Taylor i välfärden : Arbetsstudier i svensk sjukvård 1944–1960

Sammanfattning: In this paper I analyse the first use of work studies in Swedish hospitals, between 1944 and 1960. The overall purpose of the study is to increase the knowledge of how Taylorism was introduced in the Swedish welfare state. The operational purpose is to increase the knowledge of how tayloristicwork studies influenced the health service and its employees, and how the health service influenced the tayloristic methods and the engineers who conducted the work studies.In the early 1940s, the shortage of trained staff and raising costs became motivations for rationalising Swedish healthcare. The idea of using work studies as a method of rationalisation was driven by the state, in contrast both to early attempts in the US as well as when Taylorism was introduced in Swedish industry. This "push" from the state, rather than a "pull" from hospitals and the fact that only five engineers were working on work studies in the entire healthcare sector, are the reasons why work studies did not produce any measurable economic results. To be able to use work studies at the hospitals, the engineers made major changes to the original tayloristic methods. All movement studies were scrapped, and four out of ten rationalisation proposals were not based on traditional Taylorism. All groups, except doctors, were studied but a difference can be seen from 1955 when rationalisation proposals were directed only at the supportfunctions. The reason for this was that the engineers worked on behalf of the regional councils, which steered the engineers away from direct care and towards support functions such as laundry. The professional identity of Swedish engineers after the First World War focused on cooperation, neutrality, problem solving and fact-based decisions. The same professional identity can be seen for the engineers in the healthcare sector, who also actively used their professional identity as an argument why their work could contribute to the healthcare system and its rationalisation. After 1960, Taylorism gained more ground in Swedish healthcare and the work studies most likely played a role in this, but it was not until hospitals were more industrialised that Taylorism was widely disseminated in the healthcare sector. It is, therefore, hard to say that it was the work studies that led to the industrialisation of hospitals in Sweden.