Organizational behavior

A Brief Historical Perspective
Organizational behavior may be traced back thousands of years, as noted in Sterba’s analysis of the ancient Mesopotamian temple corporations. However, we will focus on the modern history of organizational behavior, which dates to the late 1800s. One of the more important series of studies conducted during this period was the Hawthorne studies. As these and other studies have unfolded, the six disciplines discussed in Chapter 1 of the text have contributed to the advancement of organizational behavior. An overview of the progress during the past century is presented in Table A.1 and the accompanying text. This is followed by a discussion of the Hawthorne studies.

1890s         l      Frederick Taylor’s development of scientific management
1900s         l      Max Weber’s concept of bureaucracy and the Protestant ethic
1910s         l      Walter Cannon’s discovery of the “emergency (stress) response”
1920s         l      Elton Mayo’s illumination studies in the textile industry
l      The Hawthorne studies at Western Electric Company
1930s         l      Kurt Lewin’s, Ronald Lippitt’s, and Ralph White’s early leadership studies
1940s         l      Abraham Maslow’s need hierarchy motivation theory
l      B. F. Skinner’s formulation of the behavioral approach
l      Charles Walker’s and Robert Guest’s studies of routine work
1950s         l      Ralph Stogdill’s Ohio State leadership studies
l      Douglas McGregor’s examination of the human side of enterprise
l      Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory of motivation and job enrichment
1960s         l      Arthur Turner’s and Paul Lawrence’s studies of diverse industrial jobs
l      Robert Blake’s and Jane Mouton’s managerial grid
l      Patricia Cain Smith’s studies of satisfaction in work and retirement
l      Fred Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership
1970s         l      J. Richard Hackman’s and Greg Oldham’s job characteristics theory
l      Edward Lawler’s approach to pay and organizational effectiveness
l      Robert House’s path–goal and charismatic theories of leadership
1980s         l      Peter Block’s political skills for empowered managers
l      Charles Manz’s approach to self-managed work teams

Progress in any discipline, practice, or field of study is measured by significant events, discoveries, and contributions over time. The history of organizational behavior begins, as noted in Table A.1, with the work of Frederick Taylor in scientific management at Midvale Steel Company, Bethlehem Steel Company, and elsewhere.1 Taylor applied engineering principles to the study of people and their behavior at work. He pioneered the use of performance standards for workers, set up differential piece-rate systems of pay, and argued for the scientific selection of employees. His ultimate hope was for an improvement in labor–
management relationships in American industry. Taylor’s lasting contributions include organizational goal-setting programs, incentive pay systems, and modern employee selection techniques.
The late 1800s also saw the United States make the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society and Taylor was part of this transformation process. About the same time Taylor was developing a uniquely American approach to the design of work, Max Weber was undertaking a classic work on religion and capitalism in Germany.2 Weber’s lasting legacies to management and organizational behavior are found in his notions of bureaucracies and the Protestant ethic, the latter an important feature of Chapter 5 in the text. Another major event of this era, as noted in Table A.1, was Walter Cannon’s discovery of the stress response in about 1915. This discovery laid a foundation for psychosomatic medicine, industrial hygiene, and an understanding of the emotional components of health at work and play.3 Finally, the first quarter of the 20th century saw the initiation of the Hawthorne studies, a major research advancement in understanding people at work.4 The Hawthorne studies are discussed in some depth in the second half of this brief history.
Beginning at the end of the 1930s and extending through the 1950s, as noted in Table A.1, came a series of major contributions to the understanding of leadership, motivation, and behavior in organizations.5 Lewin, Lippitt, and White’s early examination of autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership styles was followed over a decade later by Ralph Stogdill’s extensive studies at The Ohio State University focusing on leader behaviors. This marked a point of departure from earlier leadership studies, which had focused on the traits of the leader. Abraham Maslow proposed a need hierarchy of human motivation during the early 1940s, which was one foundation for Douglas McGregor’s theorizing in the 1950s about assumptions concerning the human side of a business enterprise. The 1950s was the decade in which Frederick Herzberg developed a new theory of motivation, which he later translated into an approach to job design, called job enrichment. This is quite different from the approach to designing work that Charles Walker and Robert Guest formulated a decade earlier in response to the problems they found with routine work. Attention was also given to group dynamics during this era in an effort to explain small group behavior.6
The 1960s and 1970s saw continued attention to theories of motivation, leadership, the design of work, and job satisfaction.7 For example, Arthur Turner and Paul Lawrence’s studies of diverse industrial jobs in various industries was a forerunner for the research program of Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham, which led to their job characteristics theory a decade later. Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s managerial grid was a variation on the Ohio State leadership studies of a decade earlier, while Fred Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership was an entirely new approach to leadership that emerged during the 1960s. Robert House proposed path–goal and charismatic theories of leadership during this era, and Edward Lawler drew attention to the importance of pay in performance and organizational effectiveness.
The 1980s saw attention shift to organizational culture, teamwork, and political skills in organizations. Peter Block drew our attention to the political skills required to empower managers in increasingly challenging working environments while Charles Manz directed attention to teamwork and self-managed teams. Leadership continued to be an important topic and Edgar Schein formulated a framework for understanding how leaders created, embedded, and maintained an organizational culture. Throughout the changing and unfolding story of the study of organizational behavior during the twentieth century there has been a common theme: How do we understand people, their psychology, and their behavior in the workplace?8
The intention of this brief historical review and time line in Table A.1 is to give you a sense of perspective on the drama of unfolding research programs, topics, and investigators who have brought us to the present state of knowledge and practice in organizational behavior. Although the text addresses the field in a topical manner by chapter, we think it important that students of organizational behavior have a sense of historical perspective over the whole field. We now turn to the Hawthorne studies, one of the seminal research programs from the early part of the century.

