The Emergence of a New Regime: Business Management and Office Mechanisation in the Dutch Financial Sector in the 1920s

During the 1920s the methods, procedures and technologies used in the Dutch office workers' sector to conduct administrative processes underwent sweeping changes. New management styles, office methods and information technologies were introduced. These changes were closely related to each other, and served as a new organisational model for large-scale office activities. We may therefore speak of the emergence of a new ‘regime’ of office organisation. Important elements of the new regime were the standardisation and formalisation of internal communication flows, the introduction of systematic analyses of office operations and the use of punched card technology. In this article the causes, characteristics and consequences of this regime shift are traced by closely examining a couple of reorganisation projects that took place in the 1920s at two different Dutch financial institutions, one of which was successful and one of which amounted to a failure. These institutions were the Rotterdamsche Bankvereeniging (Robaver) and the national Giro Service. The cases demonstrate that the different elements of the new regime were closely connected, and that the new management styles and office methods were indispensable for the successful introduction of the new information technology.