OpenStax Psychology

Chapter 13 Industrial-Organizational
Study Guide

13.1 What is industrial and Organizational Psychology?

Industrial-Organizational psychology studies how human behavior and psychology effect work and how they are
affected by work. I-0 psychologists can work in numerous fields including: academia, government, consulting
firms and business.

I-O psychology can be broken down into three main areas of study:
1. Industrial psychology – selecting and evaluating employees.
2. Organizational psychology – the social dimension of work.
3. Human Factors psychology – workplace design.

Historical Development

I-O psychology originated in the early 20th century with industrial psychology and the use of psychological
concepts to aid in personnel selection. The birth of industrial psychology lies with three students of Wilhelm
Wundt. Walter Dill Scott was one of the first psychologists to apply psychology to advertising, management and
personnel selection. Hugo Munsterberg studied employee selection, employee training, and effective
advertising, while James Cattell founded the Psychological Corporation, a psychological consulting company.

Research such as the Hawthorne study found that productivity was affected more by human interaction and not
physical factors.
● This study noticed that an individual’s performance increased when they were being observed, a
dynamic now known as the Hawthorne effect. Findings such as these caused the field to expand with
the introduction of organizational psychology.

Organizational psychology was also influenced by both WWI and WWII. During this time, psychologists (Yerkes,
Scott, and Bingham) were assigned to tasks which led to the development of tests and research in how the
psychological concepts could assist industry and other areas.

In the field of human factors psychology, influential psychologists include Frederick Taylor, who focused on
redesigning the workplace to increase productivity, and Lilian Gilbreth, known as the mother of modern
management. Gilbreth studied efficiency improvements that reduced the number of motions required to
perform a task. She is credited with the idea of putting shelves on the inside of refrigerator doors and foot-
pedal-operated garbage cans. Her research also led to the finding that many employees were motivated by
money and job satisfaction.
 Questions:

1. Why is it important to examine how human behavior and psychology affect work and how they are
affected by work?
2. In which contexts do industrial and organizational psychologists work?
3. What degrees do I-O psychologists hold?
4. What is the difference between industrial and organizational psychology?
5. How does Human Factors Psychology compare with industrial and organizational psychology?
6. What is an example from your own life in which human factors psychology may have an influence?
7. What does occupational health psychology (OHP) deal with?
8. What types of jobs do professionals from the field of I-O psychology hold? (hint: see table 13.1)

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

9. Who were the early psychologists who studied issues related to I-O?
10. How did the work of psychologist working on disciplines related to I-O contributed to military efforts
during WWI?
11. What did Elton Mayo and his colleagues find in their research about the work place environment?
12. What does the term Hawthorne effect refer to?
13. Why is it important to control for the Hawthorne-effect in experiments?
14. Who is responsible for coining the term group dynamics and how did they study it?
15. What did Taylor’s book “The Principles of Scientific Management” described?
16. How did Lilian Gilbreth find ways to increase productivity?

FROM WORLD WAR II TO TODAY

17. How did WWII drive the expansion of industrial psychology?

18. How did the work of I-O psychologists become important in the 1960s?

13.2 Industrial Psychology: Selecting and Evaluating Employees

This branch of I-0 psychology focuses on hiring and maintaining employees by studying job characteristics,
applicant characteristics, and how to match them. These procedures include job analysis, applicant testing (e.g.,
personality tests, IQ tests, integrity tests, and physical tests) and interviews. It also studies and implements
employee training procedures for new employees such as orientation and mentoring as well as on-going
training for employees.
Research also focuses on evaluating employees and designing performance appraisal systems. Performance
appraisal is the evaluation of an employee’s success or lack of success at performing the duties of the job. One
type of performance appraisal system is the 360-degree feedback appraisal, in which, supervisors, customers,
direct reports, peers, and the employee himself rate an employee’s performance.

This branch also considers issues of legality regarding discrimination in hiring. Many laws exist to prevent hiring
based on various group-membership criteria (e.g., gender, religion, and age). The U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job
applicant or an employee because of their group-membership. Industrial psychologists develop methods for
avoiding bias and adhering to the law in hiring.
Job Advertising
Job analysis – accurately describing the task/job.
• Task-oriented – lists in detail the tasks that will be performed for the job.
• Worker-oriented – describes characteristics required of the worker to successfully perform the job (e.g.,
knowledge, skills, abilities).

