A Psychoanalytic View of the
Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading*
Ramazan Erturgut∗∗ - Serhat Soyşekerci ∗∗∗
Abstract: This study, beyond conducting a theoretical analysis, aims for
mental questioning. In the West, according to a linear rhetorical perspective based on a specific method, Taylor is the origin of modern management, since with his thoughts, lifestyle and his contribution to the science
of management, he was surrounded by modernity. In this respect, the Taylorist System constitutes not only the content of classic management, but
also modern management. Meanwhile, at the end of the 18th century, modern medicine, like modern management, which was shaped by engineering
norms in the early 20th century, was born on a road of no return in the rationality of historical facts. There exists a parallelism between Taylor’s system of thought and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which modern medicine has introduced as a category of illness. This article argues on a hypothetical basis that this situation is a natural outcome of the phenomena of
modernism and rationalism. Thus, Taylor reading bears traces of passing
through different fields, whose continuity depends on advancing, accompanied by development.
Key Words: Frederick Winslow Taylor, modernism, obsessive-compulsive
disorder, scientific management approach, rationalism.
INTRODUCTION
The scientific management approach was developed on the road of
no return under the rationality of engineering norms and historical
events in the early 20th century. The main reason was that ‘engineering had become a messianic vocation in the first three quarters of the
century’ (Ross, 1995: 161). Approaches to the management process
and bureaucracy are also systematic theories like scientific management, (Ringer, 2003). The reason is that “in such cases the real is re*
This article was produced from presentation delivered at “The 17th Conference on
National Management and Organization (Soyşekerci - Erturgut, 2009) held on 21-23
May 2009.
∗∗
Asst. Prof.., Air Force Non-Commissioned Officer, Vocational School of Aviation,
Department of Economic and Administrative Programs.
∗∗∗
Asst.Prof., Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Biga Vocational School.
TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration, Volume 4 No 2 June 2010, p.1-19.
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TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration
composed of abstracts; but of what use is a dialectic that believes itself to be reunited with the real when it compensates for the inadequacy of a concept that is too broad or too general by invoking the
opposite concept, which is no less broad and general? The concrete
will never be attained by combining the inadequacy of one concept
with the inadequacy of its opposite. The singular will never be attained by correcting a generality with another generality” (Deleuze,
2006: 13). This refers to the Scientific Management Approach. The
need for considering such type of “overlapping” (Abeles, 1998: 11)
paves the way for new research and privileges some concepts that intensify numerous social dimensions. Therefore, when Taylor is carefully read, it will be seen that there are actually remarkable convergences between the systems that appear to be distant upon first
sight. Then, the phenomenon of modernity produces other systems
within its own cycle on the condition that they are bound to it. In this
context, reading Taylor refers to observing “the travel of a thought,
whose continuity depends on progress via development, through different fields” (Deleuze, 2006: 22; Bergson, 1986: 2004).
PROBLEMATIC
Frederick Taylor’s natural life tendencies and system of thinking
surround him with the reality of modernity. Charles Derber et al’s personality analyses for Taylor, who is encircled by reality, are the focal
interest of an assumption, which is considered a problematic by this
study: An ‘obsessive-compulsive’ personality reflects a personality
born from passion. Obsession refers to thoughts unknown to the ego,
which develop against one’s will and irritate the individual and, which
cannot be dismissed by conscious effort. Obsession and compulsion
are involuntary repeated actions in order to dismiss mostly obsessive
thoughts (Cüceloğlu, 1996).
Taylor bears the traces of counting his steps in his youth and calculating the angles of stroke while playing golf at the weekends. He
programmed and timed all his activities. It is strange that his analyses
of his motions aim at efficiency (Derber et al., 1990: 100). In plain
words, rather than diagnosing Taylor as sick, thus ‘keeping a record’
for him, evaluating the formal principles that lay behind the modernist
movement as the applied form of Taylorist methods (Ross, 1995:
148) denotes making a more appropriate inference. To put it more
clearly, when considered in a machine model, Taylor’s method
emerges from the tendency ‘to turn the increase of efficiency into obsession’ (Fişek, 1979: 38). French philosopher Michel Foucault’s
A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
3
(1975: 2001) method that identifies the extensive observation of body
with the practices of modern political power as the disciplinary
knowledge covers the scientific management involving engineering
norms as the visible objects of knowledge and Taylor’s methods
based on principles. Rational and positive medicine considers the
signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder as ‘severe, repetitive symptoms that causes disturbance at a certain level’ (Belene, 2007: 18).
