Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Final Project Proposal: Scientific Management

I will expand on my blog post about scientific management and how it is involved in my work as a Master Electrician. I will document how scientific management affects the preproduction process for every show.
My final project will not completely be an essay. I plan to include samples of actual paperwork from preproduction meetings as well as paperwork that I prepared for the workers that I was in charge of. I will also including samples from productions in which I was a laborer and how I changed the process when I was the manager, similar to how Taylor describes the work process before he started applying scientific principles to each work situation.

2 comments:

Adam Johns said...

I like your plan of including documentary evidence, although I'm not sure why this makes it anything other than an essay. But that's a quibble.

The biggest issue with your early post, if I recall, is that you didn't worry too much about what *Taylor* meant by scientific management. So I'd certainly suggest more attention to Taylor's text, as well as additional historical research (about the development of scientific management, etc.) in addition.

Philip said...

In my essay, I will first delve deeper into Taylor and his definition/description of scientific management. From that discussion, I will interpret how scientific management can be applied to the role of the Master Electrician in the theatre; drawing parallels between the different situations Taylor describes and my own experiences. From there, I want to go into several different shows in various spaces that I have worked on and tie the processes back to my interpretation of scientific management. Along with discussing the shows, I will talk about the various "tools" that I use in preparation for a show.