From Scientific Management to Algorithmic Management: A Century of Managing by Measurement

All courses / AI Boss / Module 1 / Chapter 3

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Map each control regime of the chapter onto the management functions the system held.
Explain the three properties the chapter says algorithmic management adds, and the fourth that is emerging.
Explain why measures built for direction and evaluation drift into M3 Consequence.
Draft a lineage review of one measure, with a variance rule that reviews the standard before the person.

Key concepts

Control regimes: Edwards's simple, technical and bureaucratic control, to which the chapter adds scientific management, lean production, metric control, algorithmic control and agent direction, each with what was measured and how a worker could contest it.
Informating: Zuboff's distinction: information technology does not only automate work, it also produces a record that makes the work visible. The record can feed M4 Development or M2 Evaluation, and only a design decision determines which.
Three new properties: Direction and evaluation at the scale and speed of software, opacity to the people managed, and the possibility of a consequence for a person without a human decision. The chapter presents this as the book's interpretation, tested in Part II.
Campbell's law: The more a quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it is to corruption pressures and the more apt to distort the processes it is meant to monitor.
Variance rule: In AIDR-0624, a route above planned time for four consecutive weeks triggers a review of the planned times first, not of the person, directing attention to the standard before the individual.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Match

Control regimes and how workers could contest

Match each control regime of Chapter 3 with the means of contest the chapter's table gives for it.

Interactive exercise 2 · Put in order

Tracing the lineage of a measure

Put the steps of the chapter's practical guide in order, for a measure that an AI system is about to compute per person.

Teaching plan

20 min	The teacher tells the history in four steps: the foreman and Taylor's task, Ford's line and the five-dollar day, bureaucratic control and deskilling, and the counter-movements including Nordic law and the stop cord.
10 min	Participants complete the chapter's regime table from memory: what was measured, which functions the system held and how a worker could contest.
10 min	Presentation of what is new: scale and speed, opacity, consequence without a human decision, and direction by an agent with its own identity.
25 min	Exercise: groups trace the lineage of one measure and write the decision record, using AIDR-0624 as the model.
10 min	Debrief on the five lessons of history and on the questions the chapter says history cannot answer.

Discussion

The chapter says the five-dollar day shows that once pay depends on a measure, evaluation spreads to whatever the employer believes predicts it. Where do you see that pattern in present-day systems?
Bureaucratic control gave workers a rule to appeal to. What is lost when the criterion is a ranking that neither the worker nor the manager can read?
The stop cord treated a deviation as a signal about the system and not a verdict on a person. What would a comparable right to halt a direction look like for people managed by an AI boss?

Written exercise

Exercise · 25 minutes

Lineage review of a measure

Take one measure that a system is about to compute per person: the time-per-visit figure at Nordvik Region, throughput per handler at Hansa Mutual, or a measure in your own organisation. Following the chapter's practical guide, write its lineage: when it was introduced, for what purpose and at what unit of aggregation. Place the old and the new use on the five functions and flag any move into M2 Evaluation of a person or into M3 Consequence. Record how the measure could be gamed and what unmeasured work it could squeeze. Decide the degree per function, a variance rule that reviews the standard before the person, a contest path and a review date.

Deliverable: A one-page decision record in the form of AIDR-0624: measure lineage, permitted functions and degrees, variance rule, worker access, contest path, reopen condition and review date.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

How does the chapter map scientific management onto the five management functions?
Show the answer
C. It moved M1 Direction to a planning department, made M2 Evaluation a comparison with standard time, and tied both to M3 Consequence through differential pay
The chapter says scientific management moved direction to a planning department, made evaluation a comparison of observed with standard time and coupled both to consequence through differential pay, while M5 Care hardly appeared.
Which of the following is one of the three properties the chapter says no earlier regime combined?
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B. Opacity to the people managed
The three new properties are scale and speed, opacity and consequence without a human decision. Bonuses, the separation of conception from execution and written procedures all belong to earlier regimes.
What does AIDR-0624 decide about Nordvik Region's time-per-visit measure?
Show the answer
A. It stays at Level 0 Advisory for M2 Evaluation and is not an input to pay, discipline or dismissal
The record sets M2 Evaluation at Level 0 Advisory, excludes the figure from M3 Consequence, gives each worker their own figures and a contest path, and reopens if the figure is proposed as an input to any M3 decision.