Henry Laurence Gantt is best known for developing the Gantt Chart, an important project management tool introduced in the 1920s. However, Gantt also made significant contributions as a pioneer in the human relations approach to management and an early advocate for business' social responsibility. Over his career, Gantt introduced innovations like a task and bonus wage system, considered the perspective of workers, and developed charts to track workflow and progress. He ultimately believed management had an obligation to serve communities and society at large.
Henry Laurence Gantt is best known for developing the Gantt Chart, an important project management tool introduced in the 1920s. However, Gantt also made significant contributions as a pioneer in the human relations approach to management and an early advocate for business' social responsibility. Over his career, Gantt introduced innovations like a task and bonus wage system, considered the perspective of workers, and developed charts to track workflow and progress. He ultimately believed management had an obligation to serve communities and society at large.
Henry Laurence Gantt is best known for developing the Gantt Chart, an important project management tool introduced in the 1920s. However, Gantt also made significant contributions as a pioneer in the human relations approach to management and an early advocate for business' social responsibility. Over his career, Gantt introduced innovations like a task and bonus wage system, considered the perspective of workers, and developed charts to track workflow and progress. He ultimately believed management had an obligation to serve communities and society at large.
Henry Laurence Gantt's (1861-1919) most popular legacy to management was the Gantt Chart. Accepted as a commonplace project management tool today, it was an innovation of worldwide importance in the 1920s. But the Chart was not Gantt's only legacy; he was also a forerunner of the Human Relations School of management and an early spokesman for the social responsibility of business. Life and career
Henry Gantt was born into a family of prosperous farmers
in Maryland in 1861. His early years, however, were marked by some deprivation as the Civil War brought about changes to the family fortunes. He graduated from Johns Hopkins College in 1880 and was a teacher before becoming a draughtsman in 1884 and qualifying as a mechanical engineer. From 1887 to 1893 he worked at the Midvale Steel Company in Philadelphia, where he became Assistant to the Chief Engineer (Fredrick W. Taylor) and then Superintendent of the Casting Department. Gantt and Taylor worked well in their early years together and Gantt followed Taylor to Simonds Rolling Company and on to Bethlehem Steel. From 1900 Gantt became well known in his own right as a successful consultant as he developed interests in broader, even conflicting, aspects of management. In 1917 he accepted a government commission to contribute to the war effort in the Frankford Arsenal and for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Gantt's contribution
1.The task and bonus system
Gantts task and bonus wage system was introduced in 1901 as a variation on Taylors differential piece-rate system. With Gantts system, the employee received a bonus in addition to his regular day rate if he accomplished the task for the day; he would still receive the day rate even if the task was not completed. As a result of introducing Gantts system, which enabled workers to earn a living while learning to increase their efficiency, production often more than doubled. This convinced Gantt that concern for the worker and employee morale was one of the most important factors in management. 2.The perspective of the worker
Gantt realized that his system offered little incentive to do
more than just meet the standard. He subsequently modified it to pay according to time allowed, plus a percentage of that time if the task were completed in that time or less. Hence a worker could receive three hours pay for doing a two-hour job in two hours or less. But here Gantt brought in an innovation, by paying the foreman a bonus if all the workers met the required standard. This constituted one of the earliest recorded attempts to reward the foreman for teaching workers to improve the way they worked. 3.The chart
Gantt's Bar Chart started as a humble but effective
mechanism for recording the progress of workers towards the task standard. A daily record was kept for each worker - in black, if he met the standard, in red, if he didn't. This expanded into further charts on quantity of work per machines, quantity of work per worker, cost control and other subjects. It was whilst grappling with the problem of tracking all the various tasks and activities of government departments on the war effort in 1917, that Gantt realized he should be scheduling on the basis of time and not on quantities. His solution was a bar chart which showed how work was scheduled over time through to its completion. This enabled management to see, in graphic form, how well work was progressing, and indicated when and where action would be necessary to keep on time. 4.The social responsibility of business
After the death of Taylor in 1915, Gantt seemed to distance
himself further from the core principles of scientific management and extended his management interests to the function of leadership and the role of the firm itself. As his thinking developed, he believed increasingly that management had obligations to the community at large, and that the profitable organization had a duty towards the welfare of society. In Organizing for work, he argued that there was a conflict between profits and service, and that the businessman who says that profits are more important than the service he renders 'has forgotten that his business system had a foundation in service, and as far as the community is concerned has no reason for existence except the service it can render.' These concerns led him to assert that: 'the business system must accept its social responsibility and devote itself primarily to service, or the community will ultimately make the attempt to take it over in order to operate it in its own interest.' Whatever we do must be in accord with human nature. We cannot drive people; we must direct their development....the general policy of the past has been to drive; but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and lead, to the advantage of all concerned'.