Karol Adamiecki (
Dąbrowa Górnicza, 18 March 1866 – 16 May 1933,
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
) was a Polish
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...
,
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activitie ...
researcher,
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
, and
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...
.
Life
Karol Adamiecki was a prominent management researcher in Eastern and Central Europe. He began his research at the
Institute of Technology in St. Petersburg, Russia (1884–90). In 1891 he graduated in engineering from the university in
St. Petersburg. He then returned to Dąbrowa Górnicza, where he was in charge of a steel rolling mill. While working in the steel industry, he developed his ideas on management.
In 1919 he joined the
Warsaw Polytechnic
The Warsaw University of Technology ( pl, Politechnika Warszawska, lit=Varsovian Polytechnic) is one of the leading institutes of technology in Poland and one of the largest in Central Europe. It employs 2,453 teaching faculty, with 357 professor ...
as a lecturer, becoming a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...
in 1922. From 1922 he headed the newly established Department of Work Organization and Industrial Enterprises at the Polytechnic's Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
He was the founder and first director (1925–1933) of the Institute of Scientific Organization () in Warsaw. He served as vice president of the
European Association of Scientific Management ().
In 1896 Adamiecki invented a novel means of displaying interdependent processes so as to enhance the visibility of production schedules. In 1903 his theory caused a stir in Russian technical circles. He published some articles on it in the Polish magazine ''Przegląd Techniczny'' (''Technical Review''), nos. 17, 18, 19 and 20 (1909). In 1931 he published a more widely known article describing his diagram, which he called the ''harmonogram'' or ''harmonograf''. Adamiecki had, however, published his works in Polish and Russian, languages little known in the
English-speaking world
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...
. By this time, a similar method had been popularized in
the West by
Henry Gantt
Henry Laurence Gantt (; May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is best known for his work in the development of scientific management. He created the Gantt chart in the 1910s.
Gan ...
(who had published articles on it in 1910 and 1915). With minor modifications, Adamiecki's chart is now more commonly referred to in English as the
Gantt chart.
[Edward R. Marsh, The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 358-36]
JSTOR
/ref>
Adamiecki published his first papers in management in 1898, before Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer. He was widely known for his methods to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of the first management consultants. In 1909, Taylor summed up ...
had popularized scientific management
Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engine ...
. In 1925 Adamiecki founded the Polish Institute of Scientific Management.
He did most of his research and observations in the field of metallurgy
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys.
Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...
.
He is the author of the law of harmony in management: harmony should comprise three parts:
* harmony of choice (all production tools should be mutually compatible, with special regard to their output production speed)
* harmony of doing (the importance of time coordination — schedules and timetables
A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are ...
)
* harmony of spirit (the importance of creating a good team)
In 1972 the State College of Economic Administration in Katowice
Katowice ( , , ; szl, Katowicy; german: Kattowitz, yi, קאַטעוויץ, Kattevitz) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area. It is the 11th most popu ...
was named after him, and in 1974 it became the Karol Adamiecki University of Economics
University of Economics in Katowice (former Karol Adamiecki Academy of Economics in Katowice) is a public higher education institution in Katowice, Poland.
History
The University of Economics in Katowice was founded in December 1936 (by t ...
(''Akademia Ekonomiczna im. Karola Adamieckiego w Katowicach'').
See also
* List of business theorists
This is an annotated list of important business writers.The Harvard Business Review asked 200 management gurus—the business thinkers most often mentioned in the media and management literature—who their gurus were. For their responses, ...
* List of economists
This is an incomplete alphabetical list by surname of notable economists, experts in the social science of economics, past and present. For a history of economics, see the article History of economic thought. Only economists with biographical arti ...
* List of Poles
Notes
References
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External links
Important dates in his life and bibliography, in Polish
The Warsaw University of Technology
A Biography from the Karol Adamiecki University of Economics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adamiecki, Karol
Warsaw University of Technology faculty
20th-century Polish economists
Polish engineers
Polish business theorists
People from Dąbrowa Górnicza
1866 births
1933 deaths