Preparedness of Experimental Psychology. — Experimental psychology has instruments of precision with which to measure and test the minds and bodies brought to it, and its leading exponents are so broadening the scope of its activities that it is ready and glad to plan for investigations.
Method of Selection Under Ultimate Management. — Under Ultimate Management, the minds of the workers, — and of the managers too, — will have been studied, and the results recorded from earliest childhood. This record, made by trained investigators, will enable vocational guidance directors to tell the child what he is fitted to be, and thus to help the schools and colleges to know how best to train him, that is to say, to provide what he will need to know to do his life work, and also those cultural studies that his vocational work may lack, and that may be required to build out his best development as an individual.
It is not always recognized that even the student who can afford to postpone his technical training until he has completed a general culture course, requires that his culture course be carefully planned. Not only must he choose those general courses that will serve as a foundation for his special study, and that will broaden and enrich his study, but also he must be provided with a counter-balance, — with interests that his special work might never arouse in him. Thus the field of Scientific Management can be narrowed to determining and preparing standard plans for standard specialized men, and selecting men to fill these places from competent applicants.
What part of the specialized training needed by the special work shall be given in schools and what in the industries themselves can be determined later. The "twin apprentice" plan offers one solution of the problem that has proved satisfactory in many places. The psychological study should determine
through which agency knowledge can best come at any particular stage of mental growth.
Effect on Workers of Such Selection. — As will be shown at greater length under "Incentives," Scientific Management aims in every way to encourage initiative. The outline here given as to how men must, ultimately, under Scientific Management, be selected serves to show that, far from being "made machines of," men are selected to reach that special place where their individuality can be recognized and rewarded to the greatest extent.
Selection Under Scientific Management To-day. — At the present day, the most that Scientific Management can do, in the average case, is to determine the type of men needed for any particular kind of work, and then to select that man who seems, from such observations as can be made, best to conform to the type. The accurate knowledge of the requirements of the work, and the knowledge of variables of the worker make even a cursory observation more rich in results than it would otherwise be. Even such an apparently obvious observation, as that the very fact that a man claims that he can do the work implies desire and will on his part to do it that may overcome many natural lacks, — even this is an advance in recognizing individuality.
Effect of This Selection. — The result of this scientific selection of the workman is not only better work, but also, and more important from the psychological side, the development of his individuality. It is not always recognized that the work itself is a great
educator, and that acute cleverness in the line of work to which he is fitted comes to the worker.
Individuality Developed by Separating Outputs. — Under Scientific Management the work of each man is arranged either so that his output shows up separately and on the individual records, or, if the Work is such that it seems best to do it in gangs, the output can often be so recorded that the individual's output can be computed from the records.