APPENDIX A OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR - RIM THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION A OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR...

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THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIORA

Why study history? Oliver Wendell Holmesanswered that question succinctly when hesaid, “When I want to understand what ishappening today or try to decide what willhappen tomorrow, I look back.” By lookingback at the history of organizational behav-ior, you gain a great deal of insight into howthe field got to where it is today. It’ll help

you understand, for instance, how manage-ment came to impose rules and regulationson employees, why many workers in orga-nizations do standardized and repetitivetasks on assembly lines, and why a numberof organizations in recent years havereplaced their assembly lines with team-based work units. In this appendix, you’ll

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find a brief description of how the theoryand practice of organizational behaviorhave evolved.

So where do we start? Human beingsand organized activities have been aroundfor thousands of years, but we needn’t goback beyond the eighteenth or nineteenthcentury to find OB’s roots.

Early PracticesThere is no question that hundreds of peo-ple helped to plant the “seeds” from whichthe OB “garden” has grown.1 Three individ-uals, however, were particularly importantin promoting ideas that would eventuallyhave a major influence in shaping the direc-tion and boundaries of OB: Adam Smith,Charles Babbage, and Robert Owen.

Adam SmithAdam Smith is more typically cited by econ-omists for his contributions to classical eco-

nomic doctrine, but his discussion in TheWealth of Nations,2 published in 1776,included a brilliant argument on the eco-nomic advantages that organizations andsociety would reap from the division oflabor (also called work specialization).Smith used the pin-manufacturing industryfor his examples. He noted that ten individ-uals, each doing a specialized task, couldproduce about 48,000 pins a day amongthem. He proposed, however, that if eachwere working separately and independently,the ten workers together would be lucky tomake ten pins in one day. If each had todraw the wire, straighten it, cut it, poundheads for each pin, sharpen the point, andsolder the head and pin shaft, it would bequite a feat to produce ten pins a day!

Smith concluded that division of laborraised productivity by increasing eachworker’s skill and dexterity, by saving timethat is commonly lost in changing tasks, andby encouraging the creation of labor-savinginventions and machinery. The extensive



development of assembly-line productionprocesses during this century has undoubt-edly been stimulated by the economicadvantages of work specialization cited overtwo centuries ago by Adam Smith.

Charles BabbageCharles Babbage was a British mathematicsprofessor who expanded on the virtues ofdivision of labor first articulated by AdamSmith. In his book On the Economy ofMachinery and Manufactures,3 published in1832, Babbage added the following toSmith’s list of the advantages that accruefrom division of labor:

1. It reduces the time needed for learninga job.

2. It reduces the waste of material duringthe learning stage.

3. It allows for the attainment of highskill levels.

4. It allows a more careful matching ofpeople’s skills and physical abilitieswith specific tasks.

Moreover, Babbage proposed that theeconomies from specialization should be asrelevant to doing mental work as physicallabor. Today, for example, we take special-ization for granted among professionals.When we have a skin rash, we go to a der-matologist. When we buy a home, we con-sult a lawyer who specializes in real estate.The professors you encounter in your busi-ness school classes specialize in areas suchas tax accounting, entrepreneurship, mar-keting research, and organizational behav-ior. These applications of division of laborwere unheard of in eighteenth-centuryEngland. But contemporary organizationsaround the world — in both manufacturingand service industries — make wide use ofdivision of labor.



Robert OwenRobert Owen was a Welsh entrepreneur whobought his first factory in 1789, at the age of18. He is important in the history of OBbecause he was one of the first industrialiststo recognize how the growing factory sys-tem was demeaning to workers.

Repulsed by the harsh practices he sawin factories—such as the employment ofyoung children (many under the age of ten),13-hour workdays, and miserable workingconditions—Owen became a reformer. Hechided factory owners for treating theirequipment better than their employees. Hecriticized them for buying the best machinesbut then employing the cheapest labor torun them. Owen argued that money spenton improving labor was one of the bestinvestments that business executives couldmake. He claimed that showing concern foremployees both was profitable for manage-ment and would relieve human misery.

For his time, Owen was an idealist.What he proposed was a utopian workplace

that would reduce the suffering of the work-ing class. He was more than a hundred yearsahead of his time when he argued, in 1825,for regulated hours of work for all, childlabor laws, public education, company-furnished meals at work, and businessinvolvement in community projects.4

The Classical EraThe classical era covered the period fromabout 1900 to the mid-1930s. It was duringthis period that the first general theories ofmanagement began to evolve. The classicalcontributors—who include Frederick Taylor,Henri Fayol, Max Weber, Mary Parker Follett,and Chester Barnard—laid the foundationfor contemporary management practices.