Repetitive recollections, images and counting the number of windows
and doors of houses are examples of symptoms of obsessivecompulsive disorder. On the other hand, the fear of illness is considered a phobic disorder (Đsmailov - Özakkaş, 1998: 287). As these are
time-consuming, they significantly affect the individual’s everyday life,
profession, as well as his/her social efficiency and relations. Obsessions are described as repetitive, involuntary impulses produced by
the individual’s own imagination that disturb the ego. Compulsions
are repetitive ritual behaviors or mental actions, which the individual
feels compelled to do (Belene, 2007: 18). Tracing Foucault’s views
on mental illnesses ‘founding mental illnesses on a Cartesian basis
turns the illness into an object detached from interpretation’ (Foucault, 2001). Thus, during the sessions devoted to the patient under
treatment, the patient gives a free rein to his or her thoughts and tells
the doctor everything. This constitutes the basis of the sessions (Brehier, 1965: 37). Therefore, Taylor’s ‘confinement’ into a category of
obsessive-compulsive disorders would mean overlooking his purpose
in contributing to scientific management, his system of thought, his
life story and his passion for enhancing the efficiency of workers. At
this point, it is appropriate to give an example from the photography
profession. If, while wandering between the realities of a photograph
portraying dazzling views and egregiousness, it is noticed that the
photographer is stuck with an extremely personal obsession, this
should be accepted as the moment captured by the photograph. For
example, “there is nothing particularly idiosyncratic, or perhaps even
inconsistent, in these contrasts. Traveling between degraded and
glamorous realities is part of the very momentum of the photographic
enterprise, unless the photographer is locked into an extremely private obsession (like the thing Lewis Carroll had about little girls or Diane Airbus about the Halloween crowd) (Sontag, 2008: 71).
The cycle around the two key concepts like initiative and impulse
in the conceptualization of the scientific management is extremely
striking. As Taylor is continuously in pursuit of these two concepts,
Taylor’s high level of impulsive desire should be considered very nor-
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mal. Those, who emphasize that Taylor’s system with his life and way
of thinking disappeared before comprehending a system (the field of
jobs or work failed to become a science, such as marketing in business administration and the profession of dietician in the science of
medicine1), fail to realize how this system offers a means to lift the veil
of mystery for understanding the way to the truth. The institutionalization of Taylor and the science of modern management find itself in
outdated Charlie Chaplin’s artistic projection.2 Undoubtedly, in this
description of art, an obsessive-compulsive depiction should be
sought not in Taylor himself, but in this system. The rhythmic steps
of ‘Charlie’ (Modern Times), the working of a piston or his image in
The Kid, the movie, in which he in one of the scenes sits on a paving
stone with a small child, depicting that tired machines should also
rest, reflects the idealized creation of the period (Asiltürk, 2006: 20).
The reason was that in his movies, Chaplin had transformed his body
both into the image of a machine metaphor itself and its contrast.
Moreover, ‘Charlie’ was saying what had to be said not by speaking,
but by using his body; perhaps he was searching for the truth by tracing a painful thought just like Taylor. Such a situation offers an extremely comprehensive content in the circuit that comes into existence in the contrast of capitalism (Frederick Taylor) and socialism
(Charlie Chaplin) in respect of catching the ‘history of subject’. As a
matter of fact, this distressing energy shows that ‘finding and disclosing the truth’ (Cibran, 1998: 8) was hidden in the phenomenon of
modernity in the everyday life of that period. The painful energy consisting of two contradictions scientifically in Taylor and artistically in
The sub-profession groups derived from the medical profession, such as the professions of dietician physiotherapist, or professions of skin care and massage therapy, or
those emphasized as “marginal professions,” a “limited profession,” a “semiprofession,” a “quasiprofession,” a “peripheral profession,” and an “incomplete professions
are considered professions that have emerged without going through a historical process (Anderson, 2004: 2374). Also see: Freidson, 1988; 1991; Illich, 1977b.
