Scientific approaches
Scientific approaches
This domain tests how organizational behavior became a science and which theoretical lens explains a given workplace situation. Expect questions that ask you to match a school of thought to its assumptions, founders, and practical prescriptions.
Classical foundations
- Scientific management (Taylor) used time-and-motion study, standardized tools and tasks, selection and training, and differential piece rates. It separated planning from execution and assumed workers were primarily economically motivated.
- Administrative theory (Fayol) offered principles such as unity of command, scalar chain, division of work, and equity. Weber's bureaucracy is an ideal type: hierarchy, written rules, impersonal treatment, career merit, and clear jurisdiction.
- Human relations grew from the Hawthorne studies (Mayo, Roethlisberger, Dickson). The illumination experiments showed productivity rose in both test and control groups, implicating attention; the relay assembly and bank wiring studies highlighted informal norms and social factors.
Later lenses
- Open-systems theory treats organizations as transforming inputs into outputs with feedback and environmental exchange.
- Contingency theory rejects one best way: structure and leadership depend on environment, technology, size, and strategy.
- Sociotechnical systems optimize the joint fit of social and technical subsystems; evidence-based management insists on reliable data rather than fads.
Worked example
A plant installs brighter lights and productivity rises in both the changed and unchanged departments. A candidate who says lighting causes productivity has missed the Hawthorne effect: the attention and monitoring, not the light, likely caused the gain. The correct inference is that being observed and consulted changed behavior, which is why later studies manipulated social conditions.
Traps
Do not credit bureaucracy to Taylor or scientific management to Weber. Hawthorne did not prove that money is irrelevant; it showed social and informal factors matter. Contingency is not anything goes - it predicts fit. Scientific management is a management philosophy, not the same as the scientific method used in OB research.