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Robert Owen Born
Robert Owen raised the demand for a ten-hour day in 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of the eight-hour day and coined the slogan: "Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest". (Jones & George, 2014) -
Adam Smith Publishes the Wealth of Nations
While Adam Smith is typically regarded in the realm of economics, his work, "The Wealth of Nations" specifically discusses the division of labor and specialization. He speaks to the crafting of a pin being made by a single craftsman, or in an assembly-line style. The specialization and division of labor creates a new efficiency. (Peach, 2014) -
Henri Fayol Born
Fayol's work was one of the first comprehensive statements of a general theory of management. He proposed that there were five primary functions of management and fourteen principles of management. Functions of management: To forecast and plan, To organize, To command or direct, To coordinate, To control. (Jones & George, 2014) -
Max Weber Born
Max Weber was the first to observe and write on bureaucracies which developed in Germany during the 19th century. He considered them to be efficient, rational and honest, a big improvement over the haphazard administration that they replaced. The German government was better developed than those in the United States and Britain and was nearly equal to that of France. He considered it the most ideal form of organization. (Selgert, 2014) -
First US Labor Union
The National Labor Union (NLU) was the first national labor federation in the United States. Founded in 1866 and dissolved in 1874, it paved the way for other organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the AFL (American Federation of Labor). It was led by William H. Sylvis. (Dubofsky, 1985) -
Mary Parker Follett Born
Follett was an American social worker, management consultant and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. Along with Lillian Gilbreth, Mary Parker Follett was one of two great women management gurus in the early days of classical management theory. She was sought out by President Theodore Roosevelt as his personal consultant on managing not-for-profit, non-governmental, and voluntary organizations. (Jones & George, 2014) -
American Federation of Labor Founded
AFL, known since 1955 as AFL-CIO, was founded as the first federation of labor unions. AFL was the largest union grouping in the United States for the first half of the 20th century, even after the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) by unions that were expelled by the AFL in 1935 over its opposition to industrial unionism. (Dubofsky, 1985) -
Frederick S Taylor publishes "The Principles of Scientific Management"
Taylor was an American manufacturing manager, mechanical engineer, and then a management consultant in his later years. He is often called "The Father of Scientific Management." His approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or Taylorism. He described scientific management as a method of scientifically finding the “one best way to do a job.” (Blake and Moseley, 2010) -
Hugo Munsterberg Writes to Frederick W Taylor
“Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science, which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problem of economics.” Industrial psychology was to be “independent of economic opinions and debatable . . . interests.” Münsterberg's works Vocation and Learning (1912) and Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913) are usually considered the beginning of what would later become known as industrial psychology. (Jones & George, 2014) -
First Secretary of Labor
The first Secretary of Labor (William B Wilson) was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson. He served from 1913 until 1921. This position is the head of the U.S. Department of Labor, exercises control over the department, and enforces and suggests laws involving unions, the workplace, and all other issues involving any form of business-person controversies. (Dubofsky, 1985) -
First Automobile Assembly Line
The creation of the assembly line by Henry Ford at his Highland Park plant, introduced on December 1, 1913, revolutionized the automobile industry and the concept of manufacturing worldwide. (Wilson & McKinlay, 2010) -
The Hawthorne Studies
The Hawthorne Studies were conducted by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger in the 1920s with the workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company, were part of an emphasis on socio-psychological aspects of human behavior in organizations. They concluded that group pressures can significantly impact individual productivity. (Jones & George, 2014) -
Joseph M Juran Graduates from the University of MN
The start of a long career. Juran was one of the first to write about the cost of poor quality. This was illustrated by his "Juran trilogy", an approach to cross-functional management, which is composed of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. Without change, there will be a constant waste, during change there will be increased costs, but after the improvement, margins will be higher and the increased costs get recouped. (Jones & George, 2014) -
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
introduced the forty-hour work week, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed "time-and-a-half" for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in oppressive child labor. This certainly changed the way that managers thought about their workforce. Some managers still mislabel their employees as "volunteers" in order to bypass some of these standards. (Kilgour, 2014) -
USA Enters WWII
World War II involved global conflict on an unprecedented scale; the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable. The hard skilled labor of women was symbolized in the United States by the concept of Rosie the Riveter, a woman factory laborer performing what was previously considered man's work. (Kilgour, 2014) -
AFL and CIO Merge
The AFL-CIO was formed in 1955 when the AFL and the CIO merged after a long estrangement. Membership in the union peaked in 1979, when the AFL-CIO had nearly twenty million members. AFL–CIO's member unions have represented nearly all unionized workers in the United States. (Dubofsky, 1985) -
Equal Pay Act of 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law by JFK as an ammendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act and would "prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages by employers." The EPA provides that the employer may not pay lower wages to employees of one gender than the other gender, employees within the equal work at jobs that require equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working conditions. (Kilgour, 2014) -
Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act bans institutional forms of racial discrimination, including in the workplace. This affected management, because segregation could not be allowed in the workplace, and it meant that managers would have to consider people of color for positions they previously wouldn't have. (Lopresti, 2013) -
Fred Fiedler publishes "A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness"
Fiedler's contingency approach states that organizations, employees, and situations require different managerial approaches. The model states that there is no one best style of leadership. Instead, a leader's effectiveness is based on the situation. This is the result of two factors – "leadership style" and "situational favorableness". (Jones & George, 2014) -
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
The new act states that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new paycheck affected by that discriminatory action. The law directly addressed Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins on the date that the employer makes the initial discriminatory wage decision, not @ the date of the most recent paycheck. (Drachsler, 2010)
