Organisational Behaviour- Movements, Antecedents and Characteristics NIHARIKA

Outline: -Industrial and Org Psych

-I/O Psych and sub-fields
-OB, Characteristics and assumptions
-Historical Movements:
-Scientific Management-Taylor and Hawthorne Studies
-Human Relations Movement
(Extra Info)
What is Industrial and Organisational Psychology?
An industry is any part of the business of production of an economic good (either material or
service) within an economy. Industrial psychology may be defined as “simply the application
or extension of psychological facts and principles to the problems concerning human beings
operating within the context of business and industry” (Blum & Naylor, 1968, p. 4). Industrial
psychology grew out of psychology’s initial success in describing and measuring differences
among people. There is little doubt that “the study of individual differences is a major foundation
of the field” (Argyris, 1976, p. 152). Traditionally, industrial psychologists were concerned with
the following:
➢ Selection and testing
➢ Personnel development: training, performance appraisal, attitude measurement, employee
counseling, career planning
➢ Human engineering: Equipment and product design
➢ Productivity study: worker fatigue, monotony, absenteeism, physical aspects of work
environment, for e.g. lighting and temperature
➢ Human relations: relations between supervisor and subordinates, and of labour union to
management
➢ Others: marketing research, accidents and safety, etc.
However, thee had their own limitations because a) There was a focus on description and
prediction from individual differences, with little regard to the processes of human behaviour
within organizations; b) A focus on selection and placement without extending it to development
at either organizational or individual levels; and c) Research methods (being experimental,
precise, objective and too rigorous) resulted in the alienation of subjects.

Interests in the social aspects of human work, largely ignored in traditional industrial psychology,
led to the crystallization of the new field called ‘organizational psychology’. Organization refers
to “a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a
relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals” (Robbins, 1991, p. 4).
Organizational psychology may be defined as the study of the structure of an organization and
of the ways in which the people in it interact, usually undertaken in order to improve the
organization.
Difference between Industrial Psychology and Organizational Psychology
-Scope: Industrial psychologists were mainly involved in testing, selection, job evaluation, etc.,
while organizational psychologists were involved in individual and organizational change. While
the former focused more on matching individuals with existing jobs, the latter were interested in
modifying jobs, interpersonal and organizational conditions.
-Orientation: Industrial psychology is individual-oriented, while organizational psychology is
systems-oriented.
-Research tradition: The research methodology in industrial psychology was largely
experimental, empirical and objective; while organizational psychologists have been willing to
use less rigorous, humanistic and clinical methods in order to obtain data.

I/O Psychology
I-O psychology applies psychological concepts and methods to optimize human potential at the
workplace. I/O psychology has been defined as “The scientific study of the relationship between
man and the world at work, the study of the adjustment people make to the places they go, the
people they meet, and the things they do in the process of living” (Guion, 1965). Four
personalities have been credited to have been the founding figures of I/O psychology: Walter
Dill Scott, Frederick W. Taylor, Lillian Moller Gilberth and Hugo Munsterberg. There now exists
numerous sub-fields within Industrial/Organisational Psychology like Personnel Psychology,
Organizational Behaviour, Ergonomics, Vocational and Career Counselling, Organizational
Development and Industrial Relations.

Organisational Behaviour
Organisational Behaviour or OB, is “the interdisciplinary field that that seeks knowledge of
behaviour in organizational settings by systematically studying individual, group, and
organizational processes” (Greenberg & Baron, p. 6) or “A field of study that investigates the
impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behaviour within organizations, for the
purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness”
(Robbins, Judge, & Sanghi, 2009, p. 10). The following equation provides a fundamental basis
for understanding OB (French, Kast, & Rosenzweig, 1985, p. 3):

Where P refers to personal characteristics and E represents the environment. Human behaviour
thus is a function of the individual’s personal characteristics and the environmental context.

Characteristics of OB according to Greenberg & Baron are:

-OB applies the scientific method to practical managerial problems: OB knowledge is based
on the behavioral sciences. These are fields such as psychology and sociology that seek
knowledge of human behavior and society through the use of the scientific method.Thus, like
other scientific fields, OB seeks to develop a base of knowledge by using an empirical,
research-based approach. That is, it is based on systematic observation and measurement of the
behavior or phenomenon of interest.

-OB focuses on three levels of analysis: individuals, groups, and organizations:

Level 1: Individual. Where the focus is on processes/phenomena such as values, attitudes,
beliefs, intelligence, motivation etc. that influence how people behave as individuals.
Level 2: Group. This is more concerned with social and interpersonal aspects, such as
group dynamics and leadership.
Level 3: Organization. The main concern here is the behaviour of an organization as a
whole, for e.g. its culture, structure and processes.
The field of OB recognizes that all three levels of analysis must be used to comprehend the
complex dynamics of behaviour within organizations. For example, in order to understand a
process like job satisfaction, it is important to delve into individual characteristics like one’s age,
gender, education, etc., group processes such as relations with supervisor and team members, and
organizational factors such as organizational culture, structure, etc.

