Joan Woodward: Productivity

Joan Woodward was British sociologist. Explore interesting quotes on productivity.

Joan Woodward: 14 quotes1 like

“Production systems which are technologically the most advanced are also the least adaptable and work to the longest time scale of decision making. These are the process industries (chemical plants, oil refineries and so on) in which vast resources are invested in the creation of a closely programmed and tightly controlled process which will continue to perform the same task over a very long period.”

Joan Woodward (1965, 1970), as cited in: Romiszowski, A. J. (2016). Designing Instructional Systems: Decision Making in Course Planning ..., p. 13

“Those responsible for marketing had to sell, not a product, but the idea that their firm was able to produce what the customer required. The product was developed after the order had been secured, the design being, in many cases, modified to suit the requirements of the customer. In mass production firms, the sequence is quite different: product development came first, then production, and finally marketing.”

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 23

“A breakdown of management into its basic functions — development, production and marketing — revealed that the character of the functions, their chronological sequence, the closeness with which they had to be integrated and their relative importance to the success and survival of the business, all depended upon the system of techniques in the firm concerned.”

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 21-22

“As technology advances the entire concept of authority in industry may have to change. In process firms the relationships between superior and subordinate was much more like that between a travel agent and his clients than that between a foreman and operators in mass production. The process foreman's job was to arrange things within limits, set by the plant, which both he and the operators accepted.”

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 30