Scientific ManagementThe typical United Parcel Service (UPS) dri-ver today makes 120 stops during his or herwork shift. Every step on that driver’s daily



route has been carefully studied by UPSindustrial engineers to maximize efficiency.Every second taken up by stoplights, traffic,detours, doorbells, walkways, stairways, andcoffee breaks has been documented by UPSengineers so as to cut wasted time. It’s noaccident, for instance, that all UPS driverstap their horns when they approach a stopin hopes that the customer will hurry to thedoor seconds sooner. It’s also no accidentthat all UPS drivers walk to a customer’sdoor at the brisk pace of three feet per sec-ond and knock first lest seconds be lostsearching for the doorbell.

Today’s UPS drivers are following prin-ciples that were laid down more than 85years ago by Frederick W. Taylor in hisPrinciples of Scientific Management.5 In thisbook, Taylor described how the scientificmethod could be used to define the “onebest way” for a job to be done. In this sec-tion, we review his work.

As a mechanical engineer at the Midvaleand Bethlehem Steel companies in Pennsyl-

vania, Taylor was consistently appalled atthe inefficiency of workers. Employees usedvastly different techniques to do the samejob. They were prone to “taking it easy” onthe job. Taylor believed that worker outputwas only about one-third of what was possi-ble. Therefore, he set out to correct the situ-ation by applying the scientific method tojobs on the shop floor. He spent more thantwo decades pursuing with a passion the“one best way” for each job to be done.

It’s important to understand whatTaylor saw at Midvale Steel that aroused hisdetermination to improve the way thingswere done in the plant. At the time, therewere no clear concepts of worker and man-agement responsibilities. Virtually no effec-tive work standards existed. Employees pur-posely worked at a slow pace. Managementdecisions were of the “seat-of-the-pants”nature, based on hunch and intuition.Workers were placed on jobs with little orno concern for matching their abilities andaptitudes with the tasks they were required



to do. Most important, management andworkers considered themselves to be in con-tinual conflict. Rather than cooperating totheir mutual benefit, they perceived theirrelationship as a zero-sum game—any gainby one would be at the expense of the other.

Taylor sought to create a mental revolu-tion among both the workers and manage-ment by defining clear guidelines for improv-ing production efficiency. He defined fourprinciples of management, listed in ExhibitA-1; he argued that following these principleswould result in the prosperity of both man-agement and workers. Workers would earnmore pay, and management more profits.

Probably the most widely cited exampleof scientific management has been Taylor’spig iron experiment. The average daily out-put of 92-pound pigs loaded onto rail carswas 12.5 tons per worker. Taylor was con-vinced that by scientifically analyzing thejob to determine the one best way to loadpig iron, the output could be increased tobetween 47 and 48 tons per day.

Taylor began his experiment by lookingfor a physically strong subject who placed ahigh value on the dollar. The individualTaylor chose was a big, strong Dutch immi-grant, whom he called Schmidt. Schmidt,like the other loaders, earned $1.15 a day,which even at the turn of the century, wasbarely enough for a person to survive on. Asthe following quotation from Taylor’s bookdemonstrates, Taylor used money — theopportunity to make $1.85 a day—as theprimary means to get workers like Schmidtto do exactly as they were told:

“Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?”“Vell, I don’t know vat you mean.” “Oh,yes you do. What I want to know iswhether you are a high-priced man or not.”“Vell, I don’t know vat you mean.” “Oh,come now, you answer my questions. WhatI want to find out is whether you are ahigh-priced man or one of these cheap fel-lows here. What I want to know is whetheryou want to earn $1.85 a day or whetheryou are satisfied with $1.15, just the same



as all those cheap fellows are getting.” “DidI vant $1.85 a day? Vas dot a high-pricedman? Vell, yes. I vas a high-priced man.”6

Using money to motivate Schmidt,Taylor went about having him load the pigirons, alternating various job factors to see

what impact the changes had on Schmidt’sdaily output. For instance, on some daysSchmidt would lift the pig irons by bendinghis knees, whereas on other days he wouldkeep his legs straight and use his back. Heexperimented with rest periods, walkingspeed, carrying positions, and other vari-


1. Develop a science for each element of an individual’s work. (Pre-viously, workers used the “rule-of-thumb” method.)

2. Scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop theworker. (Previously, workers chose their own work and trainedthemselves as best they could.)

