The emancipatory significance of Taylorism

Taylorism, we are told, is essentially alienating. This paper argues the opposite thesis. I submit that Taylorism represents a fundamentally emancipatory philosophy of job design. Since Taylorism continues to exert enormous influence in the practice of job design — as witnessed by current enthusiasm for Total Quality Management, ISO9000, and a host of management techniques for bringing greater discipline to manufacturing, clerical and professional work — this debate matters. By Taylorism, I refer to a pattern in job design practice and theory that privileges short repetitive work cycles, detailed prescribed task sequences, and a separation of conception from execution. What I will call the “standard critique ” sees such job designs as essentially alienating and thus engendering low levels of motivation and commitment. Under the view expressed in this critique, enlightened job design must break with the heritage of Taylorism in order to augment worker motivation and commitment by vertical job enrichment and horizontal job enlargement. Auto assembly has been the locus classicus of Taylorist job design. In my research on one auto assembly plant, the NUMMI plant in Fremont California, I found