Wow! That's a heavy conclusion!

"Collectively, Americans are paying the price in a lack of competitiveness, loss of profit, unemployment, and ruining of lives."

All because of Frederick Taylor?

Functional separation of work did not begin with Taylor. It goes back at least to hunter/gatherer societies and has been known since 1776 as the division of labor.

This article makes some sweeping statements with little evidence:

1. Does the author believe that technology has not realistically allowed us to do more with less? Did I misunderstand that.
2. Functional separation of work creates one of the biggest design problems for work today? And it exists only because management carries it over from previous regimes? What is the evidence for this?
3. Management's attitude toward workers today is one of distrust? Not in my experience.

Perhaps a better place to look for the cause of a lack of competitiveness and unemployment is the distance we've gotten away from the principles of free-market economics, with crony capitalism, trade-union protectionism, and the regulatory burden of a 5,000-page federal tax code.

Scott-

Thanks for the comment.

Taylor doesn't recognize division of labor from scientific management because he assumed the division of labor to be preexisting.  Let's not confuse Taylor's principle of analysis (scientific management) with a principle of action (division of labor).  Taylor focused on work processes (of his era), he ignored indirect and managerial processes as evidence at Watertown Arsenal.

Technology can enable work, the question is, does it?  Evidence - go to a contact center (almost any), take a demand from a customer and see how many IT systems it takes to complete the work end-to-end.  You would be horrified, I have seen up to 17 different IT systems here in the States. Is that enabling?

Service design - carry over from previous regimes is the comment you get back from management when you ask them why they have 17 different systems and A answer you will get is " I inherited it."  This goes for any other service design I have seen.  Best evidence - go to any organization and see the functional separation of sales, operations, finance, etc.  They are all designed the same - why is it so?  There is an unconscious acceptance of organizational design.

Management's attitude of workers often appears to be one of trust, but management seeks compliance to their dictates through an inspection bureaucracy that you (Scott) recognize as problematic here in the US.  Workers rarely have the right to make decisions as management dictates things like you can give a $50 credit but anything higher has to go to varying levels of management approval.  So, yes there is distrust.  

Tripp

My father worked at the Watertown Arsenal starting in 1940. When I was young, I would hear all the stories of his early supervisors who worked under the "Taylor Regime"

 There was universal hatred for Frederik Taylor and stories about the big drinking bash after work circa 1915 to celebrate his death and how he did the right thing by dying, No one had a good word for him down the ranks.