Twentieth Century Organizations: A Historical Perspective

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the American industrial workforce, having recently shifted focus from its agrarian origins, saw the rise of trade associations made up of craftsmen. Consumer products were made by the singular endeavors of individuals. The entire development and delivery process of product design, production, testing, measurement of quality standards, delivery, and follow-up support was provided by a single individual. Along with great individual skill and pride of workmanship, there were hidden costs in this means of production, as later techniques would show.

The vision of early twentieth century industrialists, most notably Henry Ford, ushered in the idea of specialization of labor, and a new organizational structure was born. The assembly line brought about an organizational structure in which many highly specialized functions performed their specific tasks in a sequential and repetitive fashion, allowing quick delivery of the product to the consumer for the lowest possible cost. In the evolution from the one-person project team, where one person did everything, we progressed to the division of labor structure where there were many functional specialists, each performing a highly skilled, yet very narrow, serial task.