Preaching ‘the gospel of efficiency’: The promotion of ideas about profit‐sharing and payment by results in Australia, 1915–29

Abstract

This article examines the process by which the idea of industrial efficiency emerged from the Protestant work ethic in the Australian context. The study uses Australian evidence to support Max Weber's thesis that the emphasis on efficiency in the way the individual worked was part of the continued secularisation of the religious asceticism of Protestantism in modern society. The article examines the ideology behind the methods by which industrial efficiency was to be realized—profit‐sharing and payment by results—between 1915 and 1929, when these ideas first rose to prominence in Australia.