Initiated in 1925 with a grant from Western Electric, the Hawthorne studies were among the most significant advances in the understanding of organizational behavior during the past century. They were preceded by a series of studies of illumination conducted by Elton Mayo in the textile industry of Philadelphia. The research at the Hawthorne Works (an industrial manufacturing facility in Cicero, Illinois) was directed by Fritz Roethlisberger and consisted of four separate studies throughout a seven-year period.9 These studies included (1) experiments in illumination, (2) the relay assembly test room study, (3) experiments in interviewing workers, and (4) the bank wiring room study. We will briefly examine this research program.
Experiments in Illumination
The experiments in illumination were a direct follow-up of Mayo’s earlier work in the textile industry. At Hawthorne, the experiments in illumination consisted of a series of studies of test groups, in which the researchers varied illumination levels, and control groups, in which conditions were held constant. The purpose was to examine the relation of the quality and quantity of illumination to the efficiency of industrial workers. The experiments began in 1925 and extended over several years.
The researchers were surprised to discover that productivity increased to roughly the same rate in both test and control groups. It was only in the final experiment, where they decreased illumination levels to 0.06 footcandle (roughly moonlight intensity), that an appreciable decline in output occurred. The anticipated finding of a positive, linear relationship between illumination and industrial efficiency was simply not found. The researchers concluded that the results were “screwy” in the absence of this simple, direct cause-and-effect relationship.
It is from these first experiments that the term Hawthorne Effect was coined, referring originally to the fact that people’s knowledge that they are being studied leads them to modify their behavior. A closer consideration of the Hawthorne Effect reveals that it is poorly understood and has taken on different meanings with the passage of time.10 Hence, it has become somewhat an imprecise concept.
Relay Assembly Test Room Study
The researchers next set out to study workers segregated according to a range of working condition variables, such as work room temperature and humidity, work schedule, rest breaks, and food consumption. The researchers chose five women in the relay assembly test room and kept careful records of the predictor variables, as well as output (measuring the time it took each woman to assemble a telephone relay of approximately forty parts).
Again, there was little the researchers were able to conclude from the actual data in this study in terms of a relationship between the predictor variables and industrial efficiency. However, they began to suspect that employee attitudes and sentiments were critically important variables not previously accounted for. Therefore, the researchers underwent a radical change of thought.
Experiments in Interviewing Workers
In 1928, a number of the researchers began a program of going into the workforce, without their normal tools and equipment, for the purpose of getting the workers to talk about what was important to them. Nearly 20,000 workers were interviewed over a period of two years, and in this interviewing process a major breakthrough occurred. The interview study was a form of research in which the investigators did not have a set of preconceptions concerning what they would find, as was the case in the two earlier phases of research. Rather, they set out to sympathetically and skillfully listen to what each worker was saying. As the interviewing progressed, the researchers discovered that the workers would open up and talk freely about what were the most important, and at times problematic, issues on their minds. The researchers discovered a rich and intriguing world previously unexamined within the Hawthorne Works.
Ultimately, Roethlisberger and his colleagues formulated guidelines for the conduct of interviews, and these guidelines became the basis for contemporary interviewing and active listening skills.11 The discovery of the informal organization and its relationship to the formal organization began during the interview study. This led to a richer understanding of the social, interpersonal dynamics of people at work.
The Bank Wiring Room Study
The concluding study at Hawthorne was significant because it confirmed the importance of one aspect of the informal organization on worker productivity. Specifically, the researchers studied workers in the bank wiring room and found that the behavioral norms set by the work group had a powerful influence over the productivity of the group. The higher the norms, the greater the productivity. The lower the norms, the lower the productivity. The power of the peer group and the importance of group influence on individual behavior and productivity were confirmed in the bank wiring room.
The Hawthorne studies laid a foundation for understanding people’s social and psychological behavior in the workplace. Some of the methods used at Hawthorne, such as the experimental design methods and the interviewing technique, are used today for research in organizations. However, the discipline of organizational behavior is more than the psychology of people at work and more than the sociology of their behavior in organizations. Organizational behavior emerges from a wide range of interdisciplinary influences.

References
 1.  F. W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Norton, 1911).
 2.  M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Talcott Parson, tr., 1930).
 3.  W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage (New York: Appleton, 1915).
 4.  F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939).
 5.  K. Lewin, R. Lippitt, and R. K. White, “Patterns of Aggressive Behavior in Experimentally Created ‘Social Climates,’” Journal of Social Psychology 10 (1939): 271–299; A. H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1954); F. Herzberg, B. Mausner, and B. Snyderman, The Motivation to Work, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1959); E. A. Locke, “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 3 (1968): 157–189; R. M. Stogdill, Handbook of Leadership: A Survey of Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1974); G. A. Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995).
 6.  G. C. Homans, The Human Group (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1950).
 7.  J. R. Hackman and G. Oldham, Work Redesign (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1980); P. C. Smith, L. M. Kendall, and C. L. Hulin, The Measurement of Satisfaction in Work and Retirement (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969).
 8.  N. R. F. Maier, Psychology in Industry: A Psychological Approach to Industrial Problems, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955).
 9.  F. J. Roethlisberger, Management and Morale (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1941).
10. J. G. Adair, “The Hawthorne Effect: A Reconsideration of Methodological Artifact,” Journal of Applied Psychology 69 (1984): 334–345.
11. F. J. Roethlisberger, W. J. Dickson, and H. A. Wright, Management and the Worker: An Account of a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950); A. G. Athos and J. J. Gabarro, Interpersonal Behavior: Communication and Understanding in Relationships (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978).