The early application of scientific management by cadbury

Business History

Volumn 30, Issue 4, 1988, Pages 377-395

  Rowlinson, Michael ^a  

^a ASTON UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84959688867     PISSN: 00076791     EISSN: 17437938     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00076798800000075     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Gilliam Wagner, The Chocolate Conscience (London, 1987).
2. Ian Campbell Bradley, Enlightened Entrepreneurs (London, 1987), pp.6-7, 120–40.
3. John Child, ‘Quaker Employers and Industrial Relations’, Sociological Review, Vol. 12 (1964), pp.293-315;
4. Charles Dellheim, ‘The Creation of a Company Cuture: Cadburys, 1861–1931’, American Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 1 (1987); the standard accounts of the development of the Cadbury business are: Iolo A. Williams, The Firm of Cadbury 1831–1931 (London, 1931);
5. A.G. Gardiner, Life of George Cadbury (London, 1923);
6. T.B. Rogers, A Century of Progress 1931–1931 (Bournville, 1931).
7. See Michael Rowlinson, ‘Cadbury’s New Factory System 1879-1919', (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Aston University, 1987), also Chris Smith, John Child and Michael Rowlinson, Innovations in Work Organisation: The Cadbury Case (Cambridge, forthcoming) for a much fuller discussion of ‘Cadburyism’.
8. John Child, British Management Thought, A Critical Analysis (London, 1969), p.36;
9. Edward Cadbury, Experiments in Industrial Organization (London, 1912, reprinted New York, 1979).
10. Ibid., pp.260, 262.
11. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., pp.70-80.
12. Board Minute No. 860, 19 Nov. 1901.
13. Board Minute No. 337, 28 April 1903.
14. Board Minute No. 741, 24 Sept. 1901.
15. Cadbury Brothers Board File, re Minute No. 45, 17 Jan. 1905.
16. Edward Cadbury, M. Cecile Matheson and George Shann, Women's Work and Wages (London, 1906);
17. Edward Cadbury and George Shann, Sweating (London, 1907).
18. D. Bythell, The Sweated Trades (London, 1978), pp. 155–65.
19. D. Sells, The British Trade Board System (London, 1923), pp. 147–8.
20. For example, A.G. Gardiner, George Cadbury's biographer, see op. cit., and editor of the Cadbury owned Daily News, in his Introduction to Clementina Black, Sweated Industry and The Minimum Wage (London, 1907), p.xi;
21. M.E. Bulkley, The Establishment of legal minimum rates in The Boxmaking Industry under the Trade Boards Act of 1909 (London, 1915), pp.4, 51–3.
22. Constance Smith, The Case For Wages Boards (London, c.1909), p.29.
23. Board Minutes: No. 3, 2 Oct. 1900; No. 500, 30 April 1901; cf. D. Nelson, Frederick Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Wisconsin, 1980), p.9, and C.R. Littler, The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies (London, Heinemann, 1982), pp.83-4.
24. Board Minute No. 500, 30 April 1901.
25. Board File re Minute No. 412, 16 May 1905.
26. Board File re Minute No. 350, 1907.
27. Board Minute No. 3, 2 Oct. 1900.
28. Board Minutes: No. 465, 5 Dec. 1899; No. 766, 10 April 1900; No. 678, 27 Feb. 1900.
29. Board Minute No. 825, 6 Nov. 1906.
30. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., pp. 141—143.
31. F.W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (London, 1967, first published 1911), p.81.
32. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., p. 143.
33. Taylor, op. cit., p.95.
34. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., p.244.
35. Ibid., pp. 244—245.
36. H. Braverman, Labor and Monoply Capital (London, 1974), p.336;
37. R. Hyman, Strikes (London, 1984), p. 104, ‘Whether the consequences of technology are in fact liberating or enslaving depends on how it is decided to use the machines, and on who makes the decisions. To attribute unpleasant social consequences to inanimate machinery is to evade examining those human actions which - deliberately or by default - are in fact responsible’.
38. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., pp.20, 246.
39. Taylor, op. cit., pp.87, 143–4.
40. J.E. Prosser, Piece Rates Premium and Bonus (London, 1919).
41. Bournville Works Magazine (1919), pp. 182, 258.
42. Prosser, op. cit., p.74.
43. Ibid., p.73.
