Abstract
PROF. PEAR has in this little book made an interesting study of fitness for work. He rightly remarks that far more books are written about unfitness. He analyses the aspects of successful achievement which force us to attribute to a worker capacities, abilities, or skills, and then the motives that lead a person to select, continue in, or change a particular work, and finally discusses some current conceptions of the function of work. Stupidity and laziness would almost seem to be out of place in a study of fitness, but the author presents some novel and provocative remarks on the two and shows their relation to such a theme. The final chapter on the question of the value of industrial skill opens up some very vital problems of modern industry. Two apparently opposite tendencies are clearly visible in the modern State: on one hand, there is an undoubted increase in the application of mechanism, with a corresponding diminution in the need for personal skill, but on the other, the very mechanism itself demands more people to adapt and adjust it, that is, to deal intelligently with mechanism, and modern organisations demand still greater skill on the part of those in authority.
Fitness for Work.
By Prof. T. H. Pear. Pp. 187. (London: University of London Press, Ltd., 1928.) 5s. net.
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Fitness for Work . Nature 124, 176 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124176b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124176b0