Scientific management

[[Taylorism]].

Taylor and his team promised to rationalize manufacture, rendering it more efficient and productive, by determining the “one best way” for every aspect of the work process

– [[Breaking Things at Work]]

Scientific management, for all its pretensions, was less about determining ideal working methods and more about shattering this tremendous source of worker power.

– [[Breaking Things at Work]]

Scientific management was, then, less a science of efficiency and more a political program for reshaping the worker as a pliant subject—what Taylor himself called “a complete mental revolution on the part of the workingmen … toward their work, toward their fellow men, and toward their employers.”

– [[Breaking Things at Work]]