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Summary Industrial Psychology 1A Semester 1 Notes (Learning Units 1-9)
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Industrial Psychology 1A Semester 1 Notes. Includes Learning Units 1-9, learning outcomes, and summaries at the end of each unit.
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Industrial Psychology and People ManagementChapter 1 (Unit 1)
Learning Unit 1: Industrial (Work) Psychology: An Initial Introduction
• Psychology (Define)
•the science of mental life (Miller 1966)
•mental life refers to three phenomena:
- thoughts
- emotions
- behaviors
•is it a science?
- controversial
> science - systematic collection of data under a controlled environment
> psychology is complex - dealing with behaviors and emotions
• Basic Psychology Areas / Psychology Sub-disciplines (Define)
•Physiological Psychology
- relationship between mind and body
•Cognitive Psychology
- focus is on cognitive functioning (thought processes)
•Developmental Psychology
- ways in which people grow and change psychologically
•Social Psychology
- how behaviors, thoughts, and emotions affect and are affected by other people
•Personality Psychology
- people’s characteristics, tendency to behave, think, and feel in certain ways
• Basic Psychology vs Applied Psychology (Define)
•Applied Psychologists
- interested in solving problems and identify opportunities for growth
•Basic Psychologists
- driven by the love of knowledge
•Areas of Applied Psychology:
- Clinical psychology
- Educational psychology
- Health psychology
- Legal psychology
- Sports psychology
- Work/industrial/organizational psychology – focus
> not a sub–discipline of Psychology, but an area of Applied Psychology
> uses concepts, theories, and techniques derived from all areas of basic psychology
• Traditions in Psychology (Discuss)
•Psychoanalytic Tradition
- known as psychodynamic developed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
- humanistic approach came later (check text book)
•Trait Tradition
- measuring person’s psychological characteristics
•Phenomenological Tradition
- how people experience the world around them (things are as we experience them)
•Behaviorist Tradition
- observable behavior and conditions (situations) that elicit particular behavior
•Social Cognitive Tradition
- how our thought process are used to interpret social interaction and other social-psychological phenomena
• Work Psychology (Describe)
•Definition:
- Work psychology concerns all aspects of human behavior, thoughts, feelings, and experiences concerning work/ in the workplace.
•Origin:
•Has two distinct roots within applied psychology
- FMJ (fitting man to the job)
> employee selection, training and vocational guidance
- FJM (fitting job to the man)
> response to the demands of two world wars
•Hawthorne studies (1920s) focused on human relations at work rather than human relations and their work
- illumination project
•Decline in 1960s:
- company profit margins
- employee favour
- trade unions opinion
- loaded administrative work
- managers trained in HR
•Today:
- many names (work, industrial, organizational, vocational, personnel psychology)
- the root of human resources and organizational behavior
- integrated in most parts of the organization
- employed as teachers, internal or external consultants, and researchers
- in large organization- need to speak the language of business
> organizational development
> HR management
•Code of Conduct:
- Respect: value the dignity and worth of all persons and their human rights
- Competence: to value the continuing development and maintenance of high standards of competence
- Responsibility: value their responsibility to clients, the profession, general public (do no harm)
- Integrity: to value honesty, accuracy, clarity, and fairness in their interactions with all persons
- Ethical behavior:
consent - made aware beforehand
deception - avoided unless for research
debriefing - after participation to complete understanding
withdrawal from the investigation - right to withdraw
confidentiality - data protection act - info is conidential unless agreed otherwise
protection of participants - protection from physical or mental harm
• Focus Areas in Work Psychology (Define)
•Operations:
- Recruitment and selection: uses phychological tests and interviews
- Training: identify needs, designing, delivering, and evaluating
- Performance appraisal and career development: identify key aspects, design systems, training in interventions
- Organizational development and change: analysing systems, relationships, leadership, negotiation, organisational culture
- Human-machine interaction: analyse and design work equipment and environment to fit physical and cognitive capabilities
- Counselling and personnel development: work or career issues; assessing career interests
- Design of environment and work: health and safety; features of the environment
- Employee relations and motivation: satisfied job allocations; inter-group relations
• Changes in the World of Work (Discuss)
•Economic turbulence
•Ever-changing technologies (4th Industrial Revolution)
•So why focus on staff well being in such uncertain times:
- employee engagement = staff turnover = saving on recruitment cost
- retrenchment = workload increases
- upturn = motivated employees take on new opportunities
•Historical research
- predominantly male workforce
