The efficiency movement was a major movement in the United States, Britain and other industrial nations in the early 20th century that sought to identify and eliminate waste in all areas of the economy and society, and to develop and implement best practices.Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (2000) The concept covered mechanical, economic, social, and personal improvement.Samuel Haber, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (1964) The quest for efficiency promised effective, dynamic management rewarded by growth.Jennifer K. Alexander, The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (2008)
As a result of the influence of an early proponent, it is more often known as Taylorism.
United States
The efficiency movement played a central role in the Progressive Era in the United States, where it flourished 1890–1932.Haber (1964) Adherents argued that all aspects of the economy, society and government were riddled with waste and inefficiency. Everything would be better if experts identified the problems and fixed them. The result was strong support for building research universities and schools of business and engineering, municipal research agencies, as well as reform of hospitals and medical schools, and the practice of farming. 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. Schools of business administration set up management programs oriented toward efficiency.Stuart Morris, "The Wisconsin Idea and Business Progressivism," Journal of American Studies, April 1970, Vol. 4#1 pp. 39–60
Municipal and state efficiency Many cities set up "efficiency bureaus" to identify waste and apply the best practices. For example, Chicago created an Efficiency Division (1910–1916) within the city government's Civil Service Commission, and private citizens organized the Chicago Bureau of Public Efficiency (1910–1932). The former pioneered the study of "personal efficiency," measuring employees' performance through new scientific merit systems and efficiency movement Mordecai Lee, Bureaus of Efficiency: Reforming Local Government in the Progressive Era, (Marquette University Press, 2008)
State governments were active as well. For example, Massachusetts set up its "Commission on Economy and Efficiency" in 1912. It made hundreds of recommendations.Commission on Economy and Efficiency, Annual report of the Commission on Economy and Efficiency (Boston, 1913), p 76 online
Philanthropy Leading philanthropists such as Andrew CarnegieAbigail A. Van Slyck, Free to All: Carnegie Libraries & American Culture, 1890–1920 (1998) p. 1 and John D. Rockefeller actively promoted the efficiency movement. In his many philanthropic pursuits, Rockefeller believed in supporting efficiency. He said
To help an inefficient, ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste ... it is highly probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational projects to have built up a national system of higher education adequate to our needs, if the money had been properly directed to that end.John D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1933)
Conservation The conservation movement regarding national resources came to prominence during the Progressive Era. According to historian Samuel P. Hays, the conservation movement was based on the "gospel of the efficiency".Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement 1890–1920 (1959).
The Massachusetts Commission on Economy and Efficiency reflected the new concern with conservation. It said in 1912:
President Roosevelt was the nation's foremost conservationist, putting the issue high on the national agenda by emphasizing the need to eliminate wasteful uses of limited natural resources. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt was deeply committed to conserving natural resources, and is considered to be the nation's first conservation President.W. Todd Benson, President Theodore Roosevelt's Conservation Legacy (2003)
In 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty".
In contrast, environmentalist John Muir promulgated a very different view of conservation, rejecting the efficiency motivation. Muir instead preached that nature was sacred and humans are intruders who should look but not develop. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests.Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (3rd ed. 1982), pp. 122–40 While Muir wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (1947) p. 32.
National politics In U.S. national politics, the most prominent figure was Herbert Hoover, a trained engineer who played down politics and believed dispassionate, nonpolitical experts could solve the nation's great problems, such as ending poverty.William J. Barber, From new era to New Deal: Herbert Hoover, the economists, and American economic policy, 1921–1933 (1989) p. 5
After 1929, Democrats blamed the Great Depression on Hoover and helped to somewhat discredit the movement.
Antitrust Boston lawyer Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) argued bigness conflicted with efficiency and added a new political dimension to the Efficiency Movement. 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. He coordinated the publication of a series of articles (Competition Kills, Efficiency and the One-Price Article, and How Europe deals with the one-price goods), which were also distributed by the lobbying group American Fair Trade League to legislators, Supreme Court justices, governors, and twenty national magazines. For his works, he was asked to speak before a congressional committee considering the price-fixing bill he drafted. Here, he stated that "big business is not more efficient than little business" and that "it is a mistake to suppose that the department stores can do business cheaper than the little dealer." Brandeis ideas on which business is most efficient conflicted with Croly's positions, which favored efficiency driven by a kind of consolidation gained through large-scale economic operations.
As early as 1895 Brandeis had warned of the harm that giant corporations could do to competitors, customers, and their own workers. The growth of industrialization was creating mammoth companies which he felt threatened the well-being of millions of Americans.Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: a life (2009) pp. 300–26 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. How else can we hope to attain our social ideals?"Louis Brandeis, The curse of bigness: miscellaneous papers of Louis D. Brandeis edited by Osmond Kessler Fraenkel and Clarence Martin Lewis, (1965) p. 51 He also argued against an appeal to Congress by the state-regulated railroad industry in 1910 seeking an increase in rates. 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.
Bedaux system
The Bedaux system, developed by Franco-American management consultant Charles Bedaux (1886–1944) built on the work of F. W. Taylor and Charles E. Knoeppel.Edward Francis Leopold Brech, Productivity in Perspective, 1914-1974 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002).Michael R. Weatherburn, 'Scientific Management at Work: the Bedaux System, Management Consulting, and Worker Efficiency in British Industry, 1914-48' (Imperial College PhD thesis, 2014).
Its distinctive advancement beyond these earlier thinkers was the Bedaux Unit or B, a universal measure for all manual work.Craig R. Littler, Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies: a Comparative Study of the Transformation of Work Organization in Britain, Japan and the USA (London: Heinemann, 1982) entry on Google Books
The Bedaux System was influential in the United States in the 1920s and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, especially in Britain.Steven Kreis, 'Charles E. Bedaux' in American National Biography onlineSteven Kreis, 'The Diffusion of Scientific Management: the Bedaux Company in America and Britain, 1926-1945' in A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management Since Taylor (1992)
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.Patricia Tisdall, Agents of Change: The Development and Practice of Management Consultancy (London: Heinemann, 1982).Matthias Kipping, 'Consultancies, Institutions and the Diffusion of Taylorism in Britain, Germany and France, 1920s to 1950s', Business History (1997) PDF from Taylor & Francis onlineMichael Ferguson, The Rise of Management Consulting in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)'Christopher D. McKenna, The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: CUP, 2010). Cambridge University Press
Relation to other movements Later movements had echoes of the Efficiency Movement and were more directly inspired by Taylor and Taylorism. Technocracy, for instance, and others flourished in the 1930s and 1940s.
Postmodern opponents of nuclear energy in the 1970s broadened their attack to try to discredit movements that saw salvation for human society in technical expertise alone, or which held that scientists or engineers had any special expertise to offer in the political realm.
Coming into usage in 1990, the Western term lean manufacturing (lean enterprise, lean production, or simply "lean") refers to a business idea that considered the expenditure of resources for anything other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Today the Lean concept is broadening to include a greater range of strategic goals, not just cost-cutting and efficiency.
Britain In engineering, the concept of efficiency was developed in Britain in the mid-18th century by John Smeaton (1724–1792). Called the "father of civil engineering", he studied water wheels and steam engines.Alexander (2008) ch. 1 In the late 19th century there was much talk about improving the efficiency of the administration and economic performance of the British Empire.Arnold White, Efficiency and Empire (1901).