ABSTRACT
The field of management has long been marked by a conflict between two competing views of professional knowledge. On the first view, the manager is a technician whose practice con sists in applying to the everyday problems of his organization the principles and methods derived from management science. On the second, the manager is a craftsman, a practitioner of
The idea of management science, and the complementary idea of the manager as a technician, has been carried by a social movement which has spread out from its center in the United States to encompass the whole of the industrialized world. The origins of this movement are difficult to identify, but a critically important milestone in its development was the work of Fred erick Taylor who, in the 1920s, conceived of management as a form of human engineering based on a science of work.1 While Taylor may not have invented these ideas, he was cer tainly the first to embody them in a practice of industrial man agement and consultation, and he popularized them in a way that has had enormous influence in industry, in business, and in the administration of public agencies.
