The Principles of Scientific Management

by Frederick Winslow Taylor

best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation.

The most experienced managers therefore frankly place before their workmen the problem of doing the work in the best and most economical way.

They recognize the task before them as that of inducing each workman to use his best endeavors, his hardest work, all his traditional knowledge, his skill, his ingenuity, and his good-will—in a word, his "initiative," so as to yield the largest possible return to his employer.

equal division of the responsibility between the management and the workmen,"

A careful analysis had demonstrated the fact that when workmen are herded together in gangs, each man in the gang becomes far less efficient than when his personal ambition is stimulated;