It is generally considered that systematic organizational studies began as an academic discipline, after the Industrial Revolution which took place firstly in Great Britain during the late 1700s and early 1800s. This is the first milestone for OB.

The emergence of scientific management represents the peak of this development, which dates back to the end of 19th century. Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), who was an engineer and manufacturing manager at a steel company in U.S., is best known for defining scientific management techniques, in other words applying engineering principles to the study of work tasks.

Developing as a myth, in social psychology, which covers industrial and organizational psychology, management theory, industrial sociology; Hawthorne studies led the researchers turn their attention to leadership in organizations, who believed that the productivity could be increased not only by financial rewards but with cooperative behavior  of managers and supervisors with employees. This was mainly because that one of the influencing results of the Hawthorne studies suggested that employees perform better if they receive attention and recognition. “Human relations”, defined as “motivating people in organizational settings to develop teamwork that accomplishes the individual, as well as organization’s goal efficiently”

With Hawthorne Studies, an essential part, the effect of employee motivation on organizational performance, was discovered; however there was still something missing to understand the fullpicture. With an emphasis on human side of organizations, human relations view attracted many research; but later important criticisms occurred due to its emphasis on mostly small and informal groups and the relations among the group members. The human relations approach ignored the formal organization and its relation with the environment. In 1960s, a major shift of thinking occurred, which was represented as a new scientific paradigm; this identified a third milestone in the OB history. The development of systems-theory in life-sciences as a multidisciplinary approach affected the way of thinking in organizations.

Systems theory changed the way of thinking in organizational studies; starting from 1960s, research which were undertaken within the framework of contingency theory dominated the organizational behavior field. Contingency theory, which was first termed in 1967 by Lawrence and Lorsch who investigated the effect of uncertainty and variance on organizations; represents an important part of systems approach. Within the scope of contingency theory, organizations are studied as a system. The theory focuses on both the relations of sub-systems of the organization and the relation of these sub-systems with the situations outside the organizations. Contingency theory did not totally remove the assumptions of prior approaches, but it brought a new perspective to them, which were the consideration of environmental factors and the fit of organizational factors with these external factors.

As can be understood from the nformation given, the correct answer is E. All developments given in the answer choices formed the milestones of OB history.