Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2013

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Industrial Engineering

Committee Chair

Biles, William E.

Author's Keywords

Labor productivity; Frederck W. Taylor; Adam Smith; Henry Ford; Karl Marx; Post-Fordism

Subject

Labor productivity--History

Abstract

Changing framework conditions and constantly changing influences complicate the existence of the companies that are in competition with one another. To be able to guarantee the sustainable success of a company, it is decisive for the market participant to react to the prevailing challenges in a productive and efficient way. Despite various individual approaches currently there is no uniform master plan that represents the topic of the labor productivity in the context of modern requirements. It is the aim of this dissertation to analyze the approaches on labor productivity on the most important protagonists which in the history. The historic description is done based on the pioneers of labor productivity and includes Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Frederick W. Taylor, Henri Fayol, Chester I. Barnard and Henry Ford. By analyzing the Post-Fordism Era, the biggest influence factors on labor productivity - Toyota Production System and Information and Communication Technic - will be also taken into account. Special emphasis will be placed on the key factors of labor productivity. This dissertation provides a literature review of the above mentioned pioneers and their approaches an ideas on labor productivity. Based on the literature review and the additional research work the dissertation will provide a comparison of the key factors to detect common and different approaches. After identifying all important key factors of labor productivity from the selected pioneers, the thesis will investigate about the effects on labor wages. A necessary analyze of the development of labor wages and the development of labor productivity will be done. The analyze should compare these two developments. Depending on the result potential reasons for the effect of the development should be investigate. Considering this comparison and the result possible suggestions for the feature development will arise.

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