Sociology I / Work and Labour Markets
Practice question · Fill in the blanks

Complete the account of how the organisation of industrial work was transformed.

Taylor’s scientific management separated conception from ______, so that planning became a managerial task. Ford added the moving ______ line in 1913 and a wage high enough to retain a workforce willing to work at its pace. Braverman argued in 1974 that capitalism systematically ______ work, a thesis the later evidence supports only in ______.

Word bank: execution · assembly · deskills · part · design · wholly

Hints
  1. The first blank is the half of the job left to the worker.
  2. The last blank should reflect that some occupations were upgraded rather than degraded.
Show the answer

Taylor’s scientific management separated conception from execution, so that planning became a managerial task. Ford added the moving assembly line in 1913 and a wage high enough to retain a workforce willing to work at its pace. Braverman argued in 1974 that capitalism systematically deskills work, a thesis the later evidence supports only in part.

Why

The sequence is one long transfer of knowledge from the workshop to the office. Taylor moved the knowledge of how a task is best done; Ford moved control of its pace to the machinery. Braverman read the twentieth century as the continuation of that transfer, and the mixed verdict on his thesis is that the transfer happened in many places and was reversed or bypassed in others.

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