Speaker
Arlie Belliveau
Title
Negotiating Scientific and Industrial Management: The Micromotion Films of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, 1912-1924
Abstract
Historians do not reflect kindly upon Scientific Management (SM), and perhaps rightfully so. Labor unions objected to it, some interpret facets like efficiency as Nazism, and the whole field is often conflated with Taylorism. Traditional histories problematically oversimplify SM and its relationship to supporting and competing theories. Psychology’s Industrial Management (IM) and sociology’s Hawthorne Effect are reported to have cleanly replaced the engineer’s dehumanizing SM. While all three approaches negotiated the study of workers, a reflexive critical history complicates disciplinary boundaries. Progressive Era engineers, psychologists, and managers spoke very different languages; and, while previous histories report successful contributions from each field, important cross talk between disciplines has been overlooked. The Micromotion films of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth offered these disciplines a common silent language with which to translate and moderate SM through a psychological lens. Replacing stopwatch technology with motion picture cameras maneuvered SM away from Taylorism’s stigmatized timed actions toward efficient motion study that literally brought the worker’s fatigue, motivation, and expertise back to the forefront. The films addressed the critique of dehumanization while maintaining the central goals of SM, and reflexively altering the researchers’ conceptions of workers. They also allowed the Gilbreths to sell their SM/IM hybrid to psychologists, engineers, managers, and workers, regardless of its actual utility. This untold story of the film artifacts opens up a new perspective from which to consider the role of instrumentation in knowledge production.
Directions
Thomas Teo's