijne, Hugo J. (Ed.): Scientific Management : Fredrick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World? Norwell, Mass.: Kluwer, 1996. - ISBN 0-7923-9758-4)"
    • The basic point being communicated in the article is valid. If you can refine the timeline and referencing, by all means, feel free. The basic point is that many of the concepts of S.M. are still with us today (and the reason why that's the case, by the way, although others won't allow me to say it in the article because I can't "prove" it, but any intelligent person could see it for themselves, but we really ought to say it anyway because not all the readers are intelligent, is that they are inherently smart ideas with an element of timelessness about their abstract themes if not their instantiations, e.g., efficiency, analysis, synthesis); but S.M. in the form of Taylorism was no longer the state of the art in management theory by the 1930s (it was competing and syncretizing with other ideas), AND by the 1950s, it was outdated; the syncretism was complete. I stand by that concept based on what I've read. If you can refine its details, feel free.
  • Especially the chapter "Taylor's view of workers" reads more like a novel than an encyclopaedia and citations are missing - naturally, because a lot is not true.
    • I disagree. You will have to challenge specific points, because this general criticism is too vague IMO. One thing I find annoying in defending my efforts on Wikipedia is "God forbid you explain anything solicitously to a clueless reader in expository prose," because someone else will come along and say that the tone isn't befitting of an encyclopedia and the text is too long. The aim is pedagogical effectiveness. People come to an encyclopedia because they want to answer questions. Some answers aren't short if the receiver is profoundly ignorant to begin with. Why is K-12 education (as we call it in the U.S.—meaning everything up till university) 13 years long? Is it because trying to cram it into one year is pedagogically fruitless? I think so, yes. The "reads like a novel" or "reads like an essay" criticism at Wikipedia is a microcosm of saying that K-12 education is too long and should only be one year instead of 13. Why do essays even exist anyway? Is it that expository writing has a valid pedagogical purpose? If all questions can be answered without expository prose (as critics seem to imply), then why does the essay medium exist at all? Is it pointless? I don't think so. I find this area of WP criticism facile and specious. I realize that I am in a minority on that. Whatever writing style will work toward the goals of explaining ideas/answering questions/conveying information, fine, let's consider using it where appropriate. It is my experience that people get so mad about longwindedness, yet the only alternative they ever really offer is incompleteness (skeletal sentences that don't explicate anything) that leaves readers insufficiently clued and remaining in a state of ignorance. Why even have an encyclopedia then? It's not always an improvement just because it's shorter. To paraphrase Einstein, everything should be made as simple as possible—but not simpler. Oversimplification is a type of failure to understand reality or to explain it to someone who's asking about it. Another problem I find is that God forbid anyone admit on Wikipedia (as in this S.M. article) that different human individuals have different talents, and not everyone is great at every job, and some human individuals exhibit scumbag behaviors. God forbid we teach schoolchildren reality instead of sanitized fairy tales that bowdlerize reality. Please know that although I sound snotty when I say that, I am not trying to be snarky. I'm simply wondering why people think that admitting the following in an NPOV text—that parts of Taylor's insights about some workers' bad points had a basis in a grain of truth, although incomplete—is tantamount to being a corporate shill or a Taylor groupie. NPOV means acknowledging all sides of the truth. I, for one, was angry when, having been to university and then out into the workforce for years on end, I discovered all the aspects of real life that parents and teachers lie about or deny or sanitize. WTF? You could have taught me when I was 15 or 17 or 19 years old that many humans are idiots in the following X ways. I would not have been traumatized by hearing the truth. It would have benefited me; I wouldn't have had to reinvent the wheel on my own. But I digress. Bottom line, feel free to improve, but you will have to do it on a point-by-counterpoint basis, because I challenge you to find anything in there that is not true in the experience of smart, honest people who actually work in the workforce among less-smart or dishonest people. Reality is reality. If you know specifics of Taylor's view of workers that differ from what I've got there so far, feel free to revise.
  • Chapter "Early decades: making jobs unpleasant": Taylor stopped "working for money" at 1901 (Copley, Frank Barkley: Frederick W. Taylor, Father of Scientific Management. New York: Harper, 1923). He did NOT work on Watertown Arsenal personally in 1911. This was Dwight V. Merrick, who used to work at Bethlehem Steel and Link Belt with Taylor. Merrick did not talk to the foundryman before he started time studies, and the foundryman didn't want to work while there were watched (Copley also).
    • OK, I don't doubt you're right—you clearly know the specifics more than I do—but the answer to that is, (1) feel free to refine the details, including "Taylor himself" versus "Taylor's colleagues who shared his ideas and their implementation." I don't see how that makes a great difference substantively, but I totally agree that the facts should be straight. In other words, if you can refine the details, great; but (2) does it really change the themes communicated there? "Taylorism implementations in the 1910s and 1920s went rockily and workers often hated them." Wrong? Not wrong as far as I understand.
  • There is much more to say, the article is full of citations and ideas from publishing people who obviously never read Taylor themselves and dammed something, what they think it's Scientific Management, but this never was.
    • I would bet you're right that there are a few things in the article cited to specific books or articles that represent, as you say, people's bogeyman ideas of Taylor rather than his own writings. I for one, when I read Taylor's Principles monograph, thought that it was very smart in various respects and that he was a smart guy. Of course, that impression was later tempered by exploring all the ways that Taylor was an asshole, such as his tendency toward calling workers draft animals and so forth. You can acknowledge differences between humans, and that some humans are assholes, without being racist or elitist. You just have to keep NPOV the whole time and keep things straight and be willing to give credit wherever credit is due, and to refrain from blaming people for things that aren't their fault. (For example, I suck at tennis, but that's not my fault; I lack talent for it and I've never felt a desire to practice at it or a need to be good at it.)
    • I am sorry for going on so long in these responses. I just hate to see the article painted as full of garbage when I think its content, while imperfect, is not that bad. Now I am very late to eat dinner. Regards, — ¾-10 01:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I would change some things myself if my English was better. Because this is not, I feel not able to do so. That was the reason to "claim" on discussion only. The idea just to give you a hand on your work here. And you are also right: I'm very busy now, to much to spend a lot of time on working on articles here. There is a pile to do left in my home Wikipedia also. Just two words in addition: You must not judge in Wikipedia. If you find some personal judgements you can refer to: okay, but not you. Remembering that racial segregation in USA was stopped at 1968 (!). So you should be a little prudent before calling someone living in 19th century in US calling a asshole because he told workers “draft animals“ (I would like to see a reference for this btw). -- Tasma3197 (talk) 16:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC) 

