Answer to Test Yourself on Management Viewpoints and Theories (Continued)

9.         Explain how the quantitative approach evolved and how it has contributed to the field of management.

            The quantitative approach, also called operations research or management science, is the use of quantitative techniques to improve decision making, and it evolved out of the development of mathematical and statistical solutions to military problems during World War II. After the war, many quantitative techniques that had been used for military problems were applied to the business sector. The quantitative approach has added another dimension to the evolution of management practice and thinking and has contributed most directly to management decision making in planning and control.

10.        What is organizational behavior?

            Organizational behavior is the field of study concerned with the actions or behavior of people at work.

11.        What were some of the contributions of the early advocates of OB?

            Early advocates of the OB approach were Robert Owen, who proposed an idealized workplace where work hours would be regulated, child labor outlawed, public education and meals provided, and business involved in community projects; Hugo Munsterberg, who created the field of industrial psychology, the study of individuals at work to maximize their productivity and adjustment; Mary Parker Follett, who thought that organizations should be based on a group ethic rather than on individualism to release individual potential; and Chester Barnard, who saw organizations as social systems that required human cooperation.

12.        Describe the Hawthorne studies and their contribution to management practice.

            The Hawthorne studies, conducted at the Western Electric Company Works in Cicero Illinois, from 1924 through the early 1930s, exposed an experimental group of workers to various lighting intensities while providing a control group with constant intensity. As the level of light was increased in the experimental group, the output of both groups increased. The series of studies led to a new emphasis on the human behavior factor and helped change the dominant theme of the time that employees were not different from any other machines the organization used.

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