3. Heartily cooperate with the workers so as to ensure that all workis done in accordance with the principles of the science that hasbeen developed. (Previously, management and workers were incontinual conflict.)

4. Divide work and responsibility almost equally between manage-ment and workers. Management takes over all work for which it isbetter suited than the workers. (Previously, almost all the work andthe greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the workers.)

Exhibit A-1 Taylor’s Four Principles of Management


ables. After a long period of scientificallytrying various combinations of procedures,techniques, and tools, Taylor succeeded inobtaining the level of productivity hethought possible. By putting the right per-son on the job with the correct tools andequipment, by having the worker follow hisinstructions exactly, and by motivating theworker through the economic incentive of asignificantly higher daily wage, Taylor wasable to reach his 48-ton objective.

Another Taylor experiment dealt withshovel sizes. Taylor noticed that everyworker in the plant used the same-sizedshovel, regardless of the material he wasmoving. This made no sense to Taylor. Ifthere was an optimum weight that wouldmaximize a worker’s shoveling output overan entire day, then Taylor thought the sizeof the shovel should vary depending on theweight of the material being moved. Afterextensive experimentation, Taylor foundthat 21 pounds was the optimum shovelcapacity. To achieve this optimum weight,

heavy material like iron ore would bemoved with a small-faced shovel and lightmaterial like coke with a large-faced shovel.Based on Taylor’s findings, supervisorswould no longer merely tell a worker to“shovel that pile over there.” Depending onthe material to be moved, the supervisorwould now have to determine the appropri-ate shovel size and assign that size to theworker. The result, of course, was again sig-nificant increases in worker output.

Using similar approaches in other jobs,Taylor was able to define the one best way fordoing each job. He could then, after selectingthe right people for the job, train them to doit precisely in this one best way. To motivateworkers, he favored incentive wage plans.Overall, Taylor achieved consistent improve-ments in productivity in the range of 200 per-cent or more. He reaffirmed the role of man-agers to plan and control and that of workersto perform as they were instructed. ThePrinciples of Scientific Management, as well aspapers that Taylor wrote and presented,



spread his ideas not only in the United States,but also in France, Germany, Russia, andJapan. One of the biggest boosts in interest inscientific management in the United Statescame during a 1910 hearing on railroad ratesbefore the Interstate Commerce Commission.Appearing before the commission, an effi-ciency expert claimed that railroads couldsave a million dollars a day (equivalent toabout $16 million a day in 1998 dollars)through the application of scientific manage-ment! The early acceptance of scientific man-agement techniques by U.S. manufacturingcompanies, in fact, gave them a comparativeadvantage over foreign firms that made U.S.manufacturing efficiency the envy of theworld—at least for 50 years or so!

Administrative TheoryAdministrative theory describes efforts todefine the universal functions that man-agers perform and principles that constitutegood management practice. The major con-

tributor to administrative theory was aFrench industrialist named Henri Fayol.

Writing at about the same time as Taylor,Fayol proposed that all managers performfive management functions: They plan, orga-nize, command, coordinate, and control.7The importance of this simple insight isunderlined when we acknowledge thatalmost every introductory management text-book today uses these same five functions, ora very close variant of them, as a basic frame-work for describing what managers do.

In addition, Fayol described the practiceof management as something distinct fromaccounting, finance, production, distribu-tion, and other typical business functions.He argued that management was an activitycommon to all human undertakings in busi-ness, in government, and even in the home.He then proceeded to state 14 principles ofmanagement that could be taught inschools and universities. These principlesare shown in Exhibit A-2.




1. Division of Work. This principle is the same as Adam Smith’s “division of labor.” Special-ization increases output by making employees more efficient.

2. Authority. Managers must be able to give orders. Authority gives them this right. Alongwith authority, however, goes responsibility. Whenever authority is exercised, responsibil-ity arises.

3. Discipline. Employees must obey and respect the rules that govern the organization. Gooddiscipline is the result of effective leadership, a clear understanding between managementand workers regarding the organization’s rules, and the judicious use of penalties for in-fractions of the rules.

