HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES
Most of today's organizational behavior texts have dropped any reference to history. Yet, the position taken here is that history always has important lessons to teach, and as was recently brought out again, "It is an interesting phenomenon that that which is touted as fundamentally 'new management practice' is essentially the readapting of existing 'old management truths.'" There is no question that the early management pioneers, such as Henri Fayol, Henry Ford, Alfred P. Sloan, and even the scientific managers at the end of the 19th century such as Frederick W. Taylor, recognized the behavioral side of management. However, they did not emphasize the human dimension; they let it play only a minor role in comparison with the roles of hierarchical structure, specialization, and the management functions of planning and controlling. An example would be the well-known Nobel Prize—winning French engineer turned executive Henri Fayol.