Candidate Analysis and Testing

Can involve testing, interviews, and work samples, or exercises.
• Personality tests can be used to identify personality characteristics of the candidate and match those
personality characteristics that would ensure good performance on the job.
• Other tests can include IQ tests, integrity tests, and physical tests, such as drug tests or physical fitness tests.

Interviews can be influenced by social factors and body language such as the degree of similarity of the
applicant to the interviewer and nonverbal behaviors (e.g., hand gestures, head nodding, and smiling).
• Research found that lack of eye contact and smiling lead to lower applicant ratings.

Unstructured interview:
• Different questions for different candidates.
• Questions are usually unspecified beforehand.

Structured interview:
• Same questions for every candidate.
• Questions are prepared in advance.
• Standardized rating system for each response.
• More effective at predicting subsequent job performance of the job candidate.

Orientation:
• Training usually begins with an orientation period during which a new employee learns about company
policies, practices, and culture.
• Educates the new employee about the organizational culture, the values, visions, hierarchies, norms and
ways the company’s employees interact.

Mentoring:
• Experienced employee guides the work of a new employee.
• Mentors may be formally assigned or develop informally.

Industrial-organizational psychologists are often involved in designing performance-appraisal systems for

organizations.
• Aim to make evaluations as fair and positive as possible, and decrease subjectivity.
• Performance appraisals – evaluation of an employee’s success or lack of success at performing the
duties of the job.
• Often used to motivate employees to improve performance and expand areas of competence.

Selecting candidates based on group membership, when it does not directly affect potential job performance, is
discriminatory.
• Many laws exist to prevent hiring based on various group-membership criteria.
• Pregnancy, religion, and age are some of the criteria on which hiring decisions cannot legally be made.
Questions:

SELECTING EMPLOYEES

1. What two types of approaches are used to job analysis?

2. What methods are used to obtain information required for both types of job analysis?
3. What is Figure 13.8 representing?
4. How is a candidate for a position evaluated?
5. Why are interviews useful?
6. What are the two types of interviews?
7. How is training carried out in most jobs?
8. What is an important goal of orientation training?
9. What is mentoring?

EVALUATING EMPLOYEES

10. What are performance appraisals and why are they important?
11. Describe how a 360-degree system works:

BIAS AND PROTECTIONS IN HIRING

12. What factors can influence interview rankings?

13. How can hiring discrimination be combated?

THE U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION (EEOC)

14. What is the EEOC responsible for?

15. What other laws does the United States have to protect people from discrimination?
16. What does Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protect people from?

AMERICAN WITH DISABILITITES ACT (ADA)

17. What is the ADA about?

18. How is a disability defined?
19. What is the most common reason for invoking a BFOQ?
13.3 Organizational Psychology: The Social Dimension of Work

This branch of I-0 psychology focuses on the social dimension of work by studying interactions between people
working in organizations and effects of those interactions on productivity.
● A major area of interest is job satisfaction and its determinants and outcomes. Job satisfaction results
from how we think and feel about our work, and is influenced by the work itself, our personality, and
our culture.
● The most strongly predictive factor of overall job satisfaction is work content (variety, challenge, role
clarity), whereas financial rewards was found to have the weakest correlation.
● Job stress negatively impacts job satisfaction and can result from numerous stressors in an occupation
such as work overload, discrimination, and lack of career progress.
● A primary job stressor is lack of job security which can result from job threats such as downsizing
(number of employees is reduced) and corporate mergers (the joining of two organizations).

Other areas of interest include work-life balance (sources of work-family conflict and how to reduce it),
teamwork, motivation, commitment, management and leadership styles.

