Manufacturing Rationality The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution

by Shenhav, Yehouda

• ISBN13: 9780198296300
• ISBN10: 0198296304
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Management is a powerful mode of thought and code of conduct in the modern world, closely associated with the American way and a natural extension of economic progress. This is a book about the history of management and the origin of managerial rationality in the United States.

Author Biography

Yehouda Shenhav is Associate Professor of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Sociology from Stanford University (1985) and an M.Sc. degree from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology (1981). Shenhav taught at several universities in the United States, including Stanford University, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Iowa. He served as Head of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University between 1995 and 1998.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	viii
List of Tables	viii
Introduction	1	(15)
Prophets of Management: American Engineers between Industrial Growth and Labor Unrest	16	(29)
Engineering Rationality: `System Shall Replace Chaos'	45	(26)
Colonizing the Mind: The Translation of Systematization to the Management of Organizations	71	(31)
Contested Rationality: Disturbances, Controversies, and Opposition to Management Systems	102	(32)
Engineers, Labor Politics, and American Exceptionalism before 1900	134	(28)
Taming the Shrew: Systems and Labor Politics during the Progressive Period	162	(33)
Deux ex Machina: Concluding Remarks	195	(27)
Appendix: Description of the Engineering-Management Literature	212	(10)
References	222	(14)
Index	236