Foundations of Indian Psychology, Volume 2

12

Exploring the Images Used for the Individual–Organization Interface: Experiences and Reflections

Anand Prakash

Introduction

Organizational studies became institutionalized as a distinct research field in North America in the 1960s as leading universities expanded to include the new behavioural and management sciences. In keeping with the prevailing image of science, it adopted an empiricist epistemology and an atomistic ontology that portrayed formal organizations as isolated, reactive hierarchies adapting to market selection mechanisms. At this juncture, two kinds of developments shaped the growth of the discipline of Organizational Behaviour (OB). First, the failure of logical empiricist research programmes, together with the failure of ...