In 1906 he emigrated with his family to the United States, where he was employed by the
American Locomotive Company. There he met
Henry Gantt, who was a consultant for the company at that time. Polakov joined Gantt's consulting company in 1910 and got to know
Frederick Taylor,
Frank Gilbreth and
Harrington Emerson. However, by 1912 he was working for
Wallace Clark before launching his own consulting company in 1915.
Polakov joined the
Taylor Society at this time and supported a
Marxist view of capitalism in their bulletin.[4] He also joined the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and was part of a faction led by Gantt that broke from the ASME conference to hold their own meeting of the New Machine, an organization which sought political as well as an economic power. About fifty people listened to Gantt's call for industrial reform and Polakov's analysis of inefficiency in the industrial context. Little came of their initiative despite lobbying
Woodrow Wilson to give more power to managers. However, responding to the war needs of the
US Navy, Gantt and Polakov were employed as consultants by the
Emergency Fleet Corporation where Gantt finalized the development of his
Gantt charts. Having helped the US shipbuilders keep up with losses due to German submarine action, the Gantt charts were then applied to managing fleet movements at the
U. S. Shipping Board.[5]
(1921) "Making Work Fascinating" ASME Journal, December
(1922) Polakov, Walter N. (1922), "Kinetic Statistics as an Aid to Production and Distribution", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 18 (139): 359–365,
doi:
10.2307/2276954,
JSTOR2276954
^Wren, Daniel (1980), "Scientific Management in the U.S.S.R., with Particular Reference to the Contribution of Walter N. Polakov", The Academy of Management Review, 5 (1): 1–11,
doi:
10.5465/amr.1980.4288834,
JSTOR257800
^Kelly, Diane J. (2004), "Marxist Manager amidst the Progressives: Walter N Polakov and the Taylor Society", Journal of Industrial History, 6 (2): 61–75
^Wren, Daniel (1980), "Scientific Management in the U.S.S.R., with Particular Reference to the Contribution of Walter N. Polakov", The Academy of Management Review, 5 (1): 1–11,
doi:
10.5465/amr.1980.4288834,
JSTOR257800