Idea 38 - Scientific management Is management and art or a science? The debate is not new, nor is it over. In recent times, the 'art' lobby has been making up some lost ground, but it was 19th-century engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor who first cast management as a science. Peter Drucker, the management guru's management guru, says Taylor deserves a place alongside Darwin and Freud in the making of the modern world. Taylor believed that production was subject to universal laws that were independent of human judgment. It was the task of scientific management to uncover these laws, to discover the 'one best way' of doing things. It might be the best way of shoveling coal, of securing a bolt or of ensuring quality control. Taylor is largely forgotten outside business schools these days. When his memory surfaces, it's often for the worst of reasons. He was the first to break work down into small pieces, measure them and put them back together so they opera...