The Taylor Society was created in 1912 at the New York Athletic Club by followers of Frederick W. Taylor, including Frank Gilbreth, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, Robert Kent, Conrad Lauer (for Charles Day), and Wilfred Lewis.
Contents
- Key figures and membership
- Presidents of the Society
- Activities
- Bulletin of the Taylor Society
- Engagement with the Bedaux System
- Publications
- References
In 1925 the Society declared that it 'welcomes to membership all who have become convinced that "the business men of tomorrow must have the engineer-mind".'
The Taylor Society merged with the Society of Industrial Engineers in 1936, forming the Society for Advancement of Management.
Key figures and membership
At the entry of the United States into World War One in 1917, the Society's membership numbered around 100.
Prominent interwar members included Lyndall Urwick, William Leffingwell, Harlow S. Person, Lillian Gilbreth, Mary van Kleeck, Henry Gantt, Sanford E. Thompson, Richard Feiss, Hans Renold, Henri Le Châtelier and Oliver Sheldon.
From 1919, the Society's permanent secretary was Harlow S. Person.
By 1925 the expanded Taylor Society had 800 members.
Presidents of the Society
The Society's president from 1919-1921 was Henry S. Dennison, owner of Dennison Manufacturing Co. Paper Box Factory. In 1927 its President was Morris Llewellyn Cooke and in 1932 Sanford E. Thompson.
Activities
The Taylor Society received early support from the British Fabian Society.
The Society was largely responsible for the research and publication of the first biography of F.W. Taylor by Frank Copley, published in 1923.
The Taylor Society were involved in the Committee on American Participation to the Prague International Management Congress in 1924. Frank Gilbreth died prior to the conference and his wife, Dr. Lillian Gilbreth, also a Taylor Society member, appeared in his place. This substitution was later made famous by the movie Cheaper by the Dozen (1950).
It had close connections with the Geneva-based International Management Institute (IMI) and International Labour Organization (ILO). From 1928 until its closure in 1933, the IMI was headed by Taylor Society member Lyndall Urwick.
Bulletin of the Taylor Society
The Society's regular periodical was the Bulletin of the Taylor Society, full editions of which can be found in the F.W. Taylor archive at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Its successor publication was the Bulletin of the Society of the Advancement of Management.
A 1914-1934 index of articles from the Bulletin, and many Bulletin articles, is in Donald Del Mar and Rodger D. Collons, Classics in Scientific Management: a Book of Readings (University of Alabama Press, c.1976).
Engagement with the Bedaux System
Initially, the Taylor Society appears to have been unperturbed by the Bedaux System and its Bedaux Unit: in 1927 a discussion of the Bedaux Point System appeared in the Society's Bulletin without additional comment.
However, its approach to Bedaux became more antagonistic. In 1929, the Society supported Southern textile workers in their strike against the Bedaux System, which textile workers believed was 'even worse than the old "Taylor Stop-Watch System"'.
Soon after the dissolution of the Taylor Society, its long-standing secretary Harlow S. Person responded to the Charles Bedaux & Duke of Windsor fiasco by stating that the Taylor System, which required much management restructuring, and the Bedaux System, which could be applied 'as is', were 'poles apart'.