Adamiecki, Karol (1886 - 1933)
Pioneer of scientific managementA Pioneering Pole
by Edward WilczynskiThis week Our Polonia features a Polonian who made great strides while engaging in his homeland career.
Karol Adamiecki was a pioneer of scientific management. Management science is today a highly-appreciated branch of science, having its own institutes and university departments.
What were its beginnings and what kind of people laid its first foundations? Well-known to all specialists are the names of American Frederick W. Taylor and Frenchman Henri Fayol. Others, especially those who were active outside of the United States and Western Europe have been substantially ignored.
The Pole, Karol Adamiecki (1886-1933), is one of the lesser known pioneers of scientific management. But this scholar and the work he did deserve in every respect to become more broadly known.
The times in which he worked were among the most difficult in the history of the Polish people. The partition of Poland by neighboring powers in the second half of the 18th century delayed the social and economic development of the partitioned country. And when Poland regained her independence at the end of the First World War, the country's economic structure had been ruined by the war. What industry remained was technically unproductive and backward.
Karol Adamiecki came from Dabrowa Gornicza, from a family connected with coal mining. His father was a mining engineer, and that was why young Adamiecki, from childhood familiar with mines and foundries, decided to choose the career of an engineer.
In 1891, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. He then worked in a foundry in Dabrowa Gornicza. He was quickly promoted and in 1899 became manager of the Harmann rolling steel mill in Lugansk. Then he became technical director of the foundry in Yekaterinoslav until 1905. It was there that he conducted his research on the organization of labor, which he had originally begun back in 1894.
Observing the production process in enterprises where he was employed in leading positions, Adamiecki reached the conclusion that, by means of the proper organization of labor, one could greatly raise labor productivity without increasing working time and the number of workers. By means of charts and diagrams he prepared, he proved that he was right and indicated concrete ways to improve the organization of the production process.
His methods, tested in practice, with the passage of time took the form of a theory of the harmonization of labor. It was developed almost simultaneously with, but quite independently of, that of Frederick W. Taylor. Like Taylor, he used the method of empirical analysis in research and in the solution of problems of the organization of labor in production.
The harmonogram, a graphic similar to the Gantt chart of today's PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was the basis for a technical control of production in the rolling steel mill directed by Adamiecki.
For many years to come, the scientist occupied various leading positions in industry in Russia and Poland. In 1919, he began his academic career. In independent Poland he became professor of mechanical technology and engineering at the Warsaw Polytechnical Institute. In 1923, due to his efforts, the first Polish Chair of Labor and Industrial Plant Organization was formed at the Polytechnic, the first in the history of this institute and one of the first in the world. He became chairman of this department and directed it until his death in May 1933.
Thanks to Adamiecki's vigorous and intensive activity, his scientific concepts were introduced into the rolling steel mills, in construction, in the ceramic, mining and textile industries, in agriculture and the railroad system, and even in the civil service. His theory of the harmonization of labor became the scientific foundation for management in Poland and in the whole of Eastern Europe.
Source: The Post Eagle, June 2, 2004.