Classical foundations

Even with the long history of organizing, organizations were not conducive to scientific theorizing because the abstractness of organizations prevents scientists from analyzing organizations in a laboratory. Sociology provided a solution for this constraint by providing a macro-level perspective that turned the organization into a laboratory to explore how humans work interdependently to accomplish common purposes (Jex, 2002, p. 373). Scott and Davis (2007) credit the birth of organizational studies to the 1946 publication of Max Weber’s treatise on rational organizations and authority.

Robert K. Merton built on Weber’s essays on sociology by compiling research on organizations to build a framework for a new field. Meanwhile, Herbert Simon gathered a group of political scientists, economists, engineers, and psychologists to build “a behaviorally oriented science of administration” that emphasized, “decision making and choice within organizations” (Scott & Davis, 2007, p. 9). The patron saints of organizational studies became Machiavelli, Saint-Simon, Marx, Weber, Taylor, Barnard, Mayo, Fallet, and the Gilbreths (Scott & Davis, 2007).