4. Unity of Command. Every employee should receive orders from only one superior.5. Unity of Direction. Each group of organizational activities that have the same objective

should be directed by one manager using one plan.6. Subordination of Individual Interests to the General Interests. The interests of any one em-

ployee or group of employees should not take precedence over the interests of the organi-zation as a whole.

7. Remuneration. Workers must be paid a fair wage for their services.8. Centralization. Centralization refers to the degree to which subordinates are involved in

decision making. Whether decision making is centralized (to management) or decentral-ized (to subordinates) is a question of proper proportion. The problem is to find the opti-mum degree of centralization for each situation.

Exhibit A-2 Fayol’s 14 Prnciples of Management


Structural TheoryWhile Taylor was concerned with manage-ment at the shop level (or what we todaywould describe as the job of a supervisor)and Fayol focused on general managementfunctions, the German sociologist MaxWeber (pronounced Vay-ber) was developinga theory of authority structures and describ-

ing organizational activity as based onauthority relations.8 He was one of the firstto look at management and organizationalbehavior from a structural perspective.

Weber described an ideal type of organi-zation that he called a bureaucracy. Bureau-cracy was a system characterized by divisionof labor, a clearly defined hierarchy, detailedrules and regulations, and impersonal rela-


9. Scalar Chain. The line of authority from top management to the lowest ranks representsthe scalar chain. Communications should follow this chain. However, if following the chaincreates delays, cross-communications can be allowed if agreed to by all parties and supe-riors are kept informed.

10.Order. People and materials should be in the right place at the right time.11.Equity. Managers should be kind and fair to their subordinates.12.Stability of Tenure of Personnel. High employee turnover is inefficient. Management should

provide orderly personnel planning and ensure that replacements are available to fill va-cancies.

13. Initiative. Employees who are allowed to originate and carry out plans will exert high lev-els of effort.

14.Esprit de Corps. Promoting team spirit will build harmony and unity within the organization.


tionships. Weber recognized that this “idealbureaucracy” didn’t exist in reality but,rather, represented a selective reconstruc-tion of the real world. He meant it to betaken as a basis for theorizing about workand how work could be done in largegroups. His theory became the design proto-type for large organizations. The detailedfeatures of Weber’s ideal bureaucratic struc-ture are outlined in Exhibit A-3.

“Social Man” TheoryPeople like Taylor, Fayol, and Weber couldbe faulted for forgetting that human beingsare the central core of every organizationand that human beings are social animals.Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnardwere two theorists who saw the importanceof the social aspects of organizations. Theirideas were born late in the scientific man-agement period but didn’t achieve any largedegree of recognition until the 1930s.9

MARY PARKER FOLLETT Mary ParkerFollett was one of the earliest writers to rec-ognize that organizations could be viewedfrom the perspective of individual and groupbehavior.10 A transitionalist writing duringthe time when scientific management domi-nated, Follett was a social philosopher whoproposed more people-oriented ideas. Herideas had clear implications for organiza-tional behavior. Follett thought that organi-zations should be based on a group ethicrather than individualism. Individual poten-tial, she argued, remained only potentialuntil released through group association. Themanager’s job was to harmonize and coordi-nate group efforts. Managers and workersshould view themselves as partners—as partof a common group. Therefore, managersshould rely more on their expertise andknowledge than on the formal authority oftheir position to lead subordinates.

Follett’s humanistic ideas have influencedthe way we look at motivation, leadership,



power, and authority today. In fact, Japaneseorganization and management styles, whichcame into vogue in North America and

Europe in the late 1970s, are indebted toFollett. They place a heavy emphasis on grouptogetherness and team effort.


1. Job Specialization. Jobs are broken down into simple, routine,and well-defined tasks.

2. Authority Hierarchy. Offices or positions are organized in a hi-erarchy, each lower one being controlled and supervised by ahigher one.

3. Formal Selection. All organizational members are to be selectedon the basis of technical qualifications demonstrated by train-ing, education, or formal examination.

4. Formal Rules and Regulations. To ensure uniformity and to regu-late the actions of employees, managers must depend heavilyon formal organizational rules.

5. Impersonality. Rules and controls are applied uniformly, avoid-ing involvement with personalities and personal preferences ofemployees.

6. Career Orientation. Managers are professional officials ratherthan owners of the units they manage. They work for fixedsalaries and pursue their careers within the organization.