2
There are motives in science fiction of the 1930s similar to the descriptions of Charlie
Chaplin’s movies. For example, the celebrated "small guy" in Frank Capra's films of
the time was used to express a defiant alternative to corporate labor's stifling assembly line spirit. In a similar way, the adventures of time travel and space travel, the
standard imperialistic components of pulp SF might also be seen as utopian versions
of the desire to escape the new Taylorist tyranny of organized and quantified time and
space that had come to preside over the contemporary work place (Ross, 1995: 167).
In fact, with industrialization, initiatives in the business world emerged before the utopian depictions. In 1888, the first Kodak camera was launched on the market with the
sales slogan: "You press the button, we do the rest.” (Sontag, 2008: 64). This reveals
the impression of rationalism and modernity in a camera in the last quarter of the 19th
century.
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A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
5
Chaplin is remarkable. As will be emphasized in the following pages,
Taylor was distressed due to his failure to motivate workers to work
efficiently in order to achieve his goal of increasing efficiency, while
Chaplin was concerned about the industrial tyranny undergone by art
in the process of modernization. All these should be attributed to the
change and transformation of the statuses of both professions and art
starting with that period. Therefore, it is appropriate to quote 20th
century modernity from Marx and Engel’s ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ written in the 19th century: “The bourgeoisie have also
removed the power and importance of those who had honoured and
respected occupations such as the doctor, the lawyer and the priest
and merely turned them into their paid wage labourer. They assume
that every member of society becomes part of a simple two class
model of society and those members on the fringe of the ruling bourgeoisie class are either absorbed into the bourgeoisie or more typically prolaterialised” (Parker, 2001: 142). Hence, looking at the modern
art depicted by Chaplin and others from the socialist perspective, “In
one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it
has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Marx Engels, 1950: 34). The main theme of this belief, which was shared
by many critics of the modern industrial society from Karl Marx, who
believed that the Taylorist division of labor was the inevitable consequence of the capitalist form of industrialization, to Chaplin, was the
alienation of man from himself. Under this system, man was destined
to become alienated: the machines he had built to serve had in effect
become his master, reducing the humanbeing to a cog in a system of
mechanical production (Fukuyama, 2000: 243).
METHOD
The texts included in Taylor’s book ‘The Principles of Scientific
Management’ were analyzed and other opinions and thoughts were
thoroughly investigated in the light of events and phenomena of the
period by in-depth description (Sencer - Sencer, 1978).
ANALYSIS: THE ASPECTS OF INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT SURROUNDING TAYLOR
In the 1920s and 1930s, scientific and technologic inventions
ranged across a wide spectrum. Scientific and technological inventions were used by management reformers like Taylor, progressive
engineering professionals like Morris Cooke, business leaders and
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governing figures like Herbert Hoover and Theodore Roosevelt, nonMarxist technocrats like Thornstein Veblen and Lewis Mumford. It was
a time when technological progress was raised to the status of selfevident truth and, when the cults of efficiency and waste conservation
presided over everyday life. Progressives, conservatives and Taylorist
advocates of scientific management all shared the rhetoric conservation and efficiency. Technological progress, as applied by science,
had become the basic logic of capitalist development. Even the crisis
tendencies of capitalist overproduction were now held in check by the
principles of scientific management. (Ross, 1995: 138-163). In the
United States, the rapid acceleration gained by the consumption society after the World War I, in a sense, laid the foundations for likely
and deep crises (Sontag, 2008: 60)
With industrialization, new inventions, new instruments and machines and other types of energy for production purposes resulted in
the establishment of production places called the ‘factory floor’. The
mechanization of many processes, which were previously done manually on the factory floor, reveals a well-known characteristic of this
system (Aydın, 1977: 2). To what extent technological discoveries
and inventions speeded up social motion assumed importance in the
United States of the 1930s as emphasized above. Nevertheless, the
contribution of the application of scientific principles on mass production and efficiency-focused moves to technological progress cannot be denied. In this context, Taylor, instead of choosing to pursue a
career as an inventor by obtaining the patents of more than 40 machines, which he developed, obsessively focused on the rationalization of ‘work’ and efficiency principles. This can be considered a sign
of the administrative principles and inventions that would guide the
following century. Following the technological revolution that started
with the invention of difference machines3 by Charles Babbage, who
created the concept of a programmable computer (Lewis, 2006), the
assembly plant opened in 1913 by Ford Motors in Highland Park,
Michigan symbolizes the birth of mass production (Fukuyama, 2000:
240). The ideology of the type of mass production that identified with
Henry Ford in that period is represented by Frederick Taylor and his
3
Discovery, or uncovering, has to do with what already exists, actually or virtually; it
was therefore certain to happen sooner or later. Invention gives being to what did not
exist; it might never have happened (Deleuze, 2006: 51). As analytical philosopher
Charles Babbage’s invention of the analytical machine created a technological revolution, it should be considered not as a discovery, but as an invention.
