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Unit 1: Foundations of Organisational Behaviour

Notes

Task A woman who has been angry at her boss at the workplace comes back home and
yells at her baby and husband. What is the reason behind it? Discuss technically.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:
6. Organisational behaviors is an applied behavioral science that is built on contributions
from a number of behavioral disciplines.
7. Industrial and organisational psychologists concern themselves with problems of fatigue,
boredom, perception, learning motivation, job satisfaction, personality, performance
appraisals, employee selection, job designing, work stress, etc.
8. Sociology is a branch of psychology which borrows concepts from psychology and social
psychology and focuses on the influence of people on one another.
9. Anthropologists study societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

1.5 Hawthorne Studies

The Hawthorne studies were carried out by the Western Electric company at their Hawthorne
plant in the 1920's. Initially, the study focused on lighting. Let's first focus on relay room
experiments.

Relay Room Experiments

Intrigued with positive changes in productivity, some of the engineers and company officials
decided to attempt to determine the causes through further studies. Accordingly, a second set of
experiments took place between 1927 and 1933 known as the Relay Room experiments.
The most famous study involved five girls assembling electrical relays in the Relay Assembly
Test Room, a special room away from other workers where the researchers could alter work
conditions and evaluate the results. During the experiment, the girls were often consulted and
sometimes allowed to express themselves about the changes that took place in the experiment.
Apparently, the researchers were concerned about possible negative reactions and resistance
from the workers who would be included in the experiment. To lessen potential resistance, the
researchers changed the usual supervisory arrangement so that there would be no official
supervisor; rather, the workers would operate under the general direction of the experimenter.
The workers were also given special privileges such as being able to leave their workstation
without permission, and they received considerable attention from the experimenters and
company officials. In total, they were treated and recognized as individuals with something to
contribute.

The study was aimed at exploring the best combination of work and rest periods, but a number
of other factors were also varied, such as pay, length of the workday, and provisions for free
lunches. Generally, productivity increased over the period of the study, regardless of how the
factors under consideration were manipulated.
The results in the relay room were practically identical with those in the illumination experiment.
Each test period yielded higher productivity than the previous one. Even when the girls were
subjected to the original conditions of the experiment, productivity increased. The conclusion
was that the independent variables (rest pauses and so forth) were not, by themselves, causing
the change in the dependent variable (output).

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