623 



Trends in Industrial Research and Scientific Management 



With the opening of the Twentieth Century, two important new 

 trends heightened the intensity of U.S. exploitation of industrial 

 technology. One was the appearance of the large industrial laboratory 

 and the other was the rapid spread of the doctrine of "scientific man- 

 agement" by the Taylor Societies. The first development, epitomized 

 by the Bell Telephone Laboratory at Murray Hill, N.J., and the Gen- 

 eral Electric Company laboratory at Schenectady, N.Y., proposed to 

 shorten the time sequence between basic scientific discoveries and their 

 commercial application. For the first time the tools and methods of 

 science were employed by industry to "invent to order." 



Operating in another direction, the concept of scientific manage- 

 ment involved the application of the quantitative scientific method to 

 the actions and behavior of production-line workers as well as to the 

 flow of materials and parts through industrial processes. It focused 

 attention on "time and motion studies" to discover ways to reduce in- 

 put costs and increase output of product. An important supplement to 

 this program of industrial efficiency was the campaign by Herbert 

 Hoover, as Secretary of Commerce in the early 1920s, to encourage the 

 reduction of waste in industry and the adoption of industrial stand- 

 ards and standardized methods of all kinds. The great industrial lab- 

 oratories made products better and scientific management made them 

 lower in cost. 



Maturing of the American Technological Posture 



World War II dramatized the importance of science for military 

 power, but as a practical matter it was technology that proved itself 

 of importance. Trained American scientists, with an impressive sup- 

 plement of refugee and British scientists, were able to turn themselves 

 into technologists to serve a great national and international purpose. 

 In 1945, when the scientists called attention to the opportunities of 

 the "endless frontier" of science, and urged its public support, they 

 based their claim on the proposition that investment in research and 

 education in the sciences would automatically reward society — would 

 stimulate innovation, and develop opportunities for an expanding 

 economy — in addition to its having military implications. When their 

 appeal was heeded, beginning about 1950, a veritable explosion, scien- 

 tific and technological, took place. 



Pursuing this course, and combining a high consumption economy 

 with a heavy emphasis on scientific innovation, the United States, by 

 1970, had built a teclinological structure that included the following 

 principal elements: 



A large number of very large, efficient, highly productive, geo- 

 graphically extended busmess enterprises with families of satellite 

 suppliers of materials, components, and specialized services, com- 

 prising complex, interconnected, production-distribution-service 

 enterprises; 



Separation of business ownership from business management; 



A great increase in policy, planning, and administrative staff in 



the management of enterprises of all kinds. 



The commercially-oriented part of this technological structure 



achieves higli levels of mass production at low cost, based on high 



levels of productivity of its labor. There is also a "high technology" 



