#managementtheory

Repost from @cornellphotoproject discussing our Frank and Lillian Gilbreth photograph collection! #KheelCenter #CornellRAD • Photography as a data gathering tool has been explored by numerous engineers and scientists. Frank and Lilian Gilbreth were industrial engineers known for their research in and advocacy of scientific management, an obsolete school of thought that nonetheless informed future industrial engineering and labor management developments. Along with Frederick Winslow Taylor, the Gilbreths are known for their work in time-motion study, a business efficiency technique that is still applied today. Photographs of the Gilbreths’ motion studies held at Cornell’s @kheelcenter document their efforts to find the “one best way” and most efficient manufacturing and workplace processes. The photos span from 1913 to 1917, highlighting four years of motion study experimentation, techniques, equipment and operations under analysis. Frank and Lilian affixed lights to the hands of workers performing operations, and using a long exposure, captured the path that the light took through the air, resulting in photographs that record motion. The Kheel Center’s Gilbreth collection includes photographs of the couple’s experiments and other materials pertaining to industrial engineering. “Chronocyclograph of gold champion- Francis Ouimet”, 1915. Gelatin silver print. Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917), 6126P, The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives in the ILR School at Cornell University. “2 cycles on drill press showing ‘HABIT’ positioning after transporting. Note the ‘hesitation’ before ‘grasping’”, 1915. Gelatin silver print. Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917), 6126P, The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives in the ILR School at Cornell University. “Chronocyclograph of Roger Howey champion golfer”, 1915. Gelatin silver print. Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917), 6126P, The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives in the ILR School at Cornell University. #managementtheory #scientificmanagement (at Cornell University ILR School) https://www.instagram.com/p/CMUjFk9HE3P/?igshid=vtrum467lqmt

"The similarities between medieval Christianity and the world of management theory may not be obvious, but seek and ye shall find. Management theorists sanctify capitalism in much the same way that clergymen of yore sanctified feudalism. Business schools are the cathedrals of capitalism. Consultants are its travelling friars. Just as the clergy in the Middle Ages spoke in Latin to give their words an air of authority, management theorists speak in mumbo-jumbo. [..] The most striking business trend today is not competition but consolidation. The years since 2008 have seen one of the biggest-ever bull markets in mergers and acquisitions, with an average of 30,000 deals a year worth 3% of GDP. [..] Technology is high on the list of industries that are concentrating. In the 1990s Silicon Valley was a playground for startups. It is now the fief of a handful of behemoths. [..] In America the rate of business creation has declined since the late 1970s. In some recent years more companies died than were born. [..] well over half of American households had motor cars just two decades after Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line in 1913. [..] A fourth wrong notion is that globalisation is both inevitable and irreversible—the product of technological forces that mere human decisions cannot reverse [..] In 1880-1914 the world was in many ways just as globalised as it is today; it still fell victim to war and autarky. [..] The backlash against globalisation points to a glaring underlying weakness of management theory: its naivety about politics. Modern management orthodoxies were forged in the era from 1980 to 2008, when liberalism was in the ascendant and middle-of-the-road politicians were willing to sign up to global rules. But today’s world is very different. Productivity growth is dismal in the West, companies are fusing at a furious rate, entrepreneurialism is stuttering, populism is on the rise and the old rules of business are being torn up. Management theorists need to examine their church with the same clear-eyed iconoclasm with which Luther examined his."