第98章 SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT(6)

In this way a psychological standard of fitness was attained, such as would be available for selecting applicants for the motor service.So in ship-service, where everything may turn upon prompt and accurate handling of a sudden complicated emergency.Ship officers are found whom a sudden danger paralyses, or keeps vacillating until it is too late.Others, feeling only the urgency of prompt action, jump to a too hasty decision.The desirable type is 'the men who in the unexpected situation quickly review the totality of the factors in their relative importance and with almost instinctive certainty immediately come to the same decision to which they would have arrived after great thought.'15 Here again it was possible to conduct a series of experiments, testing the mental processes and measuring the degrees of rapidity, correctness, and constancy.

Other tests can be applied for the qualities desirable in such work as the telephone service, in which memory, attention, intelligence, exactitude, and rapidity are involved.Sometimes the mental qualities can be separately tested, sometimes their inter-relation is such as to require a simultaneous testing.

§6.It is equally obvious that a good deal can be done to increase the productive efficiency of those who have been selected for any work, by methods of teaching that involve psychological guidance.In learning such processes as typewriting and telegraphy, for instance, much can be achieved by technical adjustments of movement such as we have already described, and by considered adaptations of machine and materials to suit human faculties.

But methods of improving memory and securing a more regular and accurate attention, of increasing, the rapidity of repeated actions with the least nervous wear and tear, of educating delicacy of touch and sight for specific purposes, the utilisation of rhythmic tendencies, the proper balance of intervals of work and rest, the influence of imitation and social cooperation in gang labour, and finally the effects of different quantities and modes of remuneration in evoking and maintaining the various factors of efficiency -- all such considerations offer a fruitful field for psychological investigation.

Hence psychology, it is urged, can contribute greatly to productivity by finding the best man for each job and adjusting his mental equipment to conditions of work which in their turn can be modified to fit his powers.

But, regarding production as designed to satisfy human demands, psychology can be utilised also to assist in getting the right quantities and qualities of goods to the right persons.Commercial organisation exists for this purpose.It does study the wants and demands of consumers.But it might do so with more 'science'.Professor Münsterberg makes an exceedingly interesting study of the arts of advertising and of selling over the counter, to illustrate how much might be done by substituting experimental laws for instinctive and traditional practices.One comment upon this application of his science, however, is called for.Though the social-economic view would oblige the psychologist to approach the subject specifically from the standpoint of the consumer and the psychology of satisfactions in his standard of comfort, Professor Münsterberg virtually confines himself to the psychology of commerce and of marketing regarded from the standpoint of the manufacturer or merchant.

Thus psychology can be made to devise and prescribe economies of human power in industry, which, like the technical improvements of Scientific Management, would seem to increase greatly the productivity of industry, turning out larger quantities, and perhaps better qualities, of goods, with the same amount of labour.

§7.What would be the human valuation of these processes of scientific economy? Assuming that this economy fructifies in an enlarging volume of wealth, it would appear to be accompanied by an increase of welfare, unless the human costs of labour were correspondingly increased, or the distribution of the larger volume of wealth were made so much more unequal that it furnished a smaller volume of utility in its consumption.Neither of these qualifications is, indeed, excluded by the terms of the economy.For each stroke of Scientific Management is primarily justified as a profit-making device, advantageous to the capitalist-employer in a particular business.It enables him to turn out goods at a lower labour-cost and so to make a larger margin of profit on their sale.If we suppose this economy to be of wide or general adoption, it would be equivalent to an all-round increase in the technical efficiency of labour.Unless we suppose the aggregate quantity of production to be a fixed quantity (a supposition not in accordance with experience), it would seem to follow that at least as large a quantity of this more efficient labour would be employed in turning out an increased volume of goods.In that event, it would be possible that the workers, as well as the capitalist employers, should enjoy a higher rate of remuneration.Whether they would do so, however, and to what extent, seems quite uncertain.For though the payment of a considerable bonus in addition to current wages was necessary in the experiments described by Mr.Taylor, in order to evoke from a particular group of workers submission to the new terms of work, it does not follow that, once adopted by all employers in the trade, the method would entail or even permit a continuance of this higher pay.For the pioneer firm admittedly pays the bonus partly in order to overcome the pains and scruples of workers subjected to a speeding-up system.If it did not pay a bonus, the workers would quit this employment for some other that was open to them.But if no other employment upon the old terms were open, this part of the bonus might be unnecessary as an inducement.