Systems a Valuable Assistance in Transition to Scientific Management. — One great problem which those introducing Scientific Management have to face is exactly how to make the worker understand the relation of the new type of management to the old. The usefulness of the written system in use in most places where it is planned to introduce Scientific Management as a means of making the worker
understand the transition has, perhaps, not been appreciated.
The development of the standard from the system is easy to explain. This being done, all parts of Scientific Management are so closely related that their interrelation can be readily made apparent.
It is the worker's right as well as privilege to understand the management under which he works, and he only truly coöperates, with his will and judgment as well as with his hands, when he feels that his mind is a part of the directing mind.
Standardization Under Scientific Management Eliminates Waste Scientifically. — Under Scientific Management the elimination of waste by the use of standards becomes a science. Standards are no longer based on opinions, as under Traditional Management, but are based upon scientific investigation of the elements of experience.
As James says, in the "Psychology, Briefer Course," page 156, paragraph 4, — "It is obvious and palpable that our state of mind is never precisely the same. Every thought we have of a given fact is, strictly speaking, unique and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other thoughts of the same facts. When the identical fact recurs we must think of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different angle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it last appeared."
The Standard the Result of Measurement. — It is obvious, therefore, that a scientifically derived standard can never be the outcome of an opinion. Whenever the opinion returns, the different thoughts
with which it would be accompanied would so color it as to change it, and the standard with it. It is obvious, therefore, that a standard must be the result of definite mathematical and other measured proof, and not of an opinion, and that the standard must be in such physical shape that the subject-matter will always be clearly defined, otherwise the ultimate losses resulting from dependent sequences of the standard schedule and time-tables would be enormous.
Successful Standardization Demands Complete Conformity to Standards. — The laws for establishment of standards; the laws of achieving them; the laws for preventing deviations from those paths that will permit of their achievement; the dependent sequences absolutely necessary to perform the complete whole; these have been worked out and given to the world by Dr. Taylor, who recognized, as James has said, page 157, that, "a permanently existing 'Idea' which makes its appearance before the footlights of consciousness at periodic intervals, is as mythological an entity as the Jack of Spades." The entire organization from the highest to the lowest must conform to these standards. It is out of the question to permit the deviations resulting from individual initiative. Individual initiative is quite as objectionable in obtaining the best results, — that is, high wages and low production cost, — as service would be on a railroad if each locomotive engineer were his own train despatcher, determining at what time and to what place he would go.
Initiative Provided For. — There is a distinct place