Abstract
THE relation between industrial and social efficiency, discussed in a leading article in NATURE of October 3 dealing with Sir Josiah Stamp's address to the British Association at Blackpool, has been further considered by Mr. W. Hv Smyth in the Berkeley Daily Gazette of December 5. Mr. Smyth, protesting against the mechanical conception of efficiency, urges that ultimate human efficiency should imply the liberation of man rather than the efficient control of his actions, and that the former as it gains the creative interest of the worker is likely to be the best way of achieving, though indirectly, the latter. He suggests that an act of efficiency which deals with the human element incidentally but with products as its first consideration may inevitably involve disaster to the human element. The art of efficiency in fact is misdirected if it is concerned with production as an end in itself instead of with the development of men possessing vital initiative and creative powers. Mr. Smyth sees the issue as one between human worth and human productive efficiency and one that has a vital bearing on the evolution of alternatives to war. The very value which is now attached to the work of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology in reducing labour turnover, for example, lends powerful support to Mr. Smyth's other pleas that, even in industry, efficiency should be regarded in terms of human welfare as well as of mechanical output and processes.
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Human Welfare and Human, Efficiency. Nature 139, 105–106 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139105d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139105d0