Karol Adamiecki (

Dąbrowa Górnicza Dąbrowa Górnicza () is a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, southern Poland, near Katowice and Sosnowiec. It is located in eastern part of the Silesian Voivodeship, on the Czarna Przemsza and Biała Przemsza rivers (tributaries of the Vistula Rive ...

, 18 March 1866 – 16 May 1933,

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

) was a Polish

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

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 Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

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 Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

. 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 () 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 professors (including 145 titular professors). The student body ...

as a lecturer, becoming a

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 The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English language, English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, making it the ...

. By this time, a similar method had been popularized in

the West West is a cardinal direction or compass point. West or The West may also refer to: Geography and locations Global context * The Western world * Western culture and Western civilization in general * The Western Bloc, countries allied with NAT ...

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. Gant ...

(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 A Gantt chart is a bar chart that illustrates a schedule (project management), project schedule. It was designed and popularized by Henry Gantt around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the Dependency (project management), depe ...

.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 consulting, management consultants. In 190 ...

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 engineer ...

. 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 ...

. He is the author of the "law of harmony in management" where he said 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), and * harmony of spirit (the importance of creating a good team). In 1972, the State College of Economic Administration in

Katowice Katowice (, ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Katowice urban area. As of 2021, Katowice has an official population of 286,960, and a resident population estimate of around 315,000. K ...

was named after him, and in 1974 it became the Karol Adamiecki University of Economics (''Akademia Ekonomiczna im. Karola Adamieckiego w Katowicach'').

Notes

References

* * * * *

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 Academic staff of the Warsaw University of Technology 20th-century Polish economists Polish engineers Polish business theorists People from Dąbrowa Górnicza 1866 births 1933 deaths

Life

See also

Notes

References

External links