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Lazonick (1991)Management > Comparative Management > Lectures > Independent Research > Lazonick > Managerial capitalism > Management vs. employees
Management vs. employeesShop floor workers were regarded as indispensible and with the continuing incentives for managers to ensure goals of the firm combined with the separation of operating and strategic divisions served to alienate managers from employees. Managers perceived employees as machines to serve the goals of the firm and ignored their needs. Many of the workers were immigrants from craft-orientated Britain and they protested against the introduction of machinery. The late 1880s saw the rise of unionism in the US, including the American Federation of Labour, but management were not swayed and instead employed unskilled workers from southern and eastern Europe. Many of these became semi-skilled workers, who could work the machines well. "Scientific management" arose in firms which had invested in machinery and wanted employees to work well with the machines and maximise productivity. Fearful that skilled shop floor workers would use their scarce resources to reduce their effort and increase their pay, managers invested in yet more new machinery to displace labour. After WWI in the 1920s, large firms developed "good jobs", which offered better pay and more job security. This resulted in a vast increase in productivity, which contributed to the boom of this decade.
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