Business book recommendation: ‘The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency’

Published 2:46 pm Wednesday, March 31, 2010

“The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency,” by Robert Kanigel.

Recommended by James McCusker, a Bothell economist, educator and consultant who also writes for the Herald and the Snohomish County Business Journal.

“Frederick Winslow Taylor didn’t invent management, but he did invent management as we know it today, with efficiency as its driving force. It wasn’t always that way, and Robert Kanigel’s book, ‘The One Best Way,’ tells how Taylor’s belief that work could be analyzed and accomplished more efficiently changed everything in American business. The America we live in today is the product of many forces and many individuals, but the workplace we spend so much of our lives in is very much the result of Taylor’s once-revolutionary ideas. If you want to understand management, start with this book.”