scholarly journals Picturing Efficiency: Precisionism, Scientific Management, and the Effacement of Labor

2003 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHARON CORWIN

ABSTRACT In the early decades of the twentieth century, the pursuit of efficiency came to dominate instances of industrial and artistic production: the engineering consultants Frank and Lillian Gilbreth attempted to visualize a language of minimal waste, while Precisionist art achieved its own aesthetic of efficiency. This essay examines the Precisionist project alongside the discourses of the rationalized factory and suggests a relationship between the formal economy of Precisionism and the rhetoric of scientific management. For Precisionist art and the Gilbreths' time-motion studies, the representation of efficiency ultimately entailed the elision of artist and worker as producers of labor.

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-306
Author(s):  
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz

Multisensory and cross-modal perception have been recognised as crucial for shaping modernist epistemology, aesthetics, and art. Illustrative examples of how it might be possible to test equivalences (or mutual translatability) between different sensual modalities can be found in theoretical pronouncements on the arts and in artistic production of both the avant-garde and high modernism. While encouraging multisensory, cross-modal, and multimodal artistic experiments, twentieth-century artists set forth a new language of sensory integration. This article addresses the problem of the literary representation of multisensory and cross-modal experience as a particular challenge for translation, which is not only a linguistic and cross-cultural operation but also cross-sensual, involving the gap between different culture-specific perceptual realities. The problem of sensory perception remains a vast underexplored terrain of modernist translation history and theory, and yet it is one with potentially far-reaching ramifications for both a cultural anthropology of translation and modernism's sensory anthropology. The framework of this study is informed by Douglas Robinson's somatics of translation and Clive Scott's perceptive phenomenology of translation, which help to put forth the notion of sensory equivalence as a pragmatic correspondence between the source and target texts, appealing to a range of somato-sensory (audial, visual, haptic, gestural, articulatory kinaesthetic, proprioceptive) modalities of reader response.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Boakye

The acceptance of electronic laboratory information system (LIS) is gradually increasing in developing countries. However, the issue of time effectiveness due to computerization is less clear as there is fewer accessible information. One of the key issues for laboratorians is their indecision with LISs’ would-be effect of time on their work. A polyclinic in Ghana was in the process of implementing electronic LIS. Several of the laboratorians did not have knowledge and skill in computing and there were disagreeing views on the time effectiveness of the LIS after implementation. The management of the polyclinic laboratory was concerned to assess time advantageousness of recording data when using the electronic LIS compared with paper-based LIS. <div><br></div><div>Five randomly selected laboratorians were provided two sheets of paper with tables to document the time they spent for both paper-based and electronic LIS. Data were collected for a total of 230 records,115 electronic LIS and 115 paper-based LIS. The t-test (mean-comparison test) was computed to compare the means of both electronic and paperbased LIS times. </div><div><br></div><div>There was a statistical significant difference in the time spent between electronic and paper-based LIS. The time spent between paper-based and electronic LIS was 0.41 minutes (95% CI 0.15 to 0.66) longer than in electronic LIS. </div><div><br></div><div>LIS can be adopted in polyclinics without having significant negative impact on time spent between electronic and paper-based LIS. More time–motion studies that include laboratorians are however necessary in order to get a more complete picture of time spent between electronic and paper-based LIS. </div>


2014 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 292-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Lopetegui ◽  
Po-Yin Yen ◽  
Albert Lai ◽  
Joseph Jeffries ◽  
Peter Embi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelia Cojocaru ◽  

Among the revolutions that took place in the twentieth century, one of the most important was the managerial revolution. It was during this period that management became a separate field, developing intensely even today. Currently, in all developed countries, more attention is paid to the training of professional managers, because "the task of the leader is to be more and more efficient". The need to professionalize managerial activity in the field of education was realized in the West in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century [1]. In the Republic of Moldova, this problem began to be addressed only in the 90s. Almost a hundred years ago, the author who founded the scientific management, Frederick Taylor, postulated the principle "Strict record of time and standardization of work" making a huge step towards increasing efficiency in the organization. Management means efficient and effective management of an activity. From this perspective, the manager cannot ensure the efficiency for the institution for which he is responsible if he does not know how to manage the resources efficiently. In addition, time is a precious, pretentious and irreversible economic resource: time is the rarest resource being irreplaceable but at the same time "unlimited", it is expensive, but it cannot be bought, stored, multiplied, and its loss cannot be assured either. By the largest insurance company in the world, so it cannot be "compensated", a source that can increase efficiency and profit, so that its good management is an essential skill [2].


Author(s):  
Ruth W. Grant

This chapter presents a historical account of the use of the term “incentives” and of the introduction of incentives in scientific management and behavioral psychology. “Incentives” came into the language in the early part of the twentieth century in America. During this period, the language of social control and of social engineering was quite prevalent, and incentives were understood to be one tool in the social engineers' toolbox—an instrument of power. Not coincidentally, incentives were also extremely controversial at this time and were criticized from several quarters as dehumanizing, manipulative, heartless, and exploitative. When incentives are viewed as instruments of power, the controversial ethical aspects of their use come readily to the fore.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Boersma ◽  
Patrick van Rossem

In 2010, Afterall Publishers launched a series of exhibition histories wholly devoted to the study of landmark exhibitions.[1] The aim was to examine art in the context of its presentation in the public realm. In this way, research into art history shifted from the artistic production of one individual artist to the context of the presentation, and to the position, views, and convictions of the curator. In the introduction to the book, published in 2007 with its contextually pertinent title, Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology, Florence Derieux stated: “It is now widely accepted that the art history of the second half of the twentieth century is no longer a history of artworks, but a history of exhibitions.”[2] Not everyone agrees with this, however. For example, art historian Julian Myers justifiably criticized this statement when he wrote that the history of art and exhibitions are inextricably linked.


1999 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 536
Author(s):  
Matthias Koch ◽  
William M. Tsutsui

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Iryna Lytovchenko

Abstract The article analyzes the process of formation and development of corporate education in the USA in the first half of the twentieth century. It has been determined that the main prerequisites for the development of corporate education in the USA in the first half of the twentieth century were historical, socio-economic, political factors and advances in scientific research including: the rapid growth of the US economy in the twentieth century; dissemination of scientific and technological progress and constant introduction of new technologies in the workplace; a national policy of “welfarism”; scientific works of R. Kelly “Training industrial workers” and D. Morris “Employee training: A study of education and training departments in various corporations”, which contained the first complex researches on training in industry, substantiated the necessity and prospects of this study, analyzed corporate programs of that time, the ideas on scientific management of F. Taylor, F. Gilbreth and S. Thompson, which had a major impact on all business areas. It has been found out that corporate education was the result of evolution of apprenticeship, the oldest and most traditional form of vocational training in the United States. By 1920s a new concept of modern education had been formed in the workplace which had its philosophical foundations, educational programs, technologies, system of providing services and organizational structure. In the period between the First and Second World Wars a new vision of learning at the workplace arose, new teaching methods were developed different from those used in traditional educational institutions; understanding came that the dissemination of knowledge within the whole community would contribute to building a democratic society.


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