Scientific Management cannot hope to furnish psychology with either data or methods of measurement. It can and does, however, open a new field for study to experimental psychology, and shows itself willing to furnish the actual working difficulties or problems, to do the preliminary investigation, and to utilize results as fast as they can be obtained.
Psychologists Appreciate Scientific Management. — The appreciation which psychologists have shown of work done by Scientific Management must be not only a matter of gratification, but of inspiration to all workers in Scientific Management.
So, also, must the new divisions of the Index to the Psychological Review relating to Activity and Fatigue, and the work being so extensively done in these lines by French, German, Italian and other nations, as well as by English and American psychologists.
Measurement Important in Management. — The study of individuality and of functionalization have made plain the necessity of measurement for successful management. Measurement furnishes the means for obtaining that accurate knowledge upon which the science of management rests, as do all sciences — exact and inexact.[5] Through measurement, methods
of less waste are determined, standards are made possible, and management becomes a science, as it derives standards, and progressively makes and improves them, and the comparisons from them, accurate.
Problem of Measurement in Management — One of the important problems of measurement in management is determining how many hours should constitute the working day in each different kind of work and at what gait the men can work for greatest output and continuously thrive. The solution of this problem involves the study of the men, the work, and the methods, which study must become more and more specialized; but the underlying aim is to determine standards and individual capacity as exactly as is possible.[6]
Capacity. — There are at least four views of a worker's capacity.
1. What he thinks his capacity is.
2. What his associates think his capacity is.
3. What those over him think his capacity is.