A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
7
book, The Principles of Scientific Management (Fukuyama, 2000:
241).
Seeking the most important indication that Taylorism is not the
natural outcome of industrialization in other country experiences before keeping Taylor’s ideology alive is meaningful. This also necessitates laying more emphasis on the specific behaviors and orientations
of Taylorism that spring to life in Taylor’s personality. For instance, in
Germany, German workplaces were never organized under Taylorist
assembly line production. ‘The radius of trust’, in Fukuyama’s (2000:
246) definition, was the main determinant of the factory floor. Moreover, Taylorism was exported to Germany with the translation of his
work into German in 1918 (Fukuyama, 2000: 247).
Modernism, Obsession with Efficiency and Taylor
Taylor’s system based or profitability and efficiency is the origin of
a ‘modern’ process in management. The reason is that these ‘labor
pains’ of industrialization appear in modern management and many
other fields of profession as in modern medicine, modern art and
modern sports (Foucault, 1975; Illich, 1977a, 1977b; Caudwell,
1988; Sontag, 2008; Soyşekerci - Erturgut, 2008). However, this
study does not aim to investigate Taylor’s contributions to modern
management in terms of efficiency and scientific management by focusing on the known results. Instead, the purpose of the study is to
thoroughly scrutinize all these in the context of passions, ambitions,
obsessions and compulsions, which are believed to have inherited
Taylor’s personality and from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. As will be
discussed in the following sections of the article, it is understood that
Taylor was molded with a deep passion in his spheres of interest from
his youth. His profoundness manifests itself not only in his efficiencyfocused studies, but also in the following words of him about English
and American workmen, whom he deems the greatest sportsmen in
the world: “The universal sentiment is so strong that any man who
fails to give his all in sport is branded as a "quitter," and treated with
contempt by those around him” (Taylor, 1997: 24). To Taylor, preventing laziness and avoiding work have a lot of favorable consequences from the increase in national competitiveness and social
wealth to even the creation of a good family environment.
Taylor was a mechanical engineer. As contained in his books published in 1911, the fundamental elements of Taylorist management
are the systematization of work, gaining maximum efficiency from
workers, efficiency-based rewarding, measuring and assessing works
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and continuous on-the-job training on the ‘factory floor’ in order to
obtain optimum results. It is seen that Taylor’s passion for ensuring
efficiency in work and the worker sometimes turns into metaphors
and marginal codings. In his view, handling pig iron is typical of perhaps the crudest and most elementary form of labor, which is performed by man. This work is done by men with no other implements
than their hands. This work is so crude and elementary in its nature
that the writer firmly believes that it would be possible to train an intelligent gorilla to become a more efficient pig-iron handler than any
man could be.
Under this rhythmic system, he attributes the head and hand to
dialectical nature. Therefore, the study combines the head and hand
and it divides them into parts in companies. According to this dialectic nature between head and hand, Taylor says ‘rule-of-thumb’ (1911:
16) and argues that a cycle or process that has lost its nature or function will be subject to entropy (the process that leads to decline).
