Our beliefs about what motivates human behavior in large measure determine
how we interpret, respond to, and try to influence the behavior of others.
When theorists initially began to study human behavior in organizations, the
assumptions they made about the nature of people were relatively simplistic
and generally negative. One of the first and most central ideas in the study
of organizational management was that in order for organizations to function,
workers had to be induced or forced to produce certain behaviors and
perform particular tasks. These tasks were to be accomplished by people
within an organization that was understood principally as a “structure” for
regularizing interactions and processes. The goal of this structure was to
obtain efficient and consistent performance of tasks.