"What we are actually trying to say is simply this: That the average worker knows his own job better than anyone else, and that there are a great many things that he could do if he has a complete understanding of the necessary. Given this opportunity of expressing his intelligence and ingenuity, he becomes a more useful and more valuable citizen in any given community or in any industrial operation." Joseph N. Scanlon

Who Was Joe Scanlon?

Please answer the following true/false quiz*

1) Joe was a prize fighter who fought in Madison Square Garden.

2) Joe was a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked with Dr. Carl Frost and Fred Lesieur.

3) Joe was a steelworker.

4) Joe was an accountant.

5) Joe was head of the Steelworker's Research Department.

6) Joe helped British Industry after WWII.

7) Joe was "the father of participative management".

8) Joe was a Union President.

9) Joe was one of the first to use "gainsharing."

10) Joe believed that "together we can achieve the impossible."

* (All the answers are true)

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"Scanlon believed that the typical organization did not elicit the full potential from employees, either as individuals or as a group. He did not feel that the commonly held concept that the "boss is boss and a worker works" was a proper basis for stimulating the interest of employees in company problems; rather, he felt such a concept reinforced employees' beliefs that there was an "enemy" somewhere above them in the hierarchy and that a cautious suspicion should be maintained at all times. He felt that employee interest and contribution could best be stimulated by providing the employee with a maximum amount of information and data concerning company problems and successes, and by soliciting his contribution as to how he felt the problem might best be solved and job best done. Thus the Scanlon Plan is a common sharing between management and employees of problems, goals, and ideas."

Lesieur and Puckett