EconprophA question for my open ed peeps. In a piece I'm thinking about writing about current politics & higher ed, I want to talk about Taylorism (Frederick Taylor) & it's relationship to higher ed. Anybody w/ bus. school bkgrnd should know Taylorism but I'm curious as to whether it means anything to others w/ non-business higher ed backgrounds? @katebowles @Mweller @dkernohan @actualham @mahabali @davecormier @bonstewart
dkernohan@econproph @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart yep. And the Taylor/Skinner link is interesting. Discourses of optimisation are a 50s thing, like social security and really good jazz.
@dkernohan @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart funny you say 50's, cuz my little 7 yr involvement in college strategic planning, accreditation, & governance convinced me that all higher ed mgt is stuck in a 50's-60's world. They think Taylor is the ONLY way to organize. Totally missed everything learned in bus strategy & org theory of last 50 yrs -esp last 15.
Tanya **moved**@econproph @dkernohan @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart
Yes! This explains why when I wandered around saying things like, "Not all business ideas are bad" and "Some of them could actually help us be better" it didn't usually end well. I've learned to stop doing that...
@Tdorey @katebowles @mahabali @econproph @actualham @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart DON'T EVER CONTEMPLATE STOPPING DOING THAT. There are some great ideas from business that could work in education. But not all of them.
@dkernohan @Tdorey @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart @kenbauer THANKS ALL. I agree there's a LOT of good ideas from bus/org studies. Unfortunately, it seems the most successful stuff isn't read/seen by hi ed types. For ex: holacracy, truly flat orgs, non-hierarchy collaboratives, etc really work, but Hi ed seems to want to copy GM circa 1975 structurally, behaviorally, conceptually.
Maha Bali مها بالي@econproph @Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart well and if we wanted a simple connection, isn't higher ed a kind of "social business" (I don't know if those are successful business models and i am sure there are more models than I know).
I think there are problems when higherEd is viewed as a private rather than a social/public good. And this influences internal organization as well. R u thinking Taylorism as univ administration?
@mahabali @Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart Univ admins are part of the Taylorism (instigators of it?), but it's more than that. Taylorism took Weber's bureacracy & measured, standardized, defined, and dehumanized it. It also enabled (along w/ law chg on corps) the large corporate org form we take for granted, whether it's for-profit, non-profit, or ngo.
@Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart I see Taylorist thinking behind "designing instruction" and "assessment of defined outcomes". The construction of silo-ed hierarchy & silo-ed curriculum is pure Taylor.
What frustrates me, is learned real quality & process improvement circa 1980 from Deming/Ouchi. Deming showed this Taylor stuff doesn't work. Now many orgs are showing alts, but hi ed doesn't see them
What frustrates me, is learned real quality & process improvement circa 1980 from Deming/Ouchi. Deming showed this Taylor stuff doesn't work. Now many orgs are showing alts, but hi ed doesn't see them
@econproph @dkernohan @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart
Until today, I've never looked at any of these theories but they explain why it seems like so much of the most interesting approaches to learning are happening in business (which becomes problematic for other reasons).
Back to the question at the beginning of this great thread - Taylorism as a theory? To me, meaningless, but I'd get a higher-ed example of it & how it would be using different one
@Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart I appreciate the input. I guess now that you put it that way, I don't think of Taylorism so much as theory as being a system or at least a major part of a system. (besides regular econ principles, I teach/study Comparative Economic Systems). Maybe it's more of a worldview/belief thing that conditions how managers and "leaders" organize & coordinate folks that have to work together.
@econproph @Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart isn't the main approach of Taylorism that people are only extrinsically motivated by punishment/reward and not motivated by the work itself and good social relationships? Or is it a lot deeper than that? (learned this in high school, remember, so maybe it's more than what I was told). For me, the interest in measurement/control is better described as neoliberalism than Taylorism
@mahabali @Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart The extrinsic reward stuff is part of Taylorism (and core to orthodox/neo-classical econ) but there's more that comes with it. Taylorism aims to take homogenize/genericize all the workers. The work tasks/processes to be designed FOR the workers by "engineers & mgrs" who are "smarter". Variation in workers or how they do something is bad - workers are to be interchangeable. /1
@Tdorey @dkernohan @katebowles @mahabali @actualham @kenbauer @davecormier @Mweller @bonstewart Quality is seen as to be achieved by standardization of everything and measured by inspection of output/outcomes. Therefore hierarchy of authority is necessary to control and make sure everybody does the work and does it precisely the way the engineers said it must be done.
Irony is that Deming in 50's-70's showed via Japan & later US, that none of this works or makes sense. /2
Irony is that Deming in 50's-70's showed via Japan & later US, that none of this works or makes sense. /2