Samenvatting Arbeidspsychologie UU - An introduction to Contemporary Work Psychology
Summary Work and Health Psychology
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Industrial Engineering
Organisational behaviour for industrial engineerin (1JV10)
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Chapter 1 – Introduction....................................................................................................................... 2
Chapter 3 – The Models that Made Job Design .................................................................................... 4
Chapter 4 – Current Theoretical Perspectives in Work Psychology ...................................................... 7
Chapter 6 – Qualitative Demand At Work ............................................................................................ 9
Chapter 14 – Safety at Work ............................................................................................................... 10
Topic 2 - Safety Climate and Culture ................................................................................................... 12
Chapter 5 – Quantitative Job Demands .............................................................................................. 14
Chapter 8 – Recovery from Demanding Work Hours .......................................................................... 16
Topic 3 – Working Times ..................................................................................................................... 18
Chapter 18 – Teams at Work .............................................................................................................. 19
Topic 4 – Individual and Team Performance ....................................................................................... 23
Chapter 12 - Burnout, Boredom and Engagement in the Workplace.................................................. 24
Chapter 13 – Job Satisfaction, Motivation and Performance .............................................................. 26
Chapter 15 – Sickness Absence and Sickness Presence ...................................................................... 28
Chapter 16 – Managing Psychosocial Risks in the Workplace ............................................................. 31
Chapter 17 – Job Crafting.................................................................................................................... 32
Chapter 19 – Positive Interventions .................................................................................................... 33
Chapter 11 – Work-Family Interaction ................................................................................................ 35
Topic 7 – New Ways of Working ......................................................................................................... 37
The work-life interface .................................................................................................................... 38
Chapter 9 – The Design and Use of Work Technologies...................................................................... 40
Topic 8 – Digitization........................................................................................................................... 41
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,Chapter 1 – Introduction
1.1 What We Talk About When We Talk About Work Psychology
Work: a set of coordinated and goal-directed activities that are conducted in exchange for something
else. Three key elements:
1. Goal-Directed Activities: to bring a result
2. Coordinated Activities: execute work in a series of interrelated activities
3. In Exchange For Something Else: to compensate the work delivered by workers
Psychology: people’s behaviour, motivations, thoughts and emotions related to a topic. Work
psychologists are often genuinely interested in workers’ health and well-being.
W&O psychology: is the branch of psychology that applies psychological theories and principles to
organizations. Focuses on increasing workplace productivity and well-being of employees. W&O
psychologists perform tasks, like studying worker attitudes and behavior, evaluating companies, and
conducting leadership training.
Organizational psychology: is focused on understanding how organizations affect individual behavior.
Organizational structures, technology, social norms, management styles, and role expectations are all
factors that can influence how people behave within an organization.
Personnel psychology looks at how to best match individuals to specific job roles. People who work
in this area assess employee characteristics and then match these individuals to jobs in which they are
likely to perform well. Topics that they focus on include selecting and placing employees, training
employees, developing job performance standards, and measuring job performance.
Work psychology: the way workers’ behaviours, motivations, thoughts, emotions, health and well-
being relate to each other, and about ways to influence these concepts. Work psychology has many
interfaces with organizational and personnel psychology, but it focuses especially on the tasks that
arise from work. About the specific tasks to be accomplished to achieve a goal.
Job design: the content and organization of one’s work tasks, activities, relationships and
responsibilities. It affects work stress, job satisfaction, performance, absenteeism, accidents, team
innovation and company financial revenue.
1.2 The Meaning of Working
Apparently, having a job contributes positively to people’s health and well-being. Being without a job
often negatively impacts on one’s income, meaning that it is difficult to spend money on goods and
activities that go beyond the bare necessities for survival. Having employment also provides five
classes of social benefits: time structure, opportunities for social contact, sharing of a common
purpose, social identity or status, and regular activity. Without work, people are deprived of all five
benefits, accounting for many of the adverse consequences of unemployment for health and well-
being.
1.3 The Roots of Work Psychology
1700 – 1900 – Historical precursors
Traditional Occupational Medicine working conditions in mining, hygiene and disease prevention,
performance and fatigue. Applied occupational psychology ‘psychotechnic’ - psychological and motor
parameter of human behavior, conditions of human performance.
1850 – 1930
The industrial revolution of the 1750–1850s (medicine) marked a transition towards new
manufacturing processes, in that production processes were increasingly mechanized and
industrialized. Working people found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and
factories, leading to increased urbanization. These tasks were often boring, simple, repeated a lot and
few knowledge was needed to perform it. How can employees be motivated to work hard and be
productive? The branch of personnel psychology that focuses on the link between workers’
characteristics and job requirements, assuming that worker well-being and productivity are optimal
when there is a good match between the job and the worker.
