Showing papers by "Matthias Kipping published in 1997"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare and analyze the evolution of Taylorist consultancies in three major European economies and show that institutions established by the business community, often with government support, can provide an alternative channel for the dissemination of new management methods Unlike private consultancies, they immediately benefit from a high level of trust, facilitate inter-firm comparisons, and ensure a relatively uniform application of these methods.
Abstract: This essay compares and analyses the evolution of Taylorist consultancies in the three major European economies It shows that institutions established by the business community, often with government support, can provide an alternative channel for the dissemination of new management methods Unlike private consultancies, they immediately benefit from a high level of trust, facilitate inter-firm comparisons, and ensure a relatively uniform application of these methods This was the case in Germany where institutions such as the REFA and RKW trained a large number of work study engineers and collected benchmark data In Britain on the other hand, the diffusion of scientific management relied much more on consultancies Institutions served at best as intermediaries for the establishment of a trust-based relationship and provided some sort of quality control In France, institutions had ambitions similar to the German ‘model’ But they were weakened by splits and competition among themselves and thus left su
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