-OB is multidisciplinary in nature: Rather than studying a topic from only one particular
perspective, the field of OB is likely to consider a wide variety of approaches. These range from
the highly individual-oriented approach of psychology, through the more group-oriented
approach of sociology, to issues in organizational quality studied by management scientists.
-OB seeks to improve organizational effectiveness and the quality of life at work through
(Theory Y orientation): The managers of a century ago held very negative views of employees.
They assumed that people were basically lazy and irresponsible, and treated them with
disrespect. This very negativistic approach, which has been with us for many years, reflects the
traditional view of management, called a Theory X orientation. This philosophy of management
assumes that people are basically lazy, dislike work, need direction, and will work hard only
when they are pushed. Today, however, the management’s job is to create the conditions that
make people want to perform as they should. The approach that assumes that people are not
inherently lazy, but that they are willing to work hard when the right conditions prevail, is known
as the Theory Y orientation. This philosophy assumes that people have a psychological need to
work and seek achievement and responsibility. In contrast to the Theory X philosophy of
management, which essentially demonstrates distrust for people on the job, the Theory Y
approach is strongly associated with improving the quality of people’s work lives. The Theory Y
perspective prevails within the field of organizational behavior today.
-Adopts a cross-cultural approach as organisation’s differ in their structure and culture
depending on nationalities and societal norms.

Assumptions of the field of OB

The field of OB is guided by two key assumptions—fundamental ideas that are widely accepted
by everyone who does scientific research on OB or who puts these findings into practice in the
workplace. First, OB recognizes that organizations are dynamic open systems and always
changing. Second, the field of OB assumes there is no one best way to behave in organizations,
and that different approaches are called for in different situations.

Historical Antecedents of OB: Scientific Management and Human Relations Movement

Some of the key historical movements that altered the field of I/O Psychology and subsequently
one of its subfields, OB, includes Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Human
Relations Movement by Elton Mayo and the Classical Organisational Theory by theorists like
Fayol and Weber.

I. Scientific Management by Taylor

The Scientific Management perspective pioneered by Taylor (1911), also known as ‘Taylorism’
was the impetus to the ever-growing body of research in industrial psychology as it was one of
the first theories that looked at human behaviour within organisational contexts. It essentially
focused on designing jobs in a way to ascertain the most optimal way of working to reach
improved performance and efficiency and thereby better outcomes.

The basic principles of scientific management given by Taylor (1911) posit that: a) processes
need to be revamped according to scientific research to reach optimal functioning; b) work needs
to be equally divided within employees and they need to be told how to do it; c) Employees
should be scientifically selected as well as trained for the jobs and d) cooperation within
employees preferred over individualised inputs. It was also assumed that only increasing wages
was enough to make the worker efficient. Taylor’s approach is usually implemented to increase
efficiency by standardising jobs by breaking it into component tasks that can be approached by
ways which have been scientifically determined to be efficient.
This led Taylor to study the individual movements of laborers performing different jobs,
searching for ways to do them that resulted in the fewest wasted movements. Taylor’s use of time
studies also advanced Gilberth's Time and Motion studies that observed and recorded all kinds
of movements that employees make in a certain time period to do a task, to scientifically
ascertain how to improve efficiency of the processes.

Scientific management is also linked with the classical organisational theory that aimed
at restructuring organisations in a way to increase efficiency. For instance, Fayol advocated for a
division of labor in such a way that there were specialised tasks that only people skilled in it
would be responsible for. Weber (1921) too proposed a form of organisation based in
bureaucracy and studied how power structures impact the employees’ work processes.
Characteristics of a bureaucracy includes: formal rules and regulations, impersonal treatment,
division of labor, hierarchical structures, authority structure, lifelong career commitment and
rationality in terms of achieving profitability in the most efficient manner. This theory too
assumed that employees had only economic and physical needs and focused on only the
structural or financial aspects of the job.
An industrial use of Tayloristic management policies is visible in how Amazon has made
its warehouse workers wear wristbands that track their every movement and alert them when
they make mistakes (Yeginsu, 2018). Another example is how companies use scientific
management techniques to control for efficiency or ensure employee compliance to
organisational norms in tele-working designs, during the current pandemic times. Both Taylor
and Gilberth’s studies can also inform us today of the various ways in which the person-machine
fit influences work productivity now that work has shifted online. This is where the field of
ergonomics helps current HR personnel to design methods in which they can improve the
environmental factors during the employees’ work-from-home regime to improve productivity.
Criticism: The scientific management theories are however criticised to be
organisation-centric and ignorant of the concerns of the workers. This criticism paved the way
for another important movement that impacted the field of I/O psychology which was pioneered
by Elton W. Mayo, the Human Relations Movement.