Your point is well taken. I should revise my comment—I actually don't think Taylor was a bad guy overall. A little privileged and arrogant, but also very earnest in trying to improve the world, including for workers. His vision was to have the workers share in the prosperity stemming from their own productivity increases. Only those who came after him were the ones who tried to overwork the workers and keep all the gains for themselves. And you are quite right (in different words) that "parlor elitism/racism" (echoing "parlor antisemitism", as Harry Truman called it) was very prevalent—the norm, in fact—during Taylor's era and even for decades after his death. So he was merely "normal" in his condescension toward some of the less intelligent workers (not especially cruel). However, we today would recognize his attitudes as asshole-like, just as we would recognize 1920s parlor antisemitism as asshole-like through the lens of today's standards. But you are correct that the article namespace cannot assign the value judgment in an OR or POV manner. However, that said, I do also say that there is room within the NPOV universe for acknowledging someone's bad points. To give an extreme example, I doubt that the Wikipedia article about John Wayne Gacy says that he was a fucking asshole (in those exact words), but of course he was one, as we all agree. A pedagogical tool like Wikipedia (or journalism for that matter) is supposed to stay too neutral to assign a value judgment; but there is some room in life, even in Wikipedia or journalism, for stating that there is broad consensus that parlor social-class-ism is wrong. Anyway, thanks very much for the constructive discussion. Much appreciated. Regards, — ¾-10 22:20, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Still Not an Op-Ed Piece

Today is July 21, 2012, and here's a selection of opinionated phrases from the current version:

"Scientific management is a variation on the theme of economic efficiency; it is a late 19th and early 20th century instance of the larger recurring theme in human life of increasing efficiency, decreasing waste, and using empirical methods to decide what matters, rather than uncritically accepting pre-existing ideas of what matters."

"It is human nature to jump to a post hoc conclusion that Fordism borrowed ideas from Taylorism and expanded from there."

"The opposite theoretical pole would be an extremist variant of laissez-faire thinking in which the invisible hand of free markets is the only possible "designer"."

Of course you should read the whole article yourself to get an actual idea of the extent of the problem.

What is this problem? Whether or not you agree with the assertions in this article, they are mostly just that: assertions! Citations are incredibly sparse for such a content filled article. Especially since to an economics layman as myself, Taylorism is not at all a familiar topic, such editorializing really hurts this topic which actually has the potential to be fascinating. This could really use a rewrite. — anonymous, 2:22 pm EDT, 21 July 2012.

Regarding "this topic [...] has the potential to be fascinating": You're right, it is an interesting topic. And a multifaceted one. However, about your other assertions, you're incorrect, as shown below:

Regarding the text "Scientific management is a variation on the theme of economic efficiency; it is a late 19th and early 20th century instance of the larger recurring theme in human life of increasing efficiency, decreasing waste, and using empirical methods to decide what matters, rather than uncritically accepting pre-existing ideas of what matters." You seem to think that this is an opinion. It's not; it's a fact. If you think it's not, you should explain why.

Regarding the text "It is human nature to jump to a post hoc conclusion that Fordism borrowed ideas from Taylorism and expanded from there." The cited quote from Sorensen absolutely backs up this fact. Lots of people assumed that Fordism borrowed from Taylorism, based on the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Taylor himself did so (as the cited quote from Taylor, within Sorensen's cited quote, makes clear), and quite naturally and forgiveably, because it's often human nature to jump to such a conclusion (as the article on that logical fallacy explains). Where in this do you assert that there's opinion rather than fact?

Regarding the text "The opposite theoretical pole would be an extremist variant of laissez-faire thinking in which the invisible hand of free markets is the only possible "designer"." Again, that's a fact. Can you present an argument explaining how it's only an opinion?

Willing to revise if you can clearly show how these sentences are incorrect or not factual.

— ¾-10 02:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)