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Behavior and Environment 2 Summary
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W&O psychology Introduction• Help with employee-related problems (health, performance, motivation, safety, selection,
training)
• Develop assessment centers
• Develop systems for job performance feedback
• Place recruits in appropriate jobs (e.g. military)
• Reduce assaults by employees
• Design applications forms & trainings
• Study human side of organizations (research) and apply their findings (practitioner)
• I-O Psychology as a field borrowed and expanded concepts & ideas from many other
disciplines
• Experimental psychology is the foundation of I-O
• Robert Yerkes convinced army to use psychological tests during World War I
What is I-O Psychology?
• Psychology = science of human behavior, cognition, emotion, and motivation
• I-O psychology concerns science & application
• Industrial psychology: older branch, management perspective, efficiency through the use of
human resources/people (job design, employee recruitment/selection, employee training,
performance appraisal)
• Organizational Psychology: human relations in organizations, understanding behavior & well-
being (employee attitudes, employee behavior, job stress, leadership)
• I- and O- cannot always be clearly distinguished
• Do not deal directly with employees emotional or personal problems
Activities and Settings of I-O Psychologists
• Help organizations function more effectively (to do so —> Other
research) 6%
• Often work for governments, the military, private corporations,
consulting firms Government
9%
• Many I-O psychologists are professors who create and
disseminate knowledge (teaching, research, writing/presenting Universities
Private companies 39 %
papers, consulting organizations, write textbooks, mentor 14 %
students, provide info to the public, develop courses, keep up
with their field)
• Also many practicing I-O psychologists (analyze jobs, conduct
analysis & find solution for organizational problems, employee Consulting firms
surveys, design selection of employees, design training 31 %
program, develop psychological tests, evaluate effectiveness of
activity/training, implement organizational changes like reward
systems) —> change organizations so they are healthier & safer
even if the effectiveness is not improved
I-O Psychology as a Profession
• I-O’s belong to ‚The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology' (SIOP) (a division of
the APA) and ‚The Academy of Management‘
• In Europe there is the ‚European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology‘ (EAWOP)
• Also relevant ‚International Association of Applied Psychology‘, ‚Division of Organizational
Psychology‘
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,I-O Psychology as a Science
• Research is often conducted for a specific organization
• Conferences and Journals (Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Journal of
Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior) important role
• Only 5% - 10% of submitted articles will be published
• I-O programs at most universities have a „publish or perish“ system that requires professors to
be active researchers who contribute to the knowledge base of the field
• Publication record —> determiner of career success for professors
History of the Field of I-O Psychology
• Roots in late 1800s and early 1900s
• Early focus in US on job performance & efficiency + how individual differences can be used for
employee selection, UK focus on employee fatigue & health
• Main founders:
• Hugo Münsterberg • Walter Dill Scott
• Selection of employees • Selection of employees
• Use of psychological tests • Use of psychological tests
• According to Landy, Münsterberg’s • Psychology of advertising
inability to gain respect of colleagues at • Wrote: The Theory of Advertising
Harvard motivated shift to I-Psychology
• Wrote: Psychology and Industrial Efficiency
• Frederick Winslow Taylor: studied employee productivity, developed Scientific Management
approach to handling workers in factories
• Frank & Lillian Gilbreth: originally from field of engineering, studied efficient ways of performing
tasks, foundation of field of ‚human factors‘ of how best to design technology for people
• Time & motion study: measuring peoples motions in doing tasks & developing efficient ways
• Later Lilian designed consumer products (invented foot petal trash can, fridge door shelfs)
• Lillian (1915) or Bruce V. Moor (1921) first to receive Ph.D in I-O
• Beginning in the UK: ‚Health of Munitions Committee (HMC)‘ in 1915 to deal with issues of
employee health, safety and efficacy due to the productivity demands caused by the war
• Beginning in the US: Army Alpha/ Beta group tests (mental ability & to place people in fitting job)
• In 1921 Charles Myers co-founded National Institute of Industrial Psychology (NIIP) to improve
efficiency and working conditions of British employees
• Most well-known consulting form —> American company Psychological Corporation, today
Harcourt Assessment
• World War II stimulated further development of I-O
• Prior to World War II APA considered I-O psychologists as nonscientific & rejected them
—> After war accepted and Division 14 of Industrial and Business Psychology (today Society
for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP) was formed
• Arthur Kornhauser: research how work conditions effects mental health and personal life of
employees (occupational health psychology)
• Civili rights act (1964) & Americans with Disabilities act impacted how organizations hire and
treat employees —> I-O’s helped develop procedures that would eliminate discrimination
