“After a workman has had the price per piece of the work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result of his having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely to entirely lose sight of his employer's side of the case and to become imbued with a grim determination to have no more cuts if soldiering can prevent it.”

— Frederick Winslow Taylor

Source: Shop Management, 1903, p. 1352.

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Frederick Winslow Taylor 22

American mechanical engineer and tennis player 1856–1915

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“The differential rate system of piece-work consists briefly in offering two different rates for the same job: a high price per piece, in case the work is finished in the shortest time possible and in perfect condition, and a low price, if it takes a longer time to do the job, or if there are any imperfections in the work. (The high rate should be such that the workman can earn more per day than is usually paid in similar establishments.) This is directly the opposite of the ordinary plan of piece-work, in which the wages of the workmen are reduced when they increase their productivity.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: "A Piece-rate System," 1896, p. 90; Cited in: Morgen Witzel, Fifty key figures in management. Routledge, 2004. p. 250.

“We find that the manager, particularly at senior levels, is overburdened with work. With the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their problems, he is destined to become more so. He is driven to brevity, fragmentation, and superficiality in his tasks, yet he cannot easily delegate them because of the nature of his information. And he can do little to increase his available time or significantly enhance his power to manage. Furthermore, he is driven to focus on that which is current and tangible in his work, even though the complex problems facing many organizations call for reflection and a far-sighted perspective.”

Henry Mintzberg (1939) Canadian busines theorist

Source: The structuring of organizations (1979), p. 173

“A warrior cannot lower his head - otherwise he loses sight of the horizon of his dreams.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

“The greater part of the systematic soldiering, however, is done by the men with the deliberate object of keeping their employers ignorant of how fast work can be done.
So universal is soldiering for this purpose, or under any of the ordinary systems of compensating labor, who does not devote a considerable part of his time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Shop Management, 1903, p. 1351.

“A scientist’s work is determined by two things: his interests and those of his time. Everything has led to this.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

“If a man divides the whole of his work into two branches and delegates his responsibility, freely and properly, to two experienced heads of branches he will not have enough to do. The occasions when they would have to refer to him would be too few to keep him fully occupied. If he delegates to three heads he will be kept fairly busy whilst six heads of branches will give most bosses a ten hours' day. Those data are the results of centuries of the experiences of soldiers.”

Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton (1853–1947) British Army general

Sir Ian Hamilton, The Soul and Body of an Army https://archive.org/details/soulbodyofarmy00hamiiala, 1921

“The fellow is whimsical and varys his prices every day; and he that has a mind to have any of his works must not seem too fond of it, for he' be ye worse treated for it both in price and painting too.”

Owen Swiny (1676–1754) Irish theatre manager

quoted by George A. Simonson in [Antonio Canal, The Burlington Magazine, January 1922, 40, 226, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924015109949;view=1up;seq=49, 36–41] (quote from pp. 39–40, taken from a letter by Owen Swiny to the 2nd Duke of Richmond, concerning Canaletto)

“The doctor begins to lose freedom.... First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren’t equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go.... All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine (1961 LP)
1960s

“His answer to every problem, every setback was “I will work harder!” —which he had adopted as his personal motto.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II.

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