What we know as modern construction, is the application of
Taylorism to the assembly of physical components.
The creative industries are "not immune to technological displacement and digital
taylorism" (Altass & Wiebe, 2017, p.
Charlie Chaplin spoofed
Taylorism in his film, "Modern Times," where the Little Tramp has a nervous breakdown trying to meet the expectations of a dehumanized work environment.
Taylorism is a theory of scientific management of work systems developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor between the 1880s and 1910s, whose main purpose was to make the factory workplace more efficient so as to maximize labor productivity.
"Progressives," writes Leonard, "regarded small business as inefficient and outmoded, and they largely applauded its destruction." In factories, progressives embraced
Taylorism's surveillance and micromanagement of workers because it promised to create surpluses so large that labor and management would both be satisfied with their cut, thereby promoting industrial harmony.
Although the ideologies of scientific management eventually ceded ground to organizational theory based on more humanistic principles (Jreisat, 1997), the reemergence of scientific management in modern education results in what Au (2011) refers to as new
Taylorism.
But our social and political institutions, inherited from a period of
Taylorism, mass consumption and catching-up development are ill-suited to meet these new challenges.
Amazon's shop-floor processes are an extreme variant of
Taylorism that Frederick Winslow Taylor himself, a near century after his death, would have no trouble recognizing.
Due to a combination of inter-related features, including the exhaustion of the productivity-realising potential of mechanised
Taylorism in lead sectors (De Vroey, 1984), the resistance of workers to intensified exploitation and job fragmentation (Braverman, 1974; Aglietta, 1979), the internationalisation of production (Ivanova, 2011), the erosion of US hegemony, the 1970s oil shock and the crisis of the post-War Bretton Woods financial institutions (De Vroey, 1984), Fordist countries began to run into serious, and ultimately insurmountable, obstacles from the early 1970s onwards.
Initially,
Taylorism was hailed as a progressive force that would free workers from the whim of autocratic bosses and benefit all.
Kara Reilly's essay "The Tiller Girls: Mass Ornament and Modern Girl" interestingly places their dance and cultural significance within the context of the
Taylorism of factory economy and production processes and the militaristic routine and training of mechanistic repetition.
At the LMS, Lemon had introduced the principles of
Taylorism across the organisation to increase labour productivity.