I. the DEVELOPMENT of I/O PSYCHOLOGY the Field of Industrial/Organizational

Chapter Summary/Lecture Organizer

Introductory Vignette— The chapter begins with three examples of successful businesses in today’s diverse workplace – Peet’s Coffee and Tea (part-time), the lumber mill in Canada (full-time), and owning your own business.

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF I/O PSYCHOLOGY – The field of industrial/organizational psychology is an applied field of psychology which has two major divisions – industrial and organizational. Industrial (personnel) is the older branch and emphasizes a management perspective and organizational emphasizes the individual employee within the social context of the workplace.

A. The Beginnings – Early pioneers in the field of I/O include Walter Dill Scott and his contributions in applying psychological to the field of advertising, Frederick W. Taylor and his emphasis on designing the workplace to increase worker efficiency, Hugo Munsterberg and his work in the area of personnel selection and training. World War I provided a major opportunity for the emerging field of classifying and grouping individuals in jobs by abilities. An early research project to test workplace behavior was the most famous Hawthorne Effect – when people change their behavior because of the novelty or the situation or because they are aware of being observed.

B. Modern Times – The role of I/O Psychology continued to expand with the development of the Army General Classification Test, human factors psychology, and a shift in emphasis away from manufacturing to executive management thereby creating organizational psychology. The civil rights movement had a major impact on the way employees are tested, trained, recruited, and hired.

II. INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY – Researchers and practitioners in this field help employers with personnel recruitment, selection, on-the-job training, and performance evaluation.

A. Recruitment and Selection – A job analysis includes the tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personal characteristics (KSAOs) that are necessary to perform a specific job. Interviews are the most popular and powerful selection tool and include both structured and unstructured.

B. Employee Training – After a candidate is hired, the I/O psychologist typically conduct an orientation and is involved in training and upgrading skills for new and existing employees.

C. Evaluating Workers – After an employee has been recruited, selected, and trained, his/her performance evaluation is conducted for a number of reasons including providing feedback to the employee and identifying training and development needs. Various types of rating scales may be used. III. ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY- Organizational psychology focuses on the individual in the social context of the workplace and involves leadership, power, worker motivation, and job satisfaction.

A. Leadership and Power – Leadership may be viewed as the use of interpersonal influence to inspire or persuade others to support the goals and perform the tasks desired by the leader. Leaders can be informal or formal and three major leadership styles include: trait, situational, and functional. The trait perspective views leaders are born, not made and holds that leadership traits are inherited. Others view charismatic-type leaders as possessing additional traits involving a compelling vision using excellent communication, coupled with a stirring personal style. In contrast, situational theorists believe the environment produces leaders depending upon their skills, knowledge, and personal traits most valued in that situation and at that point in time. Three major types of leaders are theorized to emerge from the situational view: autocratic (authoritarian), democratic (participative), and laissez-faire leaders. The functional perspective suggests leaders are produced because they contribute to group needs or functioning.

Five important bases of a leader’s power have been identified: legitimate, expert, referent, reward, and coercive. Legitimate power comes with a job title or position. Expert power comes from experience and expertise because of their knowledge in their fields. Referent power is derived from one’s feelings of identification with another and provides direction and leadership. Reward power is the ability to give rewards for complying with desired behavior.

Gender and Cultural Diversity: Male/Female Differences in Leadership – While Alice Eagly (1999) and other researchers have found a small, significant difference in leadership styles between genders –males tending to be more task-oriented leaders, other researchers found no significant difference and suggest the differences dwindle as the levels of management are higher.

Critical Thinking/Active Learning: Power Versus Influence – Students are given an opportunity to self-evaluate and compare their preference for power and influence on twenty-two statements.

B. Worker Motivation – I/O psychologists have developed three theories about what motivates workers: goal-setting theory, equity theory, and expectancy theory.

1.Goal-Setting Theory – Goal-setting theory is strongly supported by research and is the most popular theory of motivation in industrial/organizational psychology. Goal-setting theory proposes that having specific and difficult, but attainable goals, leads to higher performance by focusing attention and action on goal-related behaviors, motivating people to try harder, increasing persistence, and encouraging individuals to search for effective ways to achieve their goals.

2. Equity Theory – Equity theory suggests we are strongly motivated to achieve a sense of balance and we prefer jobs that the perceived input (contributions) match our job output (rewards). When these match we are happy because there is a state of equity. If we perceive an imbalance, then we may adjust our input (by decreasing our efforts or quitting) or we may seek to increase our output (by asking for more pay or compensations).

3. Expectancy Theory – Expectancy theory is the oldest and most popular worker motivation theory and maintains that workers perform according to their expectancy of outcomes, the desirability of those outcomes, and the effort needed to achieve them. C. Job Satisfaction – Job satisfaction is a high priority for I/O psychologists and several important factors are considered including the benefits and personality/job factors.

1.Benefits to Management and Employees – Research has found several reasons why management should care about worker satisfaction including: 1)decreased absenteeism and resignations, 2) employee health, and 3) increased productivity.

2.Personality/Job Factors – According to Holland’s personality-job fit theory, a match between a person’s personality and occupation is a major factor in job satisfaction. Holland developed a Self-Directed Search questionnaire that scores a person based on six personality characteristics and the matches them with various occupations.

Psychology at Work: Job Satisfaction and Psychotherapy – Researchers have identified several occupational hazards of a psychotherapist including (1) business- related problems, (2) client-related issues, (3) personal challenges, (4) setting-related stressors, and (5) evaluation-related problems. In addition, modern therapists are facing increasing risks of litigation and managed care issues. Researchers have also found that the stress of a career as a psychotherapist is often balanced with coping methods that include a sense of humor, freely consulting with colleagues, leisure activities, continuing education, perceiving client problems as interesting, and interpersonal support systems.