Exhibit A-3 Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy


CHESTER BARNARD Like Henri Fayol,Chester Barnard was a practitioner. Hejoined the American Telephone andTelegraph system in 1909 and became pres-ident of New Jersey Bell in 1927. Barnardhad read Weber and was influenced by hiswritings. But unlike Weber, who had amechanistic and impersonal view of organi-zations, Barnard saw organizations as socialsystems that require human cooperation.He expressed his views in The Functions ofthe Executive,11 published in 1938.

Barnard viewed organizations as madeup of people who have interacting socialrelationships. Managers’ major roles were tocommunicate and to stimulate subordinatesto high levels of effort. A major part of anorganization’s success, as Barnard saw it,depended on obtaining cooperation from itspersonnel. Barnard also argued that successdepended on maintaining good relationswith people and institutions outside theorganization with whom the organizationregularly interacted. By recognizing the orga-

nization’s dependence on investors, suppli-ers, customers, and other external con-stituencies, Barnard introduced the idea thatmanagers had to examine the environmentand then adjust the organization to main-tain a state of equilibrium. So, for instance,regardless of how efficient an organization’sproduction might be, if management failedto ensure a continuous input of materialsand supplies or to find markets for its out-puts, then the organization’s survival wouldbe threatened. Much of the current interestin how the environment affects organiza-tions and their employees can be traced toideas initially suggested by Barnard.

The Behavioral EraThe “people side” of organizations cameinto its own during the period we’ll call thebehavioral era. As we show, this era wasmarked by the human relations movementand the widespread application in organiza-tions of behavioral science research. While



this behavioral era really didn’t begin to rolluntil the 1930s, two earlier events deservebrief mention because they played animportant part in the application and devel-opment of organizational behavior. Theseare the birth of the “personnel office”around the turn of the century and the cre-ation of the field of industrial psychologywith the publication of Hugo Münsterberg’stextbook in 1913.

The Birth of the “PersonnelOffice”In response to the growth of trade union-ism at the turn of the century, a few firms —for example, H.J. Heinz, Colorado Fuel &Iron, and International Harvester— createdthe position of “welfare secretary.” Welfaresecretaries were supposed to assist workersby suggesting improvements in workingconditions, housing, medical care, educa-tional facilities, and recreation. These peo-ple, who were the forerunners of today’s

personnel or human resource managementdirectors, acted as a buffer between theorganization and its employees. The B. F.Goodrich Co. developed the first employ-ment department in 1900, but its responsi-bilities consisted only of hiring. In 1902,the National Cash Register Company estab-lished the first comprehensive labor depart-ment responsible for wage administration,grievances, employment and working con-ditions, health conditions, recordkeeping,and worker improvement.

The Birth of Industrial PsychologyHugo Münsterberg created the field ofindustrial psychology with the publicationof his text Psychology and IndustrialEfficiency12 in 1913. In it, he argued for thescientific study of human behavior to iden-tify general patterns and to explain individ-ual differences. Interestingly, Münsterbergsaw a link between scientific managementand industrial psychology. Both sought



increased efficiency through scientific workanalyses and through better alignment ofindividual skills and abilities with thedemands of various jobs.

Münsterberg suggested the use of psy-chological tests to improve employee selec-tion, the value of learning theory in thedevelopment of training methods, and thestudy of human behavior in order to under-stand what techniques are most effectivefor motivating workers. Much of our cur-rent knowledge of selection techniques,employee training, work design, and moti-vation is built on Münsterberg’s work.

The Magna Carta of LaborFollowing the stock market crash of 1929,the United States and much of the world’seconomy entered the Great Depression. Tohelp relieve the effects of the depression onthe U.S. labor force, President FranklinRoosevelt supported the Wagner Act, whichwas passed in 1935. This act recognized

unions as the authorized representatives ofworkers, able to bargain collectively withemployers in the interests of their members.The Wagner Act would prove to be theMagna Carta of labor. It legitimized the roleof trade unions and encouraged rapidgrowth in union membership. In response tothis legislation, managers in industrybecame much more open to finding newways to handle their employees. Having lostthe battle to keep unions out of their facto-ries, management began to try to improveworking conditions and seek better relationswith its work force. A set of studies done atWestern Electric’s Hawthorne plant would bethe prime stimulus for the human relationsmovement that swept American industryfrom the late 1930s through the 1950s.

Human RelationsThe essence of the human relations move-ment was the belief that the key to higherproductivity in organizations was increasing



employee satisfaction. In addition to theHawthorne studies, three people playedimportant roles in conveying the message ofhuman relations: Dale Carnegie, AbrahamMaslow, and Douglas McGregor. In this sec-tion, we briefly review each man’s contribu-tion. But first, we’ll briefly describe the veryinfluential Hawthorne studies.

THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES Without ques-tion, the most important contribution tothe human relations movement withinorganizational behavior came out of theHawthorne studies undertaken at theWestern Electric Company’s HawthorneWorks in Cicero, Illinois. These studies, orig-inally begun in 1924 but eventuallyexpanded and carried on through the early1930s, were initially devised by WesternElectric industrial engineers to examine theeffect of various illumination levels onworker productivity. Control and experi-mental groups were established. The experi-mental group was presented with varying

illumination intensities, while the controlgroup worked under a constant intensity.The engineers had expected individual out-put to be directly related to the intensity oflight. However, they found that as the lightlevel was increased in the experimentalgroup, output for both groups rose. To thesurprise of the engineers, as the light levelwas dropped in the experimental group,productivity continued to increase in bothgroups. In fact, a productivity decrease wasobserved in the experimental group onlywhen the light intensity had been reducedto that of moonlight. The engineers con-cluded that illumination intensity was notdirectly related to group productivity, butthey could not explain the behavior theyhad witnessed.

The Western Electric engineers askedHarvard professor Elton Mayo and his asso-ciates in 1927 to join the study as consul-tants. Thus began a relationship that wouldlast through 1932 and encompass numer-ous experiments covering the redesign of



jobs, changes in the length of the workdayand workweek, introduction of rest periods,and individual versus group wage plans.13

For example, one experiment was designedto evaluate the effect of a group pieceworkincentive pay system on group productiv-ity. The results indicated that the incentiveplan had less effect on a worker’s outputthan did group pressure and acceptanceand the concomitant security. Social normsor standards of the group, therefore, wereconcluded to be the key determinants ofindividual work behavior.

Scholars generally agree that theHawthorne studies had a large and dramaticimpact on the direction of organizationalbehavior and management practice. Mayo’sconclusions were that behavior and senti-ments were closely related, that group influ-ences significantly affected individualbehavior, that group standards establishedindividual worker output, and that moneywas less a factor in determining output thanwere group standards, group sentiments,

and security. These conclusions led to a newemphasis on the human factor in the func-tioning of organizations and the attainmentof their goals. They also led to increasedpaternalism by management.

The Hawthorne studies have not beenwithout critics. Attacks have been made ontheir procedures, analyses of findings, andthe conclusions they drew.14 However, froma historical standpoint, it’s of little impor-tance whether the studies were academicallysound or their conclusions justified. What isimportant is that they stimulated an interestin human factors.

DALE CARNEGIE Dale Carnegie’s bookHow to Win Friends and Influence People15

was read by millions during the 1930s,1940s, and 1950s. During this same period,tens of thousands of managers and aspiringmanagers attended his managementspeeches and seminars. So Carnegie’s ideasdeserve attention because of the wide audi-ence they commanded.



Carnegie’s essential theme was that theway to success was through winning thecooperation of others. He advised his audi-ence to: (1) make others feel importantthrough a sincere appreciation of theirefforts; (2) strive to make a good firstimpression; (3) win people to their way ofthinking by letting others do the talking,being sympathetic, and “never telling a manhe is wrong”; and (4) change people bypraising their good traits and giving theoffender the opportunity to save face.16

ABRAHAM MASLOW Few students of col-lege age have not been exposed to the ideasof Abraham Maslow. A humanistic psychol-ogist, Maslow proposed a theoretical hierar-chy of five needs: physiological, safety,social, esteem, and self-actualization.17 Froma motivation standpoint, Maslow arguedthat each step in the hierarchy must be sat-isfied before the next can be activated, andthat once a need was substantially satisfied,it no longer motivated behavior. Moreover,

he believed that self-actualization—that is,achieving one’s full potential — was thesummit of a human being’s existence.Managers who accepted Maslow’s hierarchyattempted to alter their organizations andmanagement practices to reduce barriers toemployees’ self-actualization.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR Douglas McGregoris best known for his formulation of two setsof assumptions—Theory X and Theory Y—about human nature.18 Briefly, Theory Xrests on an essentially negative view of peo-ple. It assumes that they have little ambi-tion, dislike work, want to avoid responsi-bility, and need to be closely directed towork effectively. Theory Y, on the otherhand, rests on a positive view of people. Itassumes they can exercise self-direction,accept responsibility, and consider work tobe as natural as rest or play. McGregor per-sonally believed that Theory Y assumptionsbest captured the true nature of workers andshould guide management practice. As a



result, he argued that managers should freeup their employees to unleash their full cre-ative and productive potential.