44. Edward Cadbury, ‘The Case Against Scientific Management’, Edward Cadbury et al., Scientific Management in Industry (London, 1915, reprinted New York, 1979) reprinted from Sociological Review, (1914).
45. Cadbury, ibid., pp.6-7.
46. Taylor, op. cit., p.39.
47. Cadbury, ‘Scientific Management’, op. cit., pp.3-4.
48. Ibid., p.5.
49. Prosser, op. cit., pp.64-5.
50. Cadbury, ‘Scientific Management’, op. cit., p.7.
51. Prosser, op. cit., pp.31-2.
52. M.J. Nadwomy, Scientific Management and the Unions (Cambridge, MA, 1955), p.4.
53. Cadbury, ‘Scientific Management’, op. cit., p.5.
54. Taylor, op. cit., p.95.
55. Cadbury, ‘Scientific Management’, op. cit., p. 19.
56. Ibid., p.10.
57. Ibid., p.9; also Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., pp.271-2.
58. Nadwomy, op. cit., p.25.
59. Ibid., p.25.
60. Cadbury, ‘Scientific Management’, op. cit., p.47.
61. G.D.H. Cole, in Scientific Management, op. cit., p.37.
62. Cf. A.G. Gardiner, Life of, op. cit., p.95.
63. Cf. Littler, op. cit., pp.83-4, who accepts this exaggeration.
64. Cadbury, ‘Scientific Management’, op. cit., p.18.
65. Ibid., p.17;
66. S. Lewenhak, Women in Trade Unions (London, 1977), pp.124-5.
67. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., p.270.
68. cf. Lewenhak, op. cit., p.125.
69. Cadbury, Experiments, op. cit., pp. 159–60.
70. Taylor, op. cit., p.121.
71. Prosser, op. cit., p.83, cf. pp.35-6, 53, 59, 73, 75, for his warnings against rate-cutting becoming associated with: the Halsey Premium; the Cost Premium; the differential piece-rate; scientific management; and the Emerson Efficiency Bonus.
72. Ibid., p.77.
73. Ibid., p.77.
74. See, for example, Boumville Girls Works Committee, Minute No. 8189, 26 June 1912, discussion of letter from the Factory Inspector, or Girls Works Committee File, 11 Jan. 1912, Report from head forewoman on ‘Heating in the Card Box Room.’ Cf. D.F. Stanes, ‘The Employment of Women in Supervisory and Managerial Positions in the Cotton, Clothing, Biscuit and Cocoa, Chocolate and Sugar Confectionary Industries in England’ (M.Sc. Econ., London, 1955), p.44.
75. Board Minute No. 240, 24 March 1915.
76. Board File re Minute No. 722, 24 Sept. 1912.
77. Board File re Minute No. 825, Oct. 1912.
78. Board File re Minute No. 914, 26 nov. 1912.
79. Board Minute No. 898, 19 Nov. 1912, this was the same meeting at which it was decided to introduce a ‘Piece Rates Wages Department’, renamed the Works Organisation Department. The only mention of Suffern and Sons which the research has located comes from the history of the Whitin Machine Works, USA, where it was decided ‘to give efficiency engineering a test’ in the spring of 1912, by letting the New York partnership of Suffern and Son start work in one department. In the summer of 1912, three Suffern men worked in the Whitinsville plant, ‘making time and motion studies, setting up piece-rates, and improvising new manufacturing procedures’.
80. T.R. Navin, The Whitin Machine Works since 1831 (New York, 1955), pp.318-20, 607
81. Littler, op. cit., p.203.
82. Board File re Minute No. 829, 19 Nov. 1913, Works Organisation Department Report, 10 Nov. 1913, by J.E. Bellows.
83. J.E. Bellows, ibid.
84. Board Minutes: No. 132, 18 Feb. 1914; No. 175, 4 March 1914; No. 8, 6 Jan. 1915; Prosser, op. cit., Preface, ‘The writer wishes to express his indebtedness to Mr. J.F. Whiteford, Mem. Am. Soc. Mech. Engrs., for the loan of much literature relating to American systems’.
85. J.E. Bellows, op. cit.
86. Ibid., p.2.
87. Ibid., pp.2–6.
88. Board File re Minute No. 207, Daily Herald cutting, 3 March 1913.
89. Bournville Works Magazine (1917), Dec., pp.300-301.
90. Herbert N. Casson, Factory Efficiency (New York, 1977, first published 1917).
91. Bournville Works Magazine (1918), Feb., pp.45-6; March, pp.67-8; April, pp.98-9; June, pp. 132–3.
92. In Scientific Management in Industry, op. cit., p.38.
93. Littler, op. cit., p.95.
94. J.A. Hobson, ‘Scientific Management’, The Sociological Review, Vol. VI, No. 3 (July 1913), pp. 197–212.
95. Nelson, op. cit., p.20.
96. See Braverman, op. cit., p.87, for an outline of this process.
97. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London, 1971), p.310.