Douglas McGregor (1960) combined scientific management and human relations into the notion of leadership
behavior. Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows with the
main objective of improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. McGregor identified two styles of
managers:
● Theory X - managers who assume workers are inherently lazy and unproductive; managers must have
control and use punishment.
● Theory Y – managers who assume workers are people who seek to work hard and productively;
managers and workers can find creative solutions to problems; workers do not need to be controlled
and punished.
● Bass (1985), identified transactional and transformational leadership styles.
● Transactional leadership – characteristic of leaders who focus on supervision and organizational goals
achieved through a system of rewards and punishments; maintenance of the organizational status quo.
● Transformational leadership – characteristic of leaders who are 1) charismatic role models, 2)
inspirational(optimistic about goal attainment), 3) intellectually stimulating (encourage critical thinking
and problem solving), and 4) individually considerate and who seek to change the organization.

Organizational culture is an important focus of organizational psychology. Organizational culture embodies the
social norms, values, visions, hierarchies, role expectations and interactions among its employees. It involves
how an organization is run, how it operates, and how it makes decisions.

Three layers in organizational culture are:

1) observable artifacts (symbols of language, narratives, and practices that represent the underlying cultural
assumptions),
2) espoused values (concepts/beliefs that are endorsed), and
3) basic assumptions.
One aspect of organizational culture is the prevention and addressing of sexual and other forms of harassment.
Sexual harassment includes language, behavior, or displays that create a hostile environment; it also includes
sexual favors requested in exchange for workplace rewards (i.e., quid pro quo).
I-O psychology has also conducted extensive research on the triggers and causes of workplace violence and
safety. This enables the organization to establish procedures that can identify these triggers before they become
a problem.

Questions:

1. What does Job satisfaction entail?

2. According to the definition of job satisfaction, can do you describe your own job satisfaction in the present
moment?
3. How is job satisfaction measured?
4. What factors are involved in job satisfaction? (Hint: see Table 13.2)
5. Why is it important to consider job satisfaction?
6. How does job stress affect job satisfaction?
7. What is downsizing?
8. Can you think of two big companies that have merged and caused cuts?

WORK-FAMILY BALANCE

9. What are some examples of work-family balance sources of conflict?

10. What are the differences between men and women in terms of work-family balance?
11. How does telecommuting decrease work-family conflict?

MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

12. Compare and contrast styles X and Y derived from McGregor’s scientific management theory:
13. What was another management style described by Donald Clifton?
14. Compare and contrast the different theories of leadership styles:

GOALS, TEAMWORK AND WORK TEAMS

15. What is one way that companies are responding to changes?

16. Why do some teams work well while others do not?
17. What are the three basic types of teams?

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

18. What are the characteristics of an organizational culture?

19. Why is diversity training important?
20. How are generational differences managed in the workplace?
21. What are some of the sexual harassment policies put in place in the work place?
i. What are the different forms of sexual harassment?

VIOLENCE IN THE WORKPLACE

22. How is violence in the workplace defined?

ii. Please give examples:
iii. What is procedural justice?
13.4 Human Factors Psychology and Workplace Design

This branch of I-0 psychology studies how workers interact with the tools of work (e.g., machines, work stations,
information displays, and the local environment) and how to design those tools to optimize workers’
productivity, safety, and health.

Human factors psychologists specifically seek to design machines to better support the workers using them.
They may be involved in design of work tools such as software, displays, or machines from the beginning of the
design process or during the testing of an already developed product. Human-software interactions are a large
sector of this research.

Attention – includes vigilance and monitoring, recognizing signals in noise, mental resources, and divided
attention.

Cognitive engineering – includes human software interactions in complex automated systems, especially
decision-making processes of workers as they are supported by the software system.

Task analysis – breaking down the elements of a task.

Cognitive task analysis – breaking down the elements of a cognitive task.

Workplace Safety
Checklists:
• Used to reduce accidents in the workplace.
• E.g. Pilots are required to go through a detailed checklist of the different parts of the aircraft before
takeoff to ensure that all essential equipment is working correctly.
Time limits on operating equipment:
• Limits how long an operator, such as a pilot or truck driver, is allowed to operate the equipment.

Questions:

1. What are some important roles that human factor professionals are involved in?
2. Think of things you used at your job. How do you think human factors psychologists have influenced the
making of such things?
3. What is one method used in the workplace to reduce accidents?
4. What are some areas of study done in human factors psychology? (Hint: look at Table 13.4)