En Passant

Bosses claim that scientific management practices are a product of “progress” and innovation. But a recent study by Caitlin Rosenthal from the Harvard Business School has found a connection between modern management techniques and the practices of slave owners, writes Kim Doyle in Red Flag.

While researching the history of business practices in the US, Rosenthal found that Southern slave owners often used more sophisticated methods to monitor the productivity of their workers than manufacturers in the North.

In the early 20th century, capitalists would often offer cash rewards to workers who met certain productivity levels. However, long before this “incentivisation”, slave owners were experimenting with ways to accelerate the pace of labour. Some held contests and gave small cash bonuses to the slave who could pick the most cotton. They then adopted this level of output as the new standard that all slaves were expected to reach.

To encourage workers to police one another, companies like Singer Sewing adopted collective penalties. Similarly, slave owners used collective punishments to induce slaves to give up their compatriots when they stole from their masters.

The railway era is often credited with creating new units of measurement for productivity, such as the “cost per ton mile”. However, according to Rosenthal, “bales per prime hand” predated this. One healthy adult slave might be considered one “hand”, while a child might be considered “half a hand”. This allowed slave owners to calculate and compare the productivity of their farms.

Slave owners could collect data on their workforce in ways that other businesses could not because they had complete control over the lives of their workers.

Scientific management is about squeezing more labour out of workers at less cost to the bosses by increasing the amount of control over our lives. Rosenthal has shown that slave owners were the true pioneers of modern management techniques.