I. 1877--The Great Upheaval
A. The Railroad Industry--literally, the engine that drove economic prosperity. This industry also completely also completely re-organized work, including implementing methods of cost accounting, so they could identify areas where costs could be cut to maximize profits.
1. Machinists--building locomotives and rolling stock required the development of new, precise methods of working with metals, and making the machines that could accomplish that, which helped to create the new skilled occupation of machinist.
2. Management--railroads had to organize across vast amounts of space and time (in the 19th century sense, anyway). To accomplish this, the industry developed the modern management system. These new managers were paid a salary, rather than a share of the profits (though later their salaries would be supplemented by sharing the profits, in the form of stock). Management implemented newly invented cost accounting techniques to identify ways to cut costs in the production of goods--and therefore boost the profit made.
No comments:
Post a Comment