Taylorism and the quest for workspace efficiency

Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer and pioneer of Taylorism*—*otherwise known as Scientific Management. On a mission to make human labor more efficient, Taylor conducted extensive research into the interactions between workers and their tools. In 1911, he wrote “The Principles of Scientific Management” in which he asserted that systematic management is the solution to inefficiency. Although Taylorism was widely criticised for the way it reduced people to mere cogs in a machine, Taylor’s focus on optimizing the relationship between humans and their tools.

1900s (early)