ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 discusses scientific management and its implications for how we look at the relationship between work and rules even today. The approach was labeled and exemplified by Frederick Taylor and the Gilbreths, who applied a scientific method to determine the most efficient way to perform a specific task. Workers needed to comply with the one best way to do the task in order to maximize efficiency (and safety). Taylorism accelerated and solidified the division between those who plan, manage, and supervise the work, and those who execute it. Thinking and problem-solving was heavily concentrated in the former, while the latter merely needed to do what they were instructed.It lies at the basis of the belief that control over workers and operators is possible through better compliance with procedures; through better hierarchical order and the imposition of rules and obedience.Taylor’s ideas have left deep traces in our thinking about the safety of work: workers need to be told what to do. They need to be supervised and monitored, and their work has to be specified in great detail. Autonomy and initiative are undesirable.Worker departures from the one best method can be seen as a ‘violation,’ which requires sanctions or reminders, or the rewriting of the rule (but that shouldnot be done by the worker). They can also be seen as local, adaptive resilience necessary to close the gap between how work is imagined and how it actually gets done. However, adherence to rules can indeed make it impossible to get the work done, lead to blindness to new situations and the squashing of innovation, resentment at the loss of freedom and discretion, and the growth of bureaucratic and supervisory control to impose compliance.
