The paper discusses how the design of a work system can be crucial to an
organization and how the choice of system depends heavily on the product or service being provided, but also on the attitudes and philosophies of the
personnel in the organization. It examines two
different theories on work systems design, that of Frederick Wilmslow Taylor, a pioneer in the management sciences, and that of Eric Trust. It compares Taylor, who essentially asserted that there is a best method of
doing a given task and a person who is best suited to doing it, with Trust, who, in his research, compared
productivity between different, comparable branches of an organization and tried to relate the differences in productivity with
employee morale.