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,Scientific Management (Taylorism (1911)/Psychotechnic): Productivity could also be optimized by
not focusing on the match between the worker and the task, but rather by concentrating on the task
itself, especially by simplifying it to such a degree that any worker would be able to do it. The idea that
workers are both lazy and stupid. As regards stupid, 5 things to consider:
1. Simplified tasks 2. Training workers
3. Examining the best way to conduct these tasks
4. Separating the planning of tasks from their execution
5. Selecting workers for particular tasks
As regards lazy, was addressed by introducing high levels of control and supervision, as well as by
introducing pay-for-performance systems – you work harder, you get paid more; you work slower,
you get fired. Fitting the worker to the job! Specialisation
1930 – Now
Employers realised that redesigning jobs is in line with the principles of scientific management
affected worker morale negatively and tended to stimulate conflicts between managers and workers,
resulting in the strengthening of the position of labour unions and recurring strikes.
Human Relations Movement: the adage of the human relations movement was to fit the job to the
worker, paying special attention to the human side of working. However, during the course of the
experiments Mayo and Roethlisberger became convinced that the intimate atmosphere of the
experiments led the participants to develop strong friendships across time, and the fact that they were
a team was the main driver of the increased productivity witnessed by the researchers.
Work psychology aims to improve productivity by optimizing the organization of work, work methods
and job characteristics, but at the same time strives towards maximization of worker health and well-
being. Fitting the job to the worker! Work smarter not harder.
1.4 The Times, They are A-Changing
The changing nature of work
This transition implies that a larger proportion of workers is involved in less physically strenuous jobs
with less exposure to physical health risks. Another rapidly growing segment of the workforce is that
of the ‘knowledge worker’, a highly educated employee who applies theoretical and analytical
knowledge to developing new products and services.
The changing workforce
Nowadays managers are confronted with a workforce that is more diverse in terms of gender, age,
ethnicity, organizational tenure, educational background and so on. Such demographic changes have
a major impact on creating new territories for research and practice in work psychology.
The changing flexibility of working
Central to this new approach is the fact that employees have high work flexibility. Such a flexible work
design, also referred to as ‘new ways of working’ (NWW), is characterized by (i) flexibility in the timing
of work, (ii) flexibility in the place of work, and (iii) the facilitation of new media technologies, such as
smartphones and videoconferencing.
The changing organization
Mergers & downsizing (more work through less people), smaller organisations, more focus on
teamwork (flatter hierarchies)
The changing psychological contract
Education and training throughout a career have become more common, increasing the potential for
employees to continuously develop and improve their own competencies, which improves their
employability.
Outlook of the future
Growing importance of technology: Technology-mediated communication (teleworking, less direct
contact). Human-technology interaction (new jobs in technology maintenance, more focus on
decision-making and coordination of human activities). Redefinition of “work”: Fewer fixed tasks,
emphasis on constantly changing tasks, constant learning, less “9 to 5”. Individual employment
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, conditions: Rewards, working hours, job responsibilities etc. depending on KSAOs (knowledge, skills,
abilities, other characteristics (personality, traits), job crafting
1.5 The Crucial Role of Task Analysis in Contemporary Work Psychology
Task/Job analysis: is the process of studying a job to determine which activities and responsibilities it
includes, its relative importance to other jobs, the qualifications necessary for performance of the job
and the conditions under which the work is performed. Goals of job analysis:
• Training design and evaluation
• Performance assessment and development of criteria (which employees must meet)
• Job design • Legal matters (dangerous work?)
• Personnel selection • Career development and planning
In the literature, all methods can be categorized using four different approaches:
1. Behaviour description approach. In this approach the focus is on the actual behaviours
employees display in executing the task
2. Behaviour requirements approach. This approach focuses on the actual behaviour employees
should display to perform the task in a successful way
3. Ability requirements approach. In this approach, tasks are analysed in terms of employees’
abilities, knowledge, skills and personal characteristics.
4. Task characteristics approach. The focus of this approach is to analyse the objective
characteristics of a task
Techniques are instruments or protocols with which data can be collected and described in a
systematic way. Task-analysis techniques can be divided into at least three broad categories:
1. Data-collection techniques (interviews, surveys, etc)
2. Task-representation techniques (flow charts, hierarchical networks)
3. Task-simulation techniques (computer modelling; mock-ups, workspace designs)
4. Critical Incidents Technique: "Incidents" during the execution of the work, which are an
example of exceptionally good or very bad performance
Selection criteria for job analysis instrument:
• Suitable for the purpose for which the analysis is being done
• Relevance of specific job characteristics for position
• Based on a theoretical model • Standardized instrument
• Ability to make quantitative judgments (minimum ordinal level)
Reliability & validity of job analysis instruments
Reliability - How good does the instrument measure what it aims to measure?
(e.g., test-retest reliability, internal consistency, inter-rater agreement)
Validity – Does the instrument measure what it should measure?
(bv. criterion-, content and construct validity)
Utility – Time and costs in relation to profit (and within limits)
Chapter 3 – The Models that Made Job Design
3.1 Background of Job Design
Job design is concerned with the activities of workers, and relates to the duties and tasks required to
perform their work, and how those tasks and duties are structured and scheduled. It involves the
design of everything in the workplace, except the employees themselves. Top-down, individual. Goals:
• Optimal fulfilment of a position
• Effectiveness and reliability (the system does what it is expected to do, always)
• Efficiency (with favourable expenses)
• Safety, no negative consequences for the performer
• Maximizing positive outcomes for people, both employee and employer
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