ABSTRACT
Businesses during the Medieval period were organized with one level of management, the owner, and usually two or three levels of craftsmen. Because most businesses were so small, owners worked closely with the employees. Everyone was involved in every step of the input, throughput, output continuum with the exception, in most cases, of bookkeeping. Joseph Wharton facilitated a major contribution to management theory by bringing one of the world’s first management consultants, Frederick Taylor, to Bethlehem Steel. Taylor’s improvements forced the workers to accommodate to rapid changes which they had not initiated. By so doing, these improvements “robbed the workers of the very things that gave meaning and significance to their work — their established routine, their personal relations with fellow workers, even the remnants of their tradition of craftsmanship. Supporters of scientific management, of the economic man theory, of Social Darwinism, of course, leapt to the attack, and with some justification.
