From chaos to systems: The engineering foundations of organization theory, 1879-1932

This paper traces the genesis of the systems paradigm in the study of organizations in the United States back to nineteenth-century engineering practices. The empirical analyses for the period 1879-1932 are based on primary data collected from three journals in which the study of organizations was first codified and crystallized: the Engineering Magazine, the American Machinist, and the ASME Transactions. The evolution of the systems paradigm was found to be a product of at least three forces that form one interacting gestalt: (1) the efforts of mechanical engineers who sought industrial legitimation and whose professional paradigm spilled over into the organizational field; (2) the Progressive period (1900-1917) and its rhetoric on professionalism, equality, order, and progress; and (3) labor unrest, which was perceived as a threat to stable economic and social order. The paper provides a cultural and political reading, rather than a functional and economic one, to the emergence of managerial thought and the evolution of organization theory.