The Mantra of Efficiency
The Mantra of Efficiency

Author: Jennifer Karns Alexander

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2008-03-03

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0801893305

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Winner, 2010 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and shop floor movements to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.

The Mantra of Efficiency
The Mantra of Efficiency

Author: Jennifer Karns Alexander

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2008-03-03

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780801886935

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Winner, 2010 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and shop floor movements to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.

The Cult of Efficiency
The Cult of Efficiency

Author: Janice Gross Stein

Publisher: House of Anansi

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0887846785

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"This thought-provoking discourse on the unquestioned pursuit of efficiency reveals how the discussion of efficiency in the delivery of public goods, such as education and health care, has risen to prominence in postindustrial society. Stein's provocative argument, reminiscent of the thinking of Lewis Mumford, demonstrates that efficiency can too often be a cloak for political agendas, and that pressure for efficiency can actually be a detrimental rather than a positive force. Citizens in public schools, community clinics, and hospitals are shown engaging directly with such agendas, redrawing the face of the state as they impose new ways of delivering public goods. Stein demonstrates how they are calling not only for efficiency but for accountability and choice as they confront the dilemmas of democratic processes in a global age."

Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency
Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency

Author: Evelyn Cobley

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0802099572

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Cobley's close readings of modernist British fiction by writers as diverse as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Conrad, and E.M. Forster identify characters whose attitudes and behaviour patterns indirectly manifest cultural anxieties that can be traced to the conflicted logic of efficiency.

The Beauty of Detours
The Beauty of Detours

Author: Yoni Van Den Eede

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2019-12-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1438477139

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Winner of the 2020 S.I. Hayakawa Book Prize presented by The Institute of General Semantics Winner of the 2020 Susanne Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form presented by the Media Ecology Association The Beauty of Detours proposes a new way of understanding and defining technology by reading systems thinker Gregory Bateson in the framework of contemporary philosophy of technology. Although "technology" was not an explicit focus of Bateson's oeuvre, Yoni Van Den Eede shows that his thought is permeated with insights directly relevant to contemporary technological concerns. This book provides a systematic reading of Bateson that reveals these under-investigated elements of his thought. It also critiques the field of philosophy of technology for still reifying "technology" too much despite its attempt to de-reify it, arguing instead that it should incorporate Bateson's insights and focus more on processes of human knowing. Sketching a Batesonian philosophy of technology, Van Den Eede calls for greater attentiveness to the purpose of technology and its role in our lives.

Nature and Bureaucracy
Nature and Bureaucracy

Author: David Jenkins

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1000636267

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This book questions how bureaucracies conceive of, and consequently interact with, nature, and suggests that our managed public landscapes are neither entirely managed nor entirely wild, and offers several warnings about bureaucracies and bureaucratic mentality. One prominent challenge facing scientists, policymakers, environmental activists, and environmentally concerned citizens, is to recognize that human influence in the natural world is pervasive and has a long history. How we act, or choose not to act, today will continue to determine the future of the natural world. Western-style management of nature, mediated by economic rationality and state bureaucracies, may not be the best strategy to maintain environmental integrity. The question is, what kinds of human influence, conceived of in the widest possible sense, will produce ideal environments for future generations? The related question is, who gets to choose? The author approaches the problem of analyzing the mutual influence of human and natural systems from two perspectives: as an objective scholar investigating bureaucracies and natural systems from the outside, and over the last decade as an inside practitioner working in various roles in federal land management agencies developing policies and regulations involved in the control of natural systems. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of natural resource management, policy and politics, and professionals working in environmental management roles as well as policymakers involved in public policy and administration.

When More Is Not Better
When More Is Not Better

Author: Roger L. Martin

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2020-09-29

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1647820073

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American democratic capitalism is in danger. How can we save it? For its first two hundred years, the American economy exhibited truly impressive performance. The combination of democratically elected governments and a capitalist system worked, with ever-increasing levels of efficiency spurred by division of labor, international trade, and scientific management of companies. By the nation's bicentennial celebration in 1976, the American economy was the envy of the world. But since then, outcomes have changed dramatically. Growth in the economic prosperity of the average American family has slowed to a crawl, while the wealth of the richest Americans has skyrocketed. This imbalance threatens the American democratic capitalist system and our way of life. In this bracing yet constructive book, world-renowned business thinker Roger Martin starkly outlines the fundamental problem: We have treated the economy as a machine, pursuing ever-greater efficiency as an inherent good. But efficiency has become too much of a good thing. Our obsession with it has inadvertently shifted the shape of our economy, from a large middle class and smaller numbers of rich and poor (think of a bell-shaped curve) to a greater share of benefits accruing to a thin tail of already-rich Americans (a Pareto distribution). With lucid analysis and engaging anecdotes, Martin argues that we must stop treating the economy as a perfectible machine and shift toward viewing it as a complex adaptive system in which we seek a fundamental balance of efficiency with resilience. To achieve this, we need to keep in mind the whole while working on the component parts; pursue improvement, not perfection; and relentlessly tweak instead of attempting to find permanent solutions. Filled with keen economic insight and advice for citizens, executives, policy makers, and educators, When More Is Not Better is the must-read guide for saving democratic capitalism.

Scientists' Expertise as Performance
Scientists' Expertise as Performance

Author: Joris Vandendriessche

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 131731722X

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The essays in this collection explore our reliance on experts within a historical context and across a wide range of fields, including agriculture, engineering, health sciences and labour management. Contributors argue that experts were highly aware of their audiences and used performance to gain both scientific and popular support.

Small, Medium, Large
Small, Medium, Large

Author: Colleen A. Dunlavy

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2024-08-15

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1509561722

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We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods – from beds to batteries to printer paper – are available in a finite number of “standard sizes.” What makes these sizes “standard” is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms – often hotly competing firms – reach such collective agreements? In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes – orchestrated by the federal government – that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass production and distribution. Without government promotion of standard sizes, the twentieth-century American variety of capitalism would have looked markedly less “Fordist.” Small, Medium, Large will make all of us think differently about the everyday consumer choices we take for granted.

Public Policy Values
Public Policy Values

Author: J. Stewart

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0230240755

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More and more policy issues involve issues that are explicitly values-based, yet public policy analysis tends to skirt around the question of values. Public Policy Values overcomes this reluctance by showing how public policies enable values-choices to be made, often without seeming to do so.