Behavioral Science TheoristsThe final category within the behavioral eraencompasses a group of researchers who, asTaylor did in scientific management, reliedon the scientific method for the study oforganizational behavior. Unlike members ofthe human relations movement, the behav-ioral science theorists engaged in objectiveresearch of human behavior in organiza-tions. They carefully attempted to keep theirpersonal beliefs out of their work. Theysought to develop rigorous research designsthat could be replicated by other behavioralscientists in the hope that a science of orga-nizational behavior could be built.

A full review of the contributions madeby behavioral science theorists would coverhundreds of pages, since their work makes upa large part of today’s foundations of organi-

zational behavior. But to give you the flavorof their work, we’ll briefly summarize thecontributions of a few of the major theorists.

JACOB MORENO Jacob Moreno created ananalytical technique called sociometry forstudying group interactions.19 Members of agroup were asked whom they liked or dis-liked, and whom they wished to work withor not work with. From these data, collectedin interviews, Moreno was able to constructsociograms that identified attraction, repul-sion, and indifference patterns among groupmembers. Moreno’s sociometric analysis hasbeen used in organizations to create cohesiveand high-performing work teams.

B.F. SKINNER Few behavioral scientists’names are more familiar to the general pub-lic than that of B.F. Skinner. His research onoperant conditioning and behavior modifi-cation had a significant effect on the designof organizational training programs andreward systems.20



Essentially, Skinner demonstrated thatbehavior is a function of its consequences.He found that people will most likelyengage in desired behavior if they arerewarded for doing so; these rewards aremost effective if they immediately followthe desired response; and behavior that isnot rewarded, or is punished, is less likely tobe repeated.

DAVID MCCLELLAND Psychologist DavidMcClelland tested the strength of individualachievement motivation by asking subjectsto look at a set of somewhat ambiguous pic-tures and to write their own story abouteach picture. Based on these projective tests,McClelland found he was able to differenti-ate people with a high need to achieve—individuals who had a strong desire to suc-ceed or achieve in relation to a set ofstandards—from people with a low need toachieve.21 His research has been instrumen-tal in helping organizations better matchpeople with jobs and in redesigning jobs for

high achievers so as to maximize their moti-vation potential. In addition, McClellandand his associates have successfully trainedindividuals to increase their achievementdrive. For instance, in India, people whounderwent achievement training workedlonger hours, initiated more new businessventures, made greater investments in pro-ductive assets, employed a larger number ofemployees, and saw a greater increase intheir gross incomes than did a similar groupwho did not undergo achievement training.

FRED FIEDLER Leadership is one of themost important and extensively researchedtopics in organizational behavior. The workof Fred Fiedler on the subject is significantfor its emphasis on the situational aspects ofleadership as well as for its attempt todevelop a comprehensive theory of leader-ship behavior.22

From the mid-1960s through the late1970s, Fiedler’s contingency model domi-nated leadership research. He developed a



questionnaire to measure an individual’sinherent leadership orientation and identi-fied three contingency variables that, heargued, determined what type of leaderbehavior is most effective. In testing hismodel, Fiedler and his associates studiedhundreds of groups. Dozens of researchershave attempted to replicate his results.Although some of the predictions from themodel have not stood up well under closeranalysis, Fielder’s model has been a majorinfluence on current thinking and researchabout leadership.

FREDERICK HERZBERG With the possibleexception of the Hawthorne studies, no sin-gle stream of research has had a greaterimpact on undermining the recommenda-tions of scientific management than thework of Frederick Herzberg.23

Herzberg sought an answer to the ques-tion: What do individuals want from theirjobs? He asked hundreds of people that ques-tion in the late 1950s, and then carefully

analyzed their responses. He concluded thatpeople preferred jobs that offered opportuni-ties for recognition, achievement, responsi-bility, and growth. Managers who concernedthemselves with things like company poli-cies, employee pay, creating narrow andrepetitive jobs, and developing favorableworking conditions might placate theirworkers, but they wouldn’t motivate them.According to Herzberg, if managers want tomotivate their people, they should redesignjobs to allow workers to perform more andvaried tasks. Much of the current interest inenriching jobs and improving the qualityof work life can be traced to Herzberg’sresearch.

