ABSTRACT
Joan Woodward formulated a second project, on the hypothesis that in batch production the control system would be the intervening variable making prediction possible. For control purposes, costs were divided into wages costs, repairs and maintenance, losses and depreciation, and fuel, water, and power costs. In every facet of costs, the department manager was thus presented with a target in the same way that he was given targets for quantity and quality. Every manager and senior manager had a bookshelf full of manuals, describing and prescribing the different aspects of his job. The expressed objective, "that any senior manager walking through the department at a quarter to eleven should know exactly which bit of the floor the clean-up man is supposed to be cleaning", seems to show anxiety rather than rationality. Senior management would eventually have to intervene, or the operators be given some additional training.