Moreover, it demonstrates the reflections of the application of head
and hand on a factory floor. The English writer Jonathan Swift (16671745) describes manual work of the pre-modernity period in his work
‘Directions to Servants’ as follows: “Put your finger into every bottle
to feel whether it be full, which is the surest way, for feeling has no fellow” (Josipovichi: 1997: 9)
Taylor’s Analysis in the Context of the Relationship
Between Being a Learned Professional and Contribution to
the Profession
Non-professional persons refer to ‘persons having no license to
work’ (Webster’s Dictionary, 1988: 980).4 In this respect, Taylor also
was not a scientist, but a practitioner. Taylor obsessively focused on
measuring and observing all physical works done in the factory order.
Naturally, Taylor’s engineering profession is a strong rationale for him
to benefit from this privilege while discovering a norm based on
measurement. However, a more important point is that Taylor’s ca4
The most popular example is the school founded by Carl Rogers, Rollo May and
Abraham Maslow in the 1960s in humanistic psychology, which they call the Human
Potential Movement. This school argues that the education of psychotherapy should
not merely be specific to the specialists or those with a university education. Everybody, who has skill and will should benefit from this education. According to this
school pioneered by Rogers, mental illness is not considered a medical model.
Hence, Rogers replaced the concept of ‘patient’ with the concept ‘client’ and significantly contributed to the profession of medicine via the construction of competence
and capacity in nonprofessionals (Mason, 2003: 265).
A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
9
reer cycle, which at first sight seems an ordinary story of success, can
actually be exemplified by ‘tides’ and has marginal aspects concerning the problematic of this study. Taylor, whose father was a lawyer,
studied engineering at evening classes and received his engineering
diploma at 27. Moreover, he won a U.S. Open doubles tennis championship in 1881: he obtained the patents of more than 40 inventions
when still in his 40s. All these prove that his personality was molded
by extreme ambition and passion even in different fields. It can be
said that these ambitions and passions nourished by obsessions and
compulsions were the keystones of Taylor’s contributions to the science of management and scientific management.
Similar to the science of management, the contribution of nonprofessionals to the science of medicine cannot be denied. The reason is that in a profession, the main drive is nourished by contributions from non-professionals. For example, in the science of medicine, anesthesia was first performed by French surgeon Ambrosie Paré in the 16th century. His invention of a ligature for large arteries that
effectively controlled hemorrhage does not denote the denial of his
contributions as a barber’s apprentice to the science of medicine
(Smith, 2001: 35). Likewise, the idea of using percussion of the thorax to aid diagnosis originated from the tapping on wine barrels in the
cellar with the fingers to determine how full they are based on the
sound. These examples are reference to the importance of observation and symmetry.
Going back to the beginning, it will not be wrong to say that Taylor was not a typical ‘self-thought’ person. However, he was not a scientist or academician; he was an engineer from the world of practice.
Since Taylor studied engineering, he asserted that the principles of
physics could be applied to the organization of work places. He believed that a factory looked like a living organism and therefore each
worker had to be assigned by a unique task that contributed to the
existence of this organism. In line with this purpose, he ascribed very
idealistic meanings to worker efficiency. To Taylor, a worker’s evasive
and slow mode of working was a crucial problem, which he believed
he could solve as if by magic. In fact, it would be wrong to expect
Taylor, whose personality was molded by obsessions and compulsions, to give priority to the socio-psychological needs of workers.
Therefore, workers were nothing but a factor in production activity for
Taylor.