Hawthorne studies
• Continued for more than 10years
• Before I-O psychologists focused on employee productivity & organizational efficiency
(assessment of employee abilities & efficient design of jobs)
• Difficult to separate employee productivity from local aspects of organizational life —> study
drew attention O side of field
• Investigated e.g. light-level effects that produced optimal performance, over the course of the
experiment the productivity increased but that seemed to have little to do with lightning levels
• Hawthorne effect: knowledge of being in an experiment caused increase in performance
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,What it takes to become and I-O psychologists
• Graduate degree (masters or phd) in I-O psychology
• Many who work in the field actually have other backgrounds
• Admission largely based on grade point average & letters of
recommendation
• Many students enter graduate school without ever having
taken I-O courses
• Trained to be a scientist-practitioner
• Masters: research + I-O psychology
• Ph.D.: research + I-O psychology + general psychology
Ethics of the I-O Field
• Avoiding harm (physically &psychologically) , illegal, immoral acts
• Social responsibility to use talents to help
• Honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility
• Many follow APA code of ethics or of Academy of Management (differ but are comparable)
Six ethical Principles of the APA
1) Competence: only perform tasks they are competent in
2) Professional and Scientific Responsibility: behave professional
3) Respect for Peoples Rights and Dignity: confidentiality/privacy
4) Concern for Others Welfare: help others through their work
5) Social Responsibility: use skills for societal benefit
Humanitarian Work Psychology
• Humanitarian work psychology: efficiently running organizations to help reduce poverty &
promote health/well-being in the workplace in countries where many lack access to economic
and workplace well-being
• Linking I-O psychology with developmental agencies (UN) and governments of developing
countries
• Assessing people’s needs & evaluating how ell programs work
• Developing strategies for implementing programs
• Dealing with issues concerning people at work
• Helping humanitarian organizations to work more effectively
• Choosing which volunteers are resilient enough to handle field assignments
Lecture 1 - Work & Work Behavior
Relevance
• Everything is developed, maintained, produced by work
• Work is super prevalent (> 3.5 billion people are employed)
• Work is super invasive: becomes part of private life, Full-timers spend half their time awake on
work, ‚free-time‘ often also spend on work e.g. commuting)
• Work has an impact on health, happiness, personally
• Working life will be prolonged (67+)
• Instead of work becoming less because of advanced technology, it is becoming more
• Work is an omnipresent context for studying behavior (to understand behavior we need to
understand interaction between work environment & psychological outcomes)
• Great meaning for health, family life, happiness
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, Sector 1: Agriculture Sector 2: Industry Sector 3: Services
(forestry, hunting, fishing (manufacturing, mining, (transportation,
• 1/3 of world works in construction) communication, public
agriculture (heavily • More and more about utilities, trade, finance, public
depending on culture, operating machines administration)
US=1-2%, SouthEast • Often physically & • 2 Billion people worldwide
Asia=40%) intellectually demanding • Healthcare a rapidly
• Mostly in economically less increasing sector (e.g.
developed regions, where Netherlands 1/6 employees
work is very physically works in health care —>
demanding soon 1/4)
Benefits from work
• study by Marie Jahoda: studied families who lost their jobs and the consequences of that
=> relative depravation model (apart from income people also get other benefits from work)
• Social benefits: time structure, regular activity, opportunities (feeling meaningful), social contact,
social identity (status, self-esteem), sharing a common purpose, learning & development —>
higher levels of general health and life satisfaction
Drawbacks
• in 2020 in the EU:
• 10% work related health problems in previous year
• 6% bone, joint or muscle problems (caused/worsened by job)
• 45% facing risk factors for their mental well-being at work
The dynamic scope of W&O psychology
• work: set of coordinated and goal-directed activities conducted in exchange to something else
• Many changes in society impact organizational changes, which then affect work
• Intensification
• Flexibilitsation
• Mentalisation (knowledge work becoming more relevant + more emotional/cognitively intense)
• Digitalisation
• Prolonged working life
• Longer life expectancy does not mean longer healthier life (healthy aging highly correlated to
education)
Organizational change
• model by Cameron & Quinn: Control vs. Flexibility, external vs. internal orientation
• During industrialization:
• Rational goal model: focus on results, productivity, competition, profit, firm leadership
• Internal process model: focus on order,
procedures, structure, quality
• Hierarchical organized, firm/structured
leadership
• 1930s-1950s
• Importance of relationships
• Human relationships: focus on people
(individuals), teamwork, cooperation
• 1950s - 1975
• Technological breakthroughs, values in
society change (individualistic, questioning
authority)
• Open system model: focus on innovation,
change, growth, entrepreneurship
• Today
• Organizations need to able to change and
adapt
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