SOB History

Historian-psychologist Ludy Benjamin wrote a fascinating article in Amer-ican Psychologist that documented the development in 1936 of the “psycholog¬ical round table” (Benjamin, 1977). Benjamin described a rebellious group of young experimental psychologists who formed an elite society of 50 invited members who met annually to discuss innovative research ideas. Many readers of TIP are probably unaware that a very similar group, composed of I-O psychologists, was formed in the mid-1970s and continues on to this day. In this History Corner article, I thought it would be interesting to document the formation and early meetings of the Society for Organizational Behavior (S.O.B.). 

S.O.B. was founded in 1976 by Jim Naylor (who also founded the journal now known as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process). As Naylor (1977) described it, he and his Purdue colleagues Bob Pritchard and Dan Ilgen were lamenting the fact that there was no good place for I-O psychology types to meet and discuss research in a meaningful way. So, in 1975, Naylor came up with the idea to form an invitation-only society….  Click here to read more