Business and Organizations

Linda J. Page and Eva Dreikurs Ferguson, Column Editors

In the working environment, relations among people can be far more complex than in other spheres of human life. The focus of this column is to show how the ideas and methods of Individual Psychology are useful in the workplace as well as to compare Adierian methods with other approaches.
Individual dynamics as well as organizational and group dynamics issues will be discussed in detail. Potential contributors are encouraged to submit manuscripts, including case studies, illustrating the application of Individual Psychology to business and organizational settings. Send manuscripts to Linda J. Page, Adler International Learning, 890 Yonge Street, 9th Floor,
Toronto, Ontario M4W 3P4, CANADA.

"Buying In'' and "Checking Out":
Motivation in the Workplace
Anita G. Teslak

Technology and measurement tools are designed to improve the capacity of employees to execute organizational plans and goals, but ultimate success always depends on the people who make up the bedrock of any organization (American Management Association, 2007). Organizations seek to understand human behavior so they can become more profitable by increasing the effectiveness of their workforces and achieving greater productivity. In a book of organizational studies. Hatch (2006) reviews the application of knowledge about how people have acted within organizations. In 1 776,
Adam Smith (1 776/1977) advocated a new form of organizational structure based on the division of labor. One hundred years later, Cerman sociologist Max Weber wrote about rational organizations^ and initiated discussion
Tite journaiof Individuai Psychoiogy,\/o\. 66, No. 1, Spring 2010
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Editorial office located in the College of Education at Georgia State University.

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of charismatic leadership. Soon after, Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced the systematic use of goal setting and rewards to motivate employees. In the 1920s, Elton Mayo and his colleagues conducted productivity studies at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant in the United States. Mayo (1933) advised managers to deal with emotional needs of employees at work.
Though it traces its roots to the German sociologist Max Weber and earlier, organizational studies as an academic discipline is generally considered to have begun with the advent of scientific management in the 1890s.
Taylorism represented the peak of this movement. After World War I, the focus of organizational studies shifted to analyzing how human factors and psychology affected organizations, a transformation propelled by the identification ofthe Hawthorne Effect in Mayo's work. This "human relations movement" focused on teams, motivation, and the actualization of the goals of individuals within organizations (Mayo, 1949).
World War II further shifted the field, fueling the development of largescale logistics and operations research. This led to a renewed interest in rationalist approaches to the study of organizations. Interest grew in theory and methods native to physical sciences, including systems and communications theory, and the study of organizations and strategy from a complexity theory perspective.
In the 1960s and 1970s organizations still mainly depended on physical labor of workers, and individuals were expected to "buy in" to the authority of institutions, despite increasing willingness to challenge that authority. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that individual workers' thinking abilities began to be seen as benefits to the workplace. During this period the field was strongly influenced by social psychology based primarily on quantitative research. Companies began to implement programs to address employee issues, such as addictions, that had an impact on absenteeism, workplace safety, and productivity. In the case of traumatic critical incidents, counselors assisted