Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 to 1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor, was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. A management consultant in his later years, he is sometimes called the father of scientific management and was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement, whose ideas were highly influential in the Progressive Era. He held that the workplace contained two mutually dependent groups, managers and laborers, and that managers should tell laborers their responsibilities. His views have been criticized as naive about how management shares profits with workers, and he disliked the unions that later secured fair wages and working terms.