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Summary Behaviour & Environment: Behaviour in Organisations (SOW-PSB2BE10EA)

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Course
B&E 2: Behaviour in Organisations (SOWPSB2BE10EA)

Institution
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)

Summary of both the lectures and all the literature of Behaviour and Environment: Behaviour in Organisations. I used this document to study for the exam and my grade was a 7.5.

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behaviour and environment
organisational psychology
radboud university
psychology

Institution
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
Education
Psychologie
Course
B&E 2: Behaviour in Organisations (SOWPSB2BE10EA)

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Samenvatting Behaviour and Environment 2
Theme 1: Work & work behaviour
Part 1: Why should we bother about work?
Everything around you is the result of work
Work in three sectors
1. Agriculture – including forestry, hunting and fishing
2. Industry – including manufacturing, mining and constructing
3. Services – including transportation, communication, healthcare, finance and administration

Work is an essential part of our lives
 > 3.5 billion people are employed
 Work is super invasive
- People in a full-time job spend half of their lives on work
- Private time is partly spent on work (overtime, thinking about work)
- Work life will be prolonged (> 67)
 So, work has a huge impact on health, happiness and personality
 Technology paradox = instead of work becoming less because of advanced technology, work
keeps growing because all the technology needs to be operated on.

Benefits from work
 Income (independence, availability of new resources)
 Relative deprivation model = apart from income there are different social benefits that
people get from work:
- Structure (regular activity)
- Opportunities for social contact (no work = more lonely feeling)
- Social identity (source of status and self-esteem)
- Sharing of a common purpose (feeling meaningful)
- Opportunities for learning and development
 So, work leads to higher levels of general health and satisfaction

Drawbacks of work
In 2020 in the EU:
 10% of workers reported work related health problems during the previous year
 6% of workers suffered from bone or muscle problems, caused or made worse by their job
 45% reported facing risk factors for their mental well-being at work

Bothering about work is important
 Work is an omnipresent context for studying behaviour
 Work has great meaning for health, family life and happiness
 To understand human behaviour, we need to understand the interaction between the work
environment and psychological outcomes
 Work knowledge is essential for all psychologists

Part 2: The dynamic scope of work and organisational psychology
Work = a set of coordinated and goal-directed activities that are conducted in exchange to
something else

The scope is dynamic
Many changes in society have an impact on organisations
 Intensification (workload, time load)
 Flexibilization (time, place, contracts)

1

,  Mentalisation (mental load, service work has become more important)
 Digitalisation (loss of employment, new jobs appearing, new organisations)
 Prolonged working in life (we live longer, we work longer)

Healthy life expectancy
Living longer does not mean living healthier and a healthy life is strongly related to educational level
 People working in lower educational level jobs usually work in poorer circumstances
 People with lower education usually have worse life style (smoking, drinking, fast food)

Organisational change
The Model of Cameron and Quinn (2011) – Diagnosing and Changing Organisational Culture

The four different quadrants of Quinn’s competing values model should be seen as four different
philosophies/perspectives about what makes an (effective) organisation, and in a certain period of
time such a perspective was dominant.

Part 3: What does work and organisational psychology involve
How can work and organisational psychology help people to work in a motivated, productive and
healthy way during their entire working life?

Sustainable performance
The ability to meet the needs and expectations of customers and other stakeholders
Three overlapping subdisciplines:
1. Work (and health) psychology
2. Personnel psychology / HRM
3. Organisational psychology

Work (and health) psychology
Focus: How should work, work conditions and resting times be structured in order to guarantee work
quality, good health and optimal performance?
 Job design
 Fatigue
 Stress

2

,  Motivation
 Sickness absence
 Example: people working at the emergency call centre often have night shifts. This might get
more difficult for people to keep up with as they get older. How do we maintain quality?

Personnel psychology / HRM
Focus: How can we ensure optimal person-job fit and flow of people through an organisation, in
which individual capacity and desires match work demands and opportunities with an organisation?
 Recruitment and selection
 Development of competences
 Performance appraisal
 (financial) reward systems
 Example: helpdesks organisation. It is difficult to find people to work in call centres because it
is not interesting for people to work there. How do we make sure that people want to work
and want to keep working there in the future?

Organisational psychology
Focus: How should organisations and business processes be structured to make people collaborate as
efficiently and effective as possible?
 Organisational structure and culture
 Leadership
 Organisational change
 Dealing with resistance
 Example: healthcare workers. How do teams work efficiently together? How do we make
sure these teams can make their own decisions too?

Part 4: History of work and Organisational Psychology
In the beginning
 The Art of War (by Sun Tzu)
- How to use creativity and intelligence
- How to engage and mobilise the army
- How to be flexible
 Hippocratic Collection
- Detailed routines and guidelines for doctors
 De Re Militari (by Vergetius)
- Organisatoin and drill of the army
- Strategy and leadership

First scientific studies on work
 1879 – Wundt: the first psychological lab
 1881 – Taylor: time & motion studies in the scientific management approach
 1911 – Frank and Lillian Gilbreth: time & motion studies in efficiency
 1913 – Münsterberg: psychology & industrial efficiency

Scientific management assumptions
 There is one best way to establish how to conduct a task
 Workers are stupid and lazy by nature
 Money is the only motivator
 Managerial control is necessary to gain more profit

Principles of scientific management (according to F.W. Taylor)
1. scientific approach: time & motion studies

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, 2. selection of right worker for the job
3. training and development of worker
4. separation of head and handwork: managers think, workers do!

Due to scientific management…
 Rise of productivity and profit
 Workers felt exploited -> protest from labour unions
 US Congress Investigations lead to a ban on stopwatch in the work environment
 But Taylorism is still alive an successful (e.g. Ford Motor Company)!
 First assembly line
 Man is extension of machine
 Standard products
 No right to labour unions
 Ford ‘gestapo’ and culture of fear
 Battle of the overpass – representatives of the union were beaten by Ford security officers

Between the world wars
 WW I – Yerkes: Army intelligence tests
- The tests were culturally biased: immigrants from southern Europe scored lower
than immigrants from northern Europe.
- The Yerkes-Dodson law: performance increases with physiological or mental arousal.
 1920 – Large companies look to psychology for selection. Collaboration between engineers
and psychologists: psychological test development and ergonomics.
 1930 – Human Relations Movement: social aspects, two-way communication, leadership
 WW II – Army Aviation Psychology Programme: recruitment testing and training. It appeared
to be effective in recruiting competent pilots and other aircrew members.

After world War II
= Growth of selection psychology
 Post-war period - Also broadening: Organisational psychology
- Learning and training
- Leadership
- Fatigue
- Stress
- Safety, ergonomics
 1960 – Wave of democratisation
- criticism of selection psychology
- servants of power
- opposition of labour unions
 From 1970 – differentiation
- Broadening and scientific deepening of work and organisational psychology

Current challenges for work and organisational psychology
The self-determination theory
= people are motivated to grow and change by three universal psychological needs:
 Autonomy: “How about responsibility when algorithms are making decisions?”
 Competence: “How about competence and de-skilling of workers?”
 Relatedness: “How about relatedness in a platform business?”

Theme 2: Organisations, Groups & Leadership
Part 1: What is an organisation

4

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