Concept
Efficiency
Overview
Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid making mistakes or wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time while performing a task. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste.
In more mathematical or scientific terms, it signifies the level of performance that uses the least inputs to achieve the highest amount of output. It often specifically comprises the capability of a specific application of effort to produce a specific outcome with a minimum amount or quantity of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. Efficiency refers to very different inputs and outputs in different fields and industries. In 2019, the European Commission said: "Resource efficiency means using the Earth's limited resources in a sustainable manner while minimising impacts on the environment. It allows us to create more with less and to deliver greater value with less input."
Writer Deborah Stone notes that efficiency is "not a goal in itself. It is not something we want for its own sake, but rather because it helps us attain more of the things we value."
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Efficiency is discussed.
It is a fact that we must look to the activities and achievements of associated life to find what the development of power--that is to say, efficiency--means. The error is in implying that we must adopt measures of subordination rather than of utilization to secure efficiency. The doctrine is rendered adequate when we recognize that social efficiency is attained not by negative constraint but by positive use of…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
As was pointed out earlier, the practical judgment determines means and end at the same time. How then can value be given, as efficiency is given, until the end is chosen? The rain is (metaphorically) valuable for laying dust.
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
500 men, each paid 1,000 bushels, cause an outlay of 500,000 yards. Profit: 150,000 yards. (2.) If efficiency and the cost of producing food remain the same as at first, suppose a change to occur which raises the quantity of corn each laborer receives from 1,000 to 1,100, or, as it is called, increases his real wages—then the account will be: 500 men, each producing 1,200 yards, give a total product of 600,000…
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
states what it is; names the idea
In a mechanistic civilization, there is grave danger of a crude utilitarianism, which sacrifices the whole æsthetic side of life to what is called “efficiency”. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I must confess that I view with alarm the theory that language is merely a means of communication, and not also a vehicle of beauty.
Bertrand Russell, Education and the good life
states what it is; opens on it; names the idea
For as our idea of efficiency is derived from the constant conjunction of two objects, wherever this is observed, the cause is efficient; and where it is not, there can never be a cause of any kind. For the same reason we must reject the distinction betwixt cause and occasion, when supposed to signify any thing essentially different from each other.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
states what it is; names the idea
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Ecological economics.