Papers presented by Francesca Sanna since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

"Management Techniques as a Business lf Labour: The Circulation of the Bedaux System at the Peñarroya Mining Company in the Interwar Years"

Abstract:

During the interwar period, the application of scientific management principles proved to be a great functionality to help companies facing the Great Depression and the instability of the labour market. Among different methods, techniques and tools developed by engineers and consultants, one in particular obtained globally quite a success: the Bedaux system. The theoretical paradigm of rhe Bedaux system has been largely studied, highlighting particularly the originality of its commodification process (Kipping, 1999). The way the Bedaux system was thus conceived, transformed into a commodity, makes it a prototype to study labour as a matter of business. As is well known, the Bedaux Company quickly lost control of the circulation of its technique which was frequently manipulated internally by companies and circulated in countries where the Bedaux Company was not present. To this extent, companies were still trying to maintain the control of the business of labour despite the increasing role of private consultancy on that matter. Through the case of the Peñarroya mining company, this paper will stress the link between the application of the technique in various Mediterranean sites of the firm (mainly Italy, France, Greece and Spain) - for which Bedaux became a profitable system of management that was used at least until 1960 - and the circulation of engineers and technicians, who carried knowledge and experience of the technique. For Peñarroya, the appropriation of the Bedaux system could thus be seen as a way to maintain the control of business of labour by circulation of knowledge and practice of management. To this extent, a connected micro-historical approach will be deployed to understand the evolution of management techniques as tools of business for the firm.