Publisher's Synopsis
The three books published by Urwick and Brech in the 1940s under the series title "The Making of Scientific Management" were the earliest works of their kind. They gave the first full history and analysis of the idea that the art of "people management" in industry could be turned into a science. Today, these books are regarded as classics in a field which still has only a small literature, yet they are hard to obtain. This reprinting of all three volumes by Thoemmes Press should be welcomed by everyone who is interested in industrial sociology and the development of British and American business practice.;The opening volume of the set, "Thirteen Pioneers", contains chapters on leading management theoreticians, from early figures such as Charles Babbage and Frederick Winslow Taylor, to later ones like B. Seebohm Rowntree and Mary Park Follett. There are portraits and bibliographies of each of the people profiled. Urwick and Brech's second volume, "Management in British Industry", includes discussion of the methods of control at the famous Bouton and Watt Foundry, and of Robert Owen's approach to personnel management. It also explores why there was particular resistance to scientific management in board rooms and shop floors in England, and shows how the resistance was overcome by the introduction of specialized personnel officers. The last book in the series (never reprinted until now) reports on "The Hawthorne Investigations", a study conducted by a Harvard research team at a plant in Illinois employing 60,000 people of 60 national origins. This telecommunications equipment factory provided a laboratory for what Urwick and Brech called "the most complete piece of controlled sociological research carried out in connection with the management of industry anywhere in the world".
