OPPapers.com

Organizational Behaviour

Historical Background of Organizational Behavior
(prepared by Professor Edward G. Wertheim, College of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115)
Table of Contents
Taylorism and Scientific Management
The Human Relations Movement
Theory X and Theory Y
Schools of Thought in Organizational Behavior

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Certainly large numbers of people have been doing work for a long time. Pyramids and many other huge monuments and structures were built, armies and governments were organized, Civilizations spread over vast territories. This took organization and management. There are some writings from antiquity that suggest that systematic approaches to management and organization did evolve and were transmitted to others.
But the primary influences in organizations and management today stem from more recent events.

Some would claim that to begin to understand our organizations today we need to look at the Protestant Reformationa nd the Protestant Ethic. A new ethic began to evolve, an ethic that shifted the orientation of one's life from the "next world" to this world. This ethic is best embodied in quotes from Luther ("All men possess a calling in the world and the fulfillment of its obligation is a divinely imposed duty") and Calvin ("Disciplined work raises a person above the calling into which he was born and is the only sign of his election by God to salvation"... "The soul is naked before God without Church or communion-religion is a personal matter; worldly success and prosperity are construed as signs of God's approval").

Over time, the Protestant Reformation provided an ideological foundation for the modern industrial society by suggesting that work is now a profound moral obligation, a path to eternal salvation. The focuse focus is this world and materialism, not next world. The individual's obligation is self-disciplin,and systematic work. It...