This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Coordination and Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise

The growth of industry during the last quarter of the nineteenth century in-spired one of the most influential efforts to promote the coordination of eco-nomic activity: the industrial engineering movement of the early twentieth century. Although railroads had devised elaborate methods of internal commu-nications and record keeping by midcentury, the late-nineteenth-century fac-tory remained a loosely organized cluster of operations. Coordination de-pended on the leadership of plant executives and personal relationships between supervisors. Indeed, the distinguishing feature of factory management was the conspicuous role of the first-line supervisor; foremen organized mate-rials and labor, directed machine operations, recorded costs, hired and fired employees, and presided over a largely autonomous empire. In the 1870s and 1880s, however, critics began to attack the “chaotic ” condition of contempo-rary industry and to propose a more systematic, centralized approach to pro-duction management. Their critique became the basis for the best-known effort to encourage coordination within the firm during the first half of the twentiet