MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Progressive Roots of Management Science

Conventional wisdom holds that the original objectives of management science were to promote economic efficiency and financial returns; the pursuit of goals loftier than moneymaking is seen as a recent development. But this isn’t the full picture. At its roots, the discipline is also closely aligned with current thinking about organizational purpose and managing with a broad community of stakeholders in mind. Today’s conversations about corporate social responsibility are not moving away from the principles of scientific management; they’re returning to them.

Anyone who has studied management will likely have been taught that the field’s founder is the efficiency-obsessed Frederick Winslow Taylor. The notion attributed to Taylor — that economic efficiency is management’s fundamental principle — reigned in the 20th century and into the 21st. Administration expert Luther Gulick wrote in 1937 that for management, “whether public or private, the basic ‘good’ is efficiency.”

About the Author

Stephen Cummings (@sdjcummings) is a professor of strategy and innovation at Victoria University of Wellington.

Todd Bridgman (@toddbridgman) is an associate professor of management at Victoria University of Wellington.

They are the coauthors of The Past, Present and Future of Sustainable Management (Palgrave, 2021).

Learn more about MIT SMR.