Industrial psychology in Great Britain / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Industrial psychology in Great Britain / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    optional subjects for the degree of Bachelor of Com¬ merce, and a special course of lectures is given in rela¬ tion thereto. An Honours B.Sc. course in Psychology has just been instituted at Edinburgh, of which the last year may be devoted to Industrial Psychology.] When the National Institute of Industrial Psychology was being established, it was obvious that the workers were straightway prejudiced against it by such terms as ‘efficiency' and ‘scientific management.' By improve¬ ment in efficiency they feared speeding-up and the dis¬ missal of their less competent comrades. The mention of scientific management made them suspect that all their craft knowledge would pass from them into the hands of their employers and that they would be degraded to the position of servile mechanisms. They could quote passages from Taylor's Principles of Scienti¬ fic Management or from his Shop Management, such as his remark, admittedly ‘in rather rough talk' to ‘the little Pennsylvanian Dutchman,' Schmidt, while Taylor was instructing him so effectively in the best methods of handling pig-iron — ‘You know just as well as I do that a high-priced man has to do exactly as he's told from morning to night,' or that ‘no worse mistake can be made than that of allowing an establishment to be looked on as a training school, to be used mainly for the education of many of its employees,’ but that the worker must ‘bear in mind that each shop exists, first, last and all time, for the purpose of paying dividends to its