| As the most influential management model to emerge from industrializing America, Taylorism ("Scientific Management") was a source of inspiration and contention among businessmen, political leaders and intellectuals around the world. Originally articulated by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late nineteenth century, the philosophy and techniques of Taylorism formed the basis of modern managerial thought in both Europe and the United States. Scholars, however, have failed to appreciate the impact of Scientific Management in twentieth-century Japan. Stressing the cultural specificity of what is now considered "Japanese-style management," most observers have assumed that imported models like Taylorism were thwarted by Japan's singular heritage of social practice.;This work argues that Taylorism progressed further, remained relevant longer, and penetrated deeper in Japan than previous appraisals have acknowledged. Tracing Taylorite thought from its introduction in 1911, through the "efficiency movement" of the 1920s, Depression-era "industrial rationalization," wartime mobilization, the postwar drive for "productivity," and the quality control initiatives of "high-growth" Japan, this study suggests that Scientific Management was progressively embraced as the logical and natural model for Japanese industry. Moreover, as in America and Western Europe, Taylorism spread far beyond workshop methodologies to constitute an expansive ideology of management, an ideology which transcended the factory to structure debates over economic policy, social stabilization, industrial relations and bureaucratic authority.;In the end, extensive cross-fertilization by American ideas and a broad parallelism with Western practice characterized Japan's transwar experience of Taylorism. Nevertheless, Japanese managerial methods were not entirely derivative: in the particular context of Japan's twentieth-century political economy, the assumptions of Scientific Management were subtly reshaped. In seeking a "revised" form of Taylorism that combined mechanistic efficiency with respect for humanity, Japan's industrial managers experimented with a variety of institutional forms, rhetorical approaches and technical devices. While remaining consistent with Taylorite ideology, the Japanese practice of modern management ultimately traced a distinct trajectory of development.;In thus reconceiving the evolution of "Japanese-style management" as an ongoing interchange between imported models and domestic constraints, this work challenges widely held but simplistic notions of the origins of Japan's industrial management methods. |
