Papers on the Science of Administration

This edited collection includes contributions by Mary Parker Follett, Henri Fayol, James D. Mooney and Henry S. Dennison, and L. J. Henderson, T. N. Whitehead and Elton Mayo. The paper by Henderson, Whitehead and Mayo discusses the findings of the Hawthorne experiments. Whilst admiring the pioneering work of Taylor, these authors criticize scientific management on the grounds that it does not study the facts of human organization. The Hawthorne experiments revealed the importance of spontaneous social organization of the work group into a micro-social system.