- predominantly large organizations
- more manufacturing than service organizations
- ethnically homogenous and located in rich countries
- full time employees
- clear and stable structures and practices
•Technology
•Affects jobs, well-being, individual and organizational performance:
- motives of those who introduce it
- process by which it is introduced
- how well it fits existing social systems
•Benefits of technology: people can work in different locations on the same project
•Shortfalls of technology: less opportunity for supervision, isolation, difficulty keeping work and non-work activities separate
•Work life integration
•What happens at work can influence people's lives outide of work and vice versa
•Why is the conversation important:
- woman in the workplace
- the rise of boundary less careers
- increasing pressure to work harder
- increasing number of dual career household
•Greenhouse and Beutel (1985) suggested three types of conflict:
•Poor work-life integration appears to be associated with stress and ill health
- Time based conflict: pressures make it impossible to meet demands
- Strain based conflict: impact of engagement reduces the resources available
- Behavior based conflict: different roles
•World of Work Changes and their Implications for Work Psychology
•Ageing Work Force
- learning, performance, satisfaction and engagement with work of older people
•Equality in the Labour Market
- development of fair selection processes; diversity; inter-group relations
•Increasing Workloads
- stress and pressure at work; employee well being; work-life balance
•Remote and Virtual Offices
- supervision and leadership; isolation and work performance; virtual communication
•Cost-Cutting and Knowledge Optimisation
- job design; knowledge management; stress; innovation and creativity; change
•Downsizing and Outsourcing
- ambiguous career paths; coping with change and uncertainty; SMEs; entrepreneurship
•Low-Skilled vs Qualified Employees
- unemployment; distribution of wealth
•Internalisation of Organisations and Markets
- cross-cultural comparison; intercultural influence; legislation across cultures
,Industrial Psychology and People Management
Chapter 2 (Unit 2)
Learning Unit 2: Theory, Research and Practice of Work Psychology
• Psychological Theory (Discuss)
• Theory: organized collection of ideas that serves to describe, explain or predict what a person will do, think or feel
•Elements of Psychological Theory should specify:
1. Person’s behavior thought or emotion should have significance for human affairs
2. Difference in degree to which people characteristically exhibit behaviors, thoughts, or emotions in question
3. Situational factors that might influence whether behaviors, thoughts or emotions occur
4. Consequences of the interaction between 2 and 3
5. Occurrence of behavior might bring about change
• Philosophies in Psychological Research (Define)
•A broard distinction between to kinds of research in work psychology.
•Positivism:
- social world exists objectively, this usually implies measuring things using quantitative methods (numerical data)
•Social constructionism:
- termed as phenomenological
- this viewpoint suggests that reality is not objective
- the meaning, events, concepts and objectives is constructed and interpreted by people, through their thought process and social interactions
•NB: Philosophical disagreement in psychology between positivism and social constructivism:
- the former emphasizes objectively verifiable cause of behavior, thoughts and emotions
- the latter focuses more on people’s subjective explanations and accounts
• Research Methods (Discuss)
•Ways in which work psychologists conduct research from the point of view of specific techniques.
•Procedures by which information (data) is collected.
1 Questionnaires and Psychometric Tests
• Used to assess individuals’ psychological attributes
• Structured questionnaires are mostly used in psych research
• Provide large quantities of data with statistical analysis
• May fail to reflect important aspects of individuals’ experiences
• Quick and easy information
2 Interviews
• Individual vs group interviews
• Structured vs unstructured interviews
• Can be analysed by content analysis or discourse analysis
3 Psychophysiological and Psychophysical Measures
• Assessing individuals’ neurological, biological, physical or physiological state of performance
4 Observation
• Structured observation - real-life situation to record the frequency, source and timing of behaviour
• Participant observation – researcher participates in the events being studied
• Observing the consequences of behaviour
• Influenced by the researcher’s theoretical orientation
• Allows the researcher to form impressions of what is said and done in the work context as it happens
5 Diaries
• Key events and behaviours, thoughts and feelings
• Important to provide a fair amount of structure to participants and stay in contact and encourage participation
• Ability to track the details and fast moving developments of individuals’ day-to-day lives
• Poor completion rates
6 Archival Sources
• Source of data rather than method
• Already existing information - company records
• Provide a context for particular research project
• Help to investigate the impact of an event on the functioning of an organisation
• Research Designs (Define)
•Ways in which work psychologists conduct research from the point of view of the overall strategy.