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Motion-and-Time Series:
Alteration of ‘Observation’ and Obsessions in Taylor
Taylor was one of the first proponents of time-and-motion studies
that sought to maximize labor efficiency on the factory floor. It is understood that Taylor’s studies are based on in-depth observation of
routine production activities that are repeated thousands of times and
results of such observations. For example, Taylor proved that the answers to the questions, ‘at what speed should I operate my machine?’
and ‘how much should I load my machine?’, which a competent
technician is expected to respond to immediately, depended on a
complicated mathematical analysis that took 26 years and that required the determining of effects of two independent variables for
every condition (Taylor, 1997: 95) Many people may think that the
need for 26 years to analyze the effects of 12 variables on the speed
of metal cutting is unreasonable and the product of an obsessive
mind. However, these studies paved the way for the development of
‘high speed steel’ and the adoption of a number of standards thereof.
Taylor tried to codify the laws of mass production by recommending
a very high degree of specialization that deliberately avoided the need
for individual assembly line workers to demonstrate initiative. Worker
efficiency was based on a strict carrot-and-stick approach: productive
workers were paid a higher piece rate than less productive workers
(Fukuyama, 2000: 241). A natural outcome of the payment criterion
between productive and less productive workers reinforced the observation and view.
At this point, it will be helpful to clarify the meaning of “quantitative approach”. The reason is that modern medicine, which is shaped
in a clinic, requires symmetry just like modern management, which is
shaped on the factory floor. A foreman in a work place and “a doctor
in a hospital wants to distinguish all its characteristics and differences;
to detect the ones that are same and different; to cluster and to classify them by their types” (Foucault, 2006: 117). With the emergence
of modernity, symmetry has been quantified; it changed form and
mode. However, the quantitative approach is not an observer’s approach, but an approach with the power of decision-making and intervention, which is supported and verified by an institution.
Undoubtedly, in a process of entropy, erosion and dissolution
should be considered in such a way so as to reflect the natural outcome of overlapping and linear history. The reason is that this unifying factor blends the movement and symmetry of the eye in mechan-
A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
11
ical and rational harmony at the linear coordinates of motion and
time and, constructs a principled system. Recommending piecework
to encourage workers to complete tasks at a high rate of speed,
translating into greater efficiency and linking various elements of work
to time by using a chronometer (timer) was Taylor’s principled step,
which, by grasping it mentally, he applied without knowing that it
would become a method. Under the time-and-motion series of scientific management a task was first reduced to the most basic motions.
Then, the sequence of movements taken by the employee in performing those steps was carefully observed to detect and eliminate
redundant or wasteful motion via scientific management and analyses. Next, the precise time taken for each correct movement was
measured and finally, the best way was achieved by combining the
remaining ‘mental’ motions as well as the ‘standard’ task completion
by adding compulsory rest breaks. For example, Taylor did not count
merely his own steps while going and coming from work. While obsessively calculating his own steps per unit time, he also timed a naturally energetic workman who, while going and coming from work,
would walk at a speed of from three to four miles per hour, and not
infrequently trot home after a day's work (Taylor, 1997: 29). That is to
say, the basic reason for counting his steps was to calculate the
worker’s time of evasion, who came to work at less than average
speed; and to transfer this data to the time-and-motion studies or to
reveal the inefficiency of a worker, who did his best to go to work late.
Thus, the uniformitarian harmony, which was the connective in
the motion-and-time series, demonstrated the efficiency between the
requirements of the job and the worker’s skills and founded it on a rational basis (Fişek, 1979: 37). Frank B. Gilbreth adopted a similar approach with Taylor. Gilbreth, interested in Taylor’s principles, decided
to apply these principles to the art of bricklaying. He observed and
analyzed every motion of bricklayer masons. Thus, in renovating
bricklaying methods, he used his adjustable scaffold to keep his
workers level with the wall they built so as to eliminate the motion of
stooping; he arranged mortar and bricks to eliminate reaching; and
he simplified the labor processes so that a bricklayer could repetitiously grab a brick trowelful of mortar simultaneously, swivel, and
simultaneously deposit it on the furthest tier of bricks and the brick in
the next closest place. This example, which offers positive contributions to production, also bears the traces of an extremely detailed obsessive-compulsive analysis.
