The Western Electric Company had made serious attempts to apply the principles of scientific management. Most importantly, it had pursued the holy grail of efficiency by consolidating all of its telephone manufacturing under the roof of a single plant, the Hawthorne Works, which was built in Cicero, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago, in 1905. By 1914, 12,000 workers were employed there, and by 1929, more than 40,000. The shift to single-factory manufacturing at such huge scale brought with it a fundamental reorganization, spearheaded by superintendent Henry F. Albright, a Taylor devotee. After 1923, semiskilled and unskilled workers replaced skilled machinists. Under the new regime, performance of repetitive tasks was scrupulously ...
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