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Fifty Years of Occupational Psychology in Britain

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Fifty Years of Occupational Psychology in Britain This a reformatted version of the original document published in 1994. FIFTY YEARS OF OCCUPATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN BRITAIN by Sylvia Shimmin Emeritus Professor of Emeritus Professor of Behaviour in Organisations, University of Lancaster and Don Wallis Emeritus Professor of Applied Psychology, University of Wales The Division and Section of Occupational Psychology, The British Psychological Society, Leicester. 1 Division and Section of Occupational Psychology, The British Psychological Society, Leicester 1994. First published in 1994 by THE DIVISION AND SECTION OF OCCUPATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. THE BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. LEICESTER. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted without permission. ISBN 1 85438 146 9 This paperback version is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The conclusions drawn and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They should not be taken to represent the views of the publishers. Printed by AVC Craft Printers Cowbridge (Wales) 1994 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 4 PART 1. THE FIRST 30 YEARS - A PERSONALISED CHRONICLE AND COMMENTARY Prologue 5 Chapter 1: The War Years 14 Chapter 2: Psychology in the Service of Government 26 Chapter 3: Post-War Research and Applications in Industry 39 Chapter 4: Personal Reflections and Recollections 52 PART 2. THE RECENT PAST Preface 63 Chapter 5: The Changing Nature of Occupational Psychology 64 Chapter 6: Developments in Academic and Professional Practice 83 Epilogue 102 Bibliography 106 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So many people have helped us, directly and indirectly, in this enterprise that it is difficult to know where to begin in acknowledging their assistance and encouragement. Sadly, some have died since we began the project, reinforcing the point we made in the opening paragraph of our text about the diminishing number of those with personal recollections spanning the years of our review. In this category, we are indebted to the late Donald Broadbent, Ken Corkindale, Jack Davies, Denys Harding and Ron Stansfield who so readily corroborated or corrected points of detail as well as giving their own impressions of events. For written or taped accounts and / or discussions and interviews about their own careers and developments in occupational psychology, our warm thanks to Isabel Blain, Mackenzie Davey, Sylvia Downs, David Duncan, Edward Elliott, Elizabeth Gould, Alastair Heron, David Nelson, John Parry, Gerry Randell, Pat Shipley, Tom Singleton, Ken Tilley, and Allan Williams; to Boris Semeonoff concerning the Applied Psychology Unit at Edinburgh and to Derek Pugh about the emergence of organisational psychology. We are grateful to David Guest for arranging access to the NIIP Archive in the library at the London School of Economics; to Sandy Lovie for access to the BPS Archive; to Wendy Hollway for making available material supplied to her by the late Leslie Hearnshaw; to Ken Gardner and Alan Jones for help concerning Admiralty studies. Interviewing in different parts of the country was facilitated by a Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellowship held by Sylvia Shimmin in 1989-90. At a later stage, the practical assistance of George Heaviside is gratefully acknowledged. Without the backing of the Division and Section of the British Psychological Society this book would not have appeared in print. We would like to thank all those who, known and unknown to us, have sought to bring this about. Among the former, our special thanks to Zander Wedderburn, who has been unfailingly helpful in steering us through the final stages of publication, and to Chris Brotherton, Tom Carruthers and Malcolm Kilcross who were active in promoting the Divisions support to the project. Likewise, to those on the Section Committee who performed a similar role but with whom we have had no personal contact. Zander, Tom, and an anonymous reviewer read the bulk of the script in manuscript and made useful comments and suggestions for improvement. The interest and encouragement of many friends and acquaintances in the field of occupational psychology has sustained us in what seemed at times a never-ending task. Our warmest thanks, therefore, to Pam Wallis for ensuring we had the best possible conditions for writing whenever we were able to get together. Without her care, we might still be on the job. 4 PART 1 THE FIRST 30 YEARS ~ A PERSONALISED CHRONICLE AND COMMENTARY PROLOGUE Introduction The origin of this volume was straightforward. It arose from the author’s reminiscences over a drink at a British Psychological Society’s Occupational Psychology Conference in the late 1980s, contrasting the field as it was when they entered it shortly after the Second World War with its contemporary configurations. We realised that the changes we had experienced and observed over some fifty years were not only extensive but also largely unrecorded, particularly from the viewpoint of the participants involved. Furthermore, the latter group was a diminishing one, reducing year by year through death or incapacitating illness. For this reason, it seemed important to seek the personal recollections from as many people as possible who had witnessed these changes, to complement our own. Also to seek out some not readily accessible documentary sources in an endeavour to fill a gap in the history of post-war occupational psychology in Britain that might otherwise remain unfilled. This was the stimulus for our project, the execution of which has been time- consuming, fascinating, but not at all straightforward. We are not professional historians and each person and source we have consulted has indicated other lines of enquiry or potentially useful material that we might follow up which, if pursued systematically, would engage full- time researchers for several years. What follows, therefore, is in no sense a definitive history of British occupational psychology in the last half century, nor a comprehensive account of all the persons and events shaping the field in recent decades, but a selective picture based on our personal recollections and reflections of working as professional psychologists. Between us we have had first-hand experience of psychological research and applications, 111 government, military, industrial and public service organisations, of university teaching and the use of field placements to acquaint students with the practical aspects of applied psychology, and of representing and promoting the interests of the discipline both within and outside professional psychological circles. Our presentation and organisation of our material have been guided by our own careers in that we have concentrated on those areas of the subject that we know best, but this is not a ‘history of psychology in autobiography’ on the lines of the American series of volumes bearing that title. The data we have gathered have been obtained through an iterative process built round our attempts to make sense of the past from archival and personal material. We have drawn upon published autobiographical accounts in psychological journals, official reports, both published and unpublished, letters and solicited and unsolicited observations from contemporaries and others, and taped interviews with a number of people who took part in particular events and/or were associated with particular institutions, as well as our own recollections. Our sample of informants was not as representative as we would have liked, but it served to “confront our interpretation of events with the impressions held by those who had lived them” to quote Pestre, one of the historians involved in the History of CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), who came to appreciate this valuable function of oral history in the course of their work (Hermann et al, 1990). As she observes, personal accounts, however “one-sided” they may be, “can supply points of reference and grist to the intellectual mill which can be extracted only with difficulty from written sources alone”. It was our experience that the documentary material to which we gained access for this project was also of variable quality, and often incomplete, so that it was necessary to cross- check with other sources and to ‘read between the lines’ in some instances in order to make use of it. 5 In round figures, the period we are concerned with is from 1940 to 1990. Part 1 of this volume deals with the first thirty years, linking chronological developments with our own and others’ personal recollections and reflections. In Part 2 we have found it necessary to write in more general terms, with less personal reminiscence and appraisal. Not only are the changes of the last twenty years too close and often too complex to view with any detachment, but we are also constrained from reporting some personal impressions and recent anecdotes which might appear prejudicial to those still active in the field or in ‘the corridors of power’. A number of our informants sought specific reassurance on this point. Defining the field In broad terms, occupational psychology is that branch of applied psychology which is concerned with human behaviour and experience in organised work settings. It is a subject area which has no fixed boundaries and in some of its sub branches overlaps with other
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