The Triumph of Personnel Management: Contesting Corporate Motherhood and the Corporate Welfare System

Abstract

Turn-of-the-century advocates of corporate welfare work promoted a familial model of labor relations which opened the doors of labor management to women. Scientific management experts argued instead for personnel management based on a consumer marketplace model. Scientific managers gained the upper hand during World War I. Their success depended, in part, on defining women as unfit for executive positions in labor relations, thereby closing the doors of labor management to women. This regendering masked an equally significant abandonment of the welfare system’s contention that companies bore an inherent responsibility for the general welfare of their workers.