II. Human Relations Movement by Mayo

Inspired by the prospects of scientific management, but taking a more humanistic approach,
other work experts advanced the idea that social factors operating in the workplace are an
important determinant of how effectively people work. At the forefront of this effort was Elton
W. Mayo, an organizational scientist and consultant widely regarded as the founder of what is
called the human relations movement. This approach emphasized that the social conditions
existing in organizations—the way employees are treated by management and the relationships
they have with each other—influence job performance. Mayo’s orientation was developed in the
first investigations of organizational behavior, known as the Hawthorne studies which began in
1927 at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works near Chicago. The original study attempted to find
the relationship between lighting and efficiency. The researchers installed various sets of lights in
workrooms where electrical equipment was being produced. In some cases the light was intense;
in other cases it was reduced to the equivalent of moonlight. Much to the researchers’ surprise,
productivity seemed to have no relationship to the level of illumination. The workers’
productivity increased whether the illumination was decreased, increased, or held constant. The
results of the study were so bizarre the researchers hypothesized that some other factors must be
responsible for the increased productivity.
The results of the first study initiated four other major studies that were conducted over a
12-year period: (1) relay assembly test room, (2) mass interviewing program, (3) bank wiring
observation room, and (4) personnel counseling. In essence, the Hawthorne studies revealed
many previously unrecognized aspects of human behavior in a workplace. Researchers
hypothesized that the study’s results were caused by the employees’ desire to please them.
Flattered at having distinguished investigators from Harvard University take the time to study
them, the workers had gone out of their way to do what they thought would impress
them—namely, to be highly productive. They therefore had produced at a high level whether the
room was too light or too dark. The researchers learned that factors other than purely
technical ones (for example, illumination) influence productivity. One of the major findings
from the studies was a phenomenon named the Hawthorne effect. The workers’ job
performance began to improve following the start of the researchers’ intervention and continued
to improve because of the novelty of the situation; that is, the employees responded positively to
the novel treatment they were getting from the researchers. Eventually, however, the novelty
began to wear off, and productivity returned to its earlier level. This phenomenon of a change in
behavior following the onset of novel treatment, with a gradual return to the previous level of
behavior as the effect of the novelty wears off, is the Hawthorne effect.
As Adair (1984) observed, however, the precise reason for the change in behavior (for
example, the novelty of the situation, special attention, or prestige from being selected for study)
is not always clear. Sometimes behavior change is due to just a change in the environment (for
example, the presence of the researchers) and not to the effect of some experimentally
manipulated variable (for example, the amount of illumination). The psychological literature
indicates that Hawthorne effects may last from a few days to two years, depending on the
situation. The Hawthorne studies also revealed the existence of informal employee work groups
and their controls on production as well as the importance of employee attitudes, the value of
having a sympathetic and understanding supervisor, and the need to treat workers as people
instead of merely human capital. Today the Hawthorne studies, though regarded by some
contemporary psychologists as having been based on flawed research methods (e.g., Bramel &
Friend, 1981), are considered to be the greatest single episode in the formation of industrial
psychology and subsequently OB. It suggests that to understand the way people behave on the
job, we must fully appreciate their attitudes and the processes by which they communicate with
each other. This way of thinking, so fundamental to modern OB, may be traced back to Elton
Mayo’s pioneering Hawthorne studies.
Examples of how the human relations movement impacts the work in Organisational Behaviour
in workplaces today is how managers now target work productivity especially during
COVID-19: by focusing on the social conditions inherent in the virtual remote workplaces and
thereby maximising these to ensure employee well-being. For instance, Chanana & Sangeeta
(2020) discuss how during the COVID-19 pandemic, employee engagement has become one of
the utmost prominent primacies for human resource managers and practitioners in organizations
due to lockdown. Their paper discusses how various companies are constantly developing
innovative and effective means to engage the employees during this tough time. Some of these
activities include online family engagement practices, virtual learning and development, online
team building activities, webinars with industry experts, online conduct weekly alignment
sessions, team meet-ups over video conference for lunch, short online game sessions, virtual
challenges and competitions, online courses, appreciation sessions, communication exercises,
live sessions for new-skill training, online counseling sessions, recognition and acknowledgment
session, webinars dealing with anxiety and stress, providing online guidance for exercise and
meditation, social interactions in a virtual office, classrooms training modules digitally,
e-learning modules, and many more creative learning sessions. Such research and practice are a
testament to the human relations movement that recognises the humane factors contributing to
employee engagement and eventually productivity and success of an organisation even in times
of distress like the pandemic.