Efficiency movement
[5] Perhaps the best known leaders were engineers Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915), who used a stopwatch to identify the smallest inefficiencies, and Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr. (1868–1924) who proclaimed there was always "one best way" to fix a problem.
Leaders including Herbert Croly, Charles R. van Hise, and Richard Ely sought to improve governmental performance by training experts in public service comparable to those in Germany, notably at the Universities of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
…This expenditure for the protection of fish and game is clearly a wise economy, tending to prevent the annihilation of birds and other animals valuable to mankind which might otherwise become extinct.
It may be said that Massachusetts and her sister States have suffered irreparable loss by carelessly allowing, for generations past, indiscriminate waste of animal life.
For instance, while fighting against legalized price fixing, Brandeis launched an effort to influence congressional policymaking with the help of his friend Norman Hapgood, who was then the editor of Harper's Weekly.
[18] In The Curse of Bigness he argued, "Efficiency means greater production with less effort and at less cost, through the elimination of unnecessary waste, human and material.
Brandeis explained that instead of passing along increased costs to the consumer, the railroads should pursue efficiency by reducing their overhead and streamlining their operations, initiatives that were unprecedented during the time.
[24][25] From the 1920s to the 1950s there were about one thousand companies in 21 countries worldwide that were run on the Bedaux System, including giants such as Swift's, Eastman Kodak, B.F. Goodrich, DuPont, Fiat, ICI and General Electric.
[33] In the early 20th century, "National Efficiency" became a powerful demand — a movement supported by prominent figures across the political spectrum who disparaged sentimental humanitarianism and identified waste as a mistake that could no longer be tolerated.
Churchill in 1908 formed an alliance with the Webbs, announcing the goal of a "National Minimum", covering hours, working conditions, and wages – it was a safety net below which the individual would not be allowed to fall.
Higher education was an important initiative, typified by the growth of the London School of Economics, and the foundation of Imperial College.
The most prominent new leaders included Liberals Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, whose influence brought a bundle of reform legislation that introduced the welfare state to Britain.
Much of the popular and elite support for National Efficiency grew out of concern for Britain's military position, especially with respect to Germany.
The Royal Navy underwent a dramatic modernization, most famously in the introduction of the Dreadnought, which in 1906 revolutionized naval warfare overnight.
Continental AG, the leading rubber company in Germany, adopted the system and profited heavily from it, thus surviving the Great Depression relatively undamaged and improving its competitive capabilities.
As ideology and practice, rationalization challenged and transformed not only machines, factories, and vast business enterprises but also the lives of middle-class and working-class Germans.
Fascinated by Taylorism and Fordism, Gastev has led a popular movement for the “scientific organization of labor” (Nauchnaya Organizatsiya Truda, or NOT).
As with the concept of 'Organoprojection' (1919) by Pavel Florensky, underlying Nikolai Bernstein and Gastev's approach, lay a powerful man-machine metaphor.
W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) brought the efficiency movement to Japan after World War II, teaching top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets), especially using statistical methods.