1 Survey Design
• Does not intervene in naturally occurring events or control them
• Individuals are asked about attitudes and perceptions
• Aim to gather quantitative information about human behaviour at a specific time and place or over longer periods
• Ask the right people to participate - random sampling
• Can be used with those directly involved the issues being investigated
• Quick and easy to conduct
• Does not involve the manipulation of variables being investigated
• Makes it difficult to establish cause and effect relationships
• Takes the world as is
2 Experimental Design
• Allows for control over what happens which permits inferences about cause and effects relationship
• Most controlled environments is the lab
• Experimental vs control groups (random sampling)
• Independent variable - behaviour, thought, emotion, etc. the researcher manipulates
• Dependent variable – behaviour, thought, emotion, etc. being effected
• Can cause artificial situations if controlled too much
• Field vs natural experiment
, • Try to balance realism and control
3 Qualitative Design
• Non-numerical data is collected
• Written language, spoken visual expressions, experiences and perceptions of people, analysis cultural aspects individual case perceptions of people, individual case studies and autobiographies
• Greater emphasis on seeing the world from the perspective of individuals participating in the research
• Information obtained is used to paint a picture, rather than measure specific sconstructs
• Data collection is influenced by theoretical ideas
• Data collection and analysis can be time consuming
> Types of Qualitative Design
a Naturalism
emphasises observing what happens in real-life settings
b Ethnomethodology
analyses the interactions between people and the way in which the interactions maintain and reflect social order
c Emotionalism
interested in establising close rapport with research participants and findind out about their experiences and feelings
d Postmodernism
how people portray themselves and their context in order to achieve personal goals and affirm their sense of identity
4 Action Research Design
• Researcher and participants are jointly involved in the process
• Solving both immediate problems collaboratively and adding to the general knowledge about the topic being researched
• Involves diagnoses, investigation, changes being made, evaluations
• Mostly involves interviews and participant observation
• Abandons the use of surveys and experimental designs
• Can be difficult and unpredictable
• Problem orientated in the organisation
• Challenging to establish who the researcher is working for
• Research Terminology
•Statistics:
- work psychologists use statistics to assess whether two or more groups of people differ psychologically in some way
- or whether two or more aspects of people's psychological functioning tend to go together
• Statistical Significance (Discuss)
•The concept of statistical significance refers to the probability of the null hypothesis being true given the data obtained.
- Crucial in psychological research
- Lower probability of accepting the alternative hypothesis and rejecting null shypothesis
- Not prepared to accept the alternative hypothesis, unless there is a probability of 0.05 that the null hypothesis is true
- Can say with 95% certainty that the alternative hypothesis is true
- Type I error = rejecting the null hypothesis
- Type II error = accepting the null hypothesis
- Arbitrary cut off points= significance at 0.05 and 0.01 levels
- Lower probability = higher statistical significance
- Dependent on the effect size x size of the study
• Statistical Tests (Define)
- common tests used in work psychology
•t-test (mean score – average)
- assesses the significance of a difference and magnitude between 2 group mean scores
•Analysis of variance (comparing more than two groups)
- used when scores of > 2 groups are compared
•Chi-square (the levels at which groups/variables may differ)
- used when data is more categorical and qualitative to identify differences between groups
•Multiple regression (posh correlations)
- extension of the correlation between > 2 variables
•Correlations (the levels at which groups/variables may be the same)
- most commonly used in survey research to understand the relationships between variables
•Meta-analysis (other phenomena in statistical testing)
- provide an overview and summary of what general conclusions can be drawn from a body of research
SUMMARY
* NATURE OF THEORY
* FACTORS THAT A GOOD THEORY NEEDS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT
* HOW STATISTICAL AND QUALATITIVE TECHNIQUES FOR ANALAYSING DATA CAN BE UTILISED IN ORDER TO DRAW CONCLUSIONS ABOUT WHAT THE DATA MEAN
* STATISTICAL TECHNIQUES HELP DRAW APPROPRIATE CONCLUSIONS FROM QUANTATIVE DATA
1 COMPARISONS BETWEEN TWO OR MORE GROUPS OF PEOPLE
t-test; analysis of variance; chi-square
2 TWO OR MORE VARIABLES ARE BEING EXAMINED WITHIN A GROUP TO SEE WHETHER THEY TEND TO GO TOGETHER
correlation; multiple regression
* STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE IS NB IN INTERPRETING THE RESULTS PRODUCED BY STATISTICAL TESTS
so is the notion of effect size (degree to which the null hypothesis is false)
* TECHNIQUES FOR ANALYSING QUALATATIVE DATA
many and varied
degree of flexibility
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