With Special Guests Stephen Cummings and Todd Bridgman
What do the terms “Taylorism” or “scientific management” bring to mind? To many they conjure settings where managers push employees to their limits and devolve more effort to numbers on a spreadsheet than to relations at work. But as we have discussed in several previous episodes, the original intentions of <strong>Frederic Taylor</strong> and others were better than their reputation. Their explicit goal was to make work both more efficient and satisfying through systematic and empirical analysis.
Louis Brandeis, as we discuss in this episode, was the actual originator of the term scientific management. A graduate of Harvard Law School in 1877, he was a champion of work environments that conserved effort and made work life more predictable, reducing worker stress. He also advocated for a more altruistic and professionalized form of business leadership that served both the needs of customers or clients and those of the workers under their supervision. This view of management echoes some other thinkers previously discussed in the podcast such as Mary Parker Follett or Charles Clinton Spaulding.
The focus of this episode is Brandeis’ collection of lectures entitled “Business – A Profession.” The volume illustrates the human and financial potential of his professed forms of management where profit would not be the only measure of a business’ success. Joining us are Stephen Cummings and Todd Bridgman, both of the University of Wellington in New Zealand, who recently published a book that presents Brandeis’ vision and works and explains why they ultimately did not take hold in the management community. While Brandeis was able to push his views through the judicial process as a US Supreme Court justice, he did not have much influence over the direction management headed in the 20th century. Yet, in a time in which the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the social fault lines and dissatisfaction over work, we ask ourselves: Is it time to reintroduce Brandeis’ vision?
Read with us:
Brandeis, L. (1914). Business – A Profession. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Available through the University of Louisville here: https://louisville.edu/law/library/special-collections/the-louis-d.-brandeis-collection/business-a-profession-by-louis-d.-brandeis
- We read the following speeches — #1. “Business — A Profession,” #5. “Efficiency by Consent,” #6. “The Road to Social Efficiency,” #20. “The Opportunity in the Law,” and #21. “The Living Law.”
To Learn More:
Brandeis, L. (1914). Other people’s money and how the bankers use it. New York: Stokes.
Bridgman, T., & Cummings, S. (2020). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Management Theory. Sage.
Cummings, S. & Bridgman, T. (2021). The past, present and future of sustainable management: From the conservation movement to climate change. Palgrave-Macmillan.
Cummings, S. & Bridgman, T. (2021, November 15). The progressive roots of management science. MIT Sloan Management Review Online. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-progressive-roots-of-management-science/
McLaren, P. G., Bridgman, T., Cummings, S., Lubinski, C., O’Connor, E., Spender, J. C., & Durepos, G. (2021). From the editors—New times, New histories of the Business School. Academy of Management Learning & Education 20(3), 293-299.
Also see Stephen Cummings and Todd Bridgman’s YouTube channel, “A New History of Management,” including clips on Brandeis and The Past, Present, and Future of Sustainable Management, available at
https://www.youtube.com/c/anewhistoryofmanagement
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:
Episode 1. Principles of Scientific Management — F. W. Taylor’s One Best Way
Episode 5. The Law of the Situation — Mary Parker Follett
Episode 56. Cooperative Advantage — Charles Clifton Spaulding
Episode 67. Professions & Professionalism — Andrew Abbott
Title Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Picture of the original Filene’s Department Store (1980), available in public domain through the U.S. Library of Congress.
