ABSTRACT
The study of organisations involves many disciplines from various scientific fields. The fact that organisational behaviour is concerned with obtaining an overall picture of an organisation, an organisational problem, or a project, means that abstraction is often required, and that details are of secondary importance – otherwise, one would lose sight of the wood for the trees. The subject of organisational behaviour was born from the need for a structured frame of thought and comprehension regarding organisations and their processes. The Human Relations movement arose at the time that Scientific Management, and its accompanying, highly rationalistic approach to working organisations, was the most important organisational theory. A new form of management had been propagated, based on the social needs of workers in small groups; an idea vehemently opposed to the Scientific Management approach, which was strictly rational and focused solely on individual production workers.
