ABSTRACT
A study of human behaviour in groups and organizations has its origins in many separate and distinct pieces of work. Certainly before the 1930s, this was not a generally recognized field of study and different countries produced a variety of people who, reflecting their own cultures and social climates, looked at groups and organizations from a number of different standpoints. This chapter gives a brief survey of this early work and then examines in more detail four contributions which can now be seen to be of particular importance.