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The factory floor is reduced to a certain measurement of motion
and time. Under this measurement system, a discourse like ‘its size
is…’, ‘its length is…’, ‘its weight is… denotes the exclusion of the
phenomenon5 (manual handling of tasks on the factory floor) and inclusion of quantitative facts in the plurality. This mode of discourse,
which also renders modern medicine distinguishable, is an extensive
rational that transforms the question asked by physicians ‘what is
your problem?’ to the question ‘which part of your body is aching?” in
the 19th century (Foucault, 1975: 17). This situation turned hearing
patient’s story into a search for a ‘visible’ reality of a particular symptom. Then, evaluating from the perspective of management, Taylor’s
point of view changed. Taylor compiled ideas from his observations
and thoughts during his employment as a foreman at Midvale Steel
Company in Philadelphia in 1912 (Dale, 1999). This method of insight should be attributed importance (Davis - Filley, 1973: 28-29).
However, some manual tasks are divided into subgroups and create
hierarchies based on the factory floor. The measurability and countability of the ergonomy between hand and machine is the basic point
of scientific thought in management. The reason is that phenomenon
is replaced by measurement exercises.
When Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) started as an apprentice mechanist at a small machine-manufacturing workshop and
then became a foreman in the early 1870s, he experienced how observation was significant. Quantitative criteria for a given motion and
time constitutes the essence of this experience (Davis - Filley, 1973:
31). Naturally, this experience guided Taylor to become a quantitative
observer who was as good at perceiving the difficulty of motivating
workers to work and enthusing them. This reflects the assumption
that in capitalist countries, nineteen out of twenty workers believe that
a ‘slow rate of work (inefficiency, passivity and laziness) instead of a
‘fast rate of work (efficiency, energy and nimbleness) is for their own
benefit” (Taylor, 1947: 19). It will be helpful to give an example from
the literature. Taylor asked Schmidt, a pig iron worker, who he knew
he was paid $1.25 a day “Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?”. Although Schmidt said that he did not know what Taylor meant, Taylor
repeatedly asked him the same question in an aggressive manner.
Then Taylor asked Schmidt, “What I want to find out is whether you
want to earn $1.85 a day?”, He once more asked the same question
over and over again although Schmidt seemed to be more interested
5
Everything that can be perceived by the senses.
A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
13
in Taylor’s offer. The purpose of this dialogue, which appeared to be
highly rude and meaningless, even “pathological” in medical terms,
was to develop even a worker who is mentally slow to his highest state
of efficiency and prosperity and to make him handle pig iron at the
rate of 47 tons per day. Thus, Schmidt received 60 per cent higher
wages than were paid to other men who were not working on task
work. At the end of this study, Schmidt and other workers handled 47
tons per day and they earned 60% more than their usual wages (Taylor, 1997: 51).
As a matter of fact, an observer looking from outside, rather than
seeing Taylor as an ‘enemy of the worker’ or considering businesses
nothing but profit-seeking organizations, has to make an assessment
taking into consideration the genealogy of a capitalist country. Taylor’s following words reveal the focal point of his method and one of
the aspects of his personality that portrays him: “"When a naturally
energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of
the situation is unanswerable: Why should I work hard when that
mindless fellow gets the same pay that I do and does only half as
much work?" (Taylor, 1947: 31; Dale, 1999: 64).
The concept of “mindless fellow” used in the sentence given
above is in fact the key word of the sentence. Undoubtedly, the adjectives ‘stupid’ or ‘scatterbrained’ may also be used in place of mindless. However, Taylor, while describing the carelessness of work by
using the adjective ‘mindless’, refers to assembly line workers in a factory floor by laying emphasis on the masculine structure. Nevertheless, Taylor does not question merely the masculine mentality in a
factory floor, but also the interruption, which he perceived in the nature of masculinity after his faith in the uninterruptedness attributed
to work and labor throughout their history. In fact, recorded information verifies that ‘Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded
history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and
study’ (Drucker, 1994: 157). As Taylor conducted numerous studies
in workplaces requiring physical labor tasks, he became successful in
defining and examining the basic operations and arranging them in a
rational and balanced manner. Therefore, as Drucker (1994: 163)
emphasizes, although Taylor presented a perfect work analysis for
manual workers, he failed to consider its psychological dimension.