J. RICHARD HACKMAN AND GREG OLDHAM

While Herzberg’s conclusions were greetedwith enthusiasm, the methodology he usedfor arriving at those conclusions was farless enthusiastically embraced. It would bethe work of J. Richard Hackman and GregOldham in the 1970s that would provide an



explanation of how job factors influenceemployee motivation and satisfaction, andwould offer a valid framework for analyzingjobs.24 Hackman and Oldham’s researchalso uncovered the core job dimensions—skill variety, task identity, task significance,autonomy, and feedback—that have stoodup well as guides in the design of jobs. Morespecifically, Hackman and Oldham foundthat among individuals with strong growthneeds, jobs that score high on these fivecore dimensions lead to high employee per-formance and satisfaction.

OB Today: A ContingencyPerspectiveWe’ve attempted to demonstrate in thisappendix that the present state of organiza-tional behavior encompasses ideas intro-duced dozens, and sometimes hundreds, ofyears ago. So don’t think of one era’s con-cepts as replacing an earlier era’s; rather, viewthem as extensions and modifications of earlier

ideas. As United Parcel Service demonstrates,many of Taylor’s scientific management prin-ciples can be applied today with impressiveresults. Of course, that doesn’t mean thatthose principles will work as well in otherorganizations. If there is anything we’velearned over the last quarter of a century, it’sthat few ideas—no matter how attractive—are applicable to all organizations or to alljobs or to all types of employees. Today, orga-nizational behavior must be studied andapplied in a contingency framework.

Baseball fans know that a batter doesn’talways try for a home run. It depends on thescore, the inning, whether runners are onbase, and similar contingency variables.Similarly, you can’t say that students alwayslearn more in small classes than in largeones. An extensive body of educationalresearch tells us that contingency factorssuch as course content and teaching style ofthe instructor influence the relationshipbetween class size and learning effectiveness.Applied to organizational behavior, contin-



gency theory recognizes that there is no“one best way” to manage people in organi-zations and no single set of simple principlesthat can be applied universally.25

A contingency approach to the study ofOB is intuitively logical. Why? Because orga-nizations obviously differ in size, objectives,and environmental uncertainty. Similarly,employees differ in values, attitudes, needs,and experiences. So it would be surprising tofind that there are universally applicableprinciples that work in all situations. But, ofcourse, it’s one thing to say “it all depends”and another to say what it all depends upon.

The most popular OB topics for researchinvestigation in recent years have been the-ories of motivation, leadership, work design,and job satisfaction.26 But while the 1960sand 1970s saw the development of new the-ories, the emphasis since has been on refin-ing existing theories, clarifying previousassumptions, and identifying relevant con-tingency variables.27 That is, researchershave been trying to identify the “what”

variables and which ones are relevant forunderstanding various behavioral phenom-ena. This essentially reflects the maturing ofOB as a scientific discipline. The near-termfuture of OB research is likely to continue tofocus on fine-tuning current theories so asto better help us understand those situa-tions where they’re most likely to be useful.

SummaryWhile the seeds of organizational behaviorwere planted more than 200 years ago, cur-rent OB theory and practice are essentiallyproducts of the twentieth century.

Frederick Taylor’s principles of scientificmanagement were instrumental in engineer-ing precision and standardization into peo-ple’s jobs. Henri Fayol defined the universalfunctions that all managers perform and theprinciples that constitute good managementpractice. Max Weber developed a theory ofauthority structures and described organiza-tional activity based on authority relations.



The “people side” of organizations cameinto its own in the 1930s, predominately asa result of the Hawthorne studies. Thesestudies led to a new emphasis on the humanfactor in organizations and increased pater-nalism by management. In the late 1950s,managers’ attention was caught by the ideasof people like Abraham Maslow and DouglasMcGregor, who proposed that organizationstructures and management practices had tobe altered so as to bring out the full produc-tive potential of employees. Motivation and

leadership theories offered by DavidMcClelland, Fred Fiedler, Frederick Herzberg,and other behavioral scientists during the1960s and 1970s provided managers withstill greater insights into employee behavior.

Almost all contemporary managementand organizational behavior concepts arecontingency based. That is, they providevarious recommendations dependent uponsituational factors. As a maturing discipline,current OB research is emphasizing therefinement of existing theories.



APPENDIX A OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR - RIM THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION A OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR...

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