ABSTRACT
In recent years many scattered attempts have been made to apply physiology and psychology to economic processes. Business men by scientific observation and experiment have brought criticism to bear upon the traditional and empirical modes of organising and conducting businesses. The more or less handto-mouth methods which were possible in small businesses where the manager was owner, and could keep a close personal supervision of his employees and all their work, were found increasingly unsuitable to modern types of large capitalist business. It was necessary to devise regular methods for correlating the work of the different departments, and for enabling a single central purpose to operate by complex delegation through several grades of subordinate officials with automatic checks and registers. More accurate methods of book-keeping, especially of cost-taking, were devised; experiments were made in bonuses, profit-sharing, fines, pace-making and various modifications of the wage-systems applied to evoke more energy, skill, or care from the workers and officials; hours of labour and shift-systems were subjected to measured tests. Still more recently the detailed technology of manual and mental labour has been made material of physiological and psychological investigation. Scientific Management has become a conscious art. Business colleges in America and Germany give courses of instruction in this art, and a new profession has arisen of expert advisers who are called in as specialists to diagnose the deficiencies or wastes of industrial or financial power in particular businesses and to prescribe remedies.
