Final answer:
In the early 20th century, a production-centric approach dominated, emphasizing the improvement of products and production efficiency, largely ignoring market dynamics. The adoption of scientific management principles aimed to maximize productivity, and industrialization was marked by a shift towards mechanized, mass production in factories.
Step-by-step explanation:
For the early part of the 20th century, the focus was on the production-centric approach of improving products and production efficiency without much regard for what was going on in the marketplace. During this era, industrialization was characterized by the adoption of new technologies to shift from farm production to manufacturing production, a change that began earlier, in the 1750 to 1850 period, with significant developments in industrial technology that transformed how goods were manufactured. The principles of scientific management, also known as Taylorism, were introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911 to enhance productivity by minimizing wasteful movements, among other strategies.
Throughout the 19th century, as industrial production soared, factory owners sought to outpace competitors and increase profits by optimizing the efficiency of labor and production. This drive for efficiency and the focus on mechanization led to a manufacturing environment geared toward mass-producing identical products. Workers operated in assembly lines, performing repetitive tasks, often under demanding and precarious conditions, to accommodate the push for greater efficiency and speed in production.