The History of Industrial Organizational Psychology.

Psychology as a profession was not formally established until 1879, and I/O Psychology was not established for several years after that. However, theories related to the topic where discussed well before 1879. Aristotle discussed several modern management techniques and concepts such as authority, departmentalization, and leader selection. In 1527 Machiavelli gave practical advice on giving structure to organizations. One of the more important additions came from Adam Smith in 1776 with the book The Wealth of Nations, where he suggested using centralization of labor in factories, and management of specialization in factories….(short extract)