Another point is that Taylor disguises an ideological assumption under the cover of scientific analysis. More precisely, Taylor, by saying
‘lazy fellow’, offered an opportunity for a comparison with the ‘economic individual’ of the classical economy. Thus, he generated a
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passive and rational type of individual, who responded to the stimulus
of his personal interests, leading to the systematization of the factory
floor, where obedience is turned into an element of dictation that by
no means is opposed to in such a way so as to summarize Taylorism’s low trust, rule-based factory system (Fukuyama, 2000: 242).
When Taylor promised to reconcile labor and capital, he was
blamed of being a ‘charlatan’ by the masses of that period. This was a
real tragedy. Particularly, discourses that provoked the workers employed in Watertown Arsenal in 1912, which resulted in collective
strikes, indicated the dimension of fury (Montgomery, 1989: 251254). The conferences, seminars and similar activities conducted by
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which was
established in 1880, were organizations that made the steps towards
the scientification of management ‘visible’. The management science,
just like the clinical medicine, tended to read and to measure perceptions with the influence of engineering norms.
CONCLUSION
The reading of Taylor’s work reveals that he was somehow enslaved by deep passion and extremely detailed observations for the
sake of achieving efficiency. This deep passion was nourished by obsessions and compulsions underlying his obsessive behavior and created waves in his daily life and career. In Taylor, it is possible to observe an effort towards developing a control mechanism against the
pressure of his contradictory drives, the main problem of an obsessive personality. While reading Taylor, we frequently see the traces of
a meticulous and systematic personality structure in pursuit of perfection and his expressionist behavior reflects an extremely controlled
and normative profile. Taylor’s perceptions of problems concerning
efficiency, time-and-motion studies, which preyed on his mind and
caused him pain nourished his personality almost in the form of spiral
vicious cycles on the one hand, and resulted in inventions, mathematical measurements, tables and formulas that would increase production and profitability on the other hand. The relevant literature
makes reference to the existence of strong data pointing to the correlation of such a type of personality with social attitudes in the emergence of obsessive-compulsive behaviors (Öztürk, 1997: 278). It
should also be considered that the intellectual environment surrounding Taylor analyzed under the headings above and the attitudes prevailing society in his period also laid the foundations for his such behaviors. Nevertheless, it is also understood from the literature that de-
A Psychoanalytic View of the Scientific Management Approach:
A Taylor Reading
15
spite his obsessive-compulsive behavior, it is clear that Taylor never
broke from reality; his social cohesion and his ability of assessing reality did not deteriorate in general.
The acceptance of an understanding based on the goals of tasks
and the efficiency of workers by establishing a scientific and systematic discipline as objective constitutes a keystone for the principles of
scientific management (Aydın, 1977: 2). While serving as a foreman,
Taylor observed the state of assembly line workers in depth from a
quantitative perspective and he ensured the institutionalization of his
method step by step via his measurement studies. It is observed that
for the sake of a passionate purpose, the same thing is continuously
and persistently repeated in almost all his observations, discourses
and behaviors. Therefore, Taylor carried out his studies on work and
time-and-motion like “a person who fears that a thief will break into
his house and who therefore cannot sleep at night, repeatedly rechecking locks and bolts on doors and windows”. Even these repetitions alone recall the images of obsession and compulsion.
In summary, Taylor, who was the product of a period presided
over by modernity and rationality, aimed to establish a factory system
in the work place with the passion for ‘mechanic speed and repetition” (Turner, 1966: 431). Undoubtedly, it would be wrong to expect
Taylor, whose personality was molded by obsessions and compulsions, to give priority to the socio-psychological needs of workers. To
Taylor workers were always elements of production activity. Moreover,
the pressure imposed by the assembly line appears to be the basic
motive that pushed Taylor to work passionately like an implosive
mental energy. Therefore, Taylor’s disappointment with the fact that
he could not see the realization of his ideas and thoughts in his workers, his spiritual passion, compulsions, internalized internal pressures
internalized and the emergence of modernity should be regarded as
an impulsive ‘kuwe (will)’ that pushed him to study in an uninterrupted manner.
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