The History of Progress Functions as a Managerial Technology

Abstract

H In this article, Professors Dutton, Thomas, and Butler trace the sixtyyear history of a major managerial technology-the progress functionfrom its discovery in post-World War I airplane manufacture to its post-World War II popularity among management consultants. By statistically analyzing the large number of progress function studies, they demonstrate that its investigation has become balkanized by academic discipline, and that applied researchers have frequently ignored the contingencies stressed in the leading theoretical studies. Their article is thus a revealing example of how social scientific concepts get translated into business practice.Even though they are more ambiguous and abstract, managerial technologies possess many of the same properties of invention and development as do process and product technologies. 1 This study traces the history of one such managerial technology, the progress function. The progress function was, in itself, an important finding about the cost dynamics of firms. And its history reflects how a managerial technology originates, evolves, and diffuses with respect to both its scientific foundations and its field applications. 2 Progress functions provided management with a relatively simple technology for dealing with a phenomenon of great underlying complexity. Published prescriptions for employing progress functions in firms, however, often diverged from basic research findings. In this article, we explore where, how, and why the progress function emerged, and contrast its diffusion paths in scientific and practical fields. We use as our data base the fifty-year literature on progress functions.

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