Lecture 1 - Introduction to Organizational Psychology
What is psychology → Study of human mind and behaviour
What is organizational psychology → Study of human mind and behaviour in an organizational
context. The application of psychological principles, theory, and research to work settings.
3 levels of study
1. Individual
a. Focus on the characteristics of the individual and how these characteristics affect
job performance
b. Personality, values, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, decision making
2. Group
a. How individuals interact with one another and how the characteristics of groups
affect group outcomes.
b. We also need to understand how leadership affects teams, so sort of like a mix of
individual and group levels
c. Teamwork, negotiation and conflict management, leadership
3. Organization
a. Organizational culture, diversity, change management, communication
Organizational Psychology: Looking for causes
Finding: On average women are less likely to reach top management positions than men.
Solution: Quotas (30% quota on female board members in NL)
But can we know if quotas will be effective without knowing the reason why women are passed
over for promotion?
➔ Discrimination
➔ Lack of qualified women on the market
➔ Women’s own preferences (work-life balance)
➔ Structural barriers to combine work and family life (e.g. lack of childcare facilities)
Lecture 2 - Attitudes at Work
What are attitudes
Attitudes → attitudes are evaluative statements about objects, people, events. The main
characteristic is that they are favourable or unfavourable.
,Usually attitudes are considered to have 3 components:
Cognitive attitudes → Your evaluation of the object.
Affective attitudes → emotions towards the object
Behavioural attitudes → your behaviour in response to object
Hawthorne Studies
In organizational studies the concept of attitudes has a relatively young history. Before the
1930’s there was little interest in workers’ attitudes.
The idea before was that there were surveyors that would ask managers about their employees'
satisfaction, to which managers would reply they are very satisfied, because they assumed that
as long as we keep paying the workers, they will be happy.
In the 1930s something changed; The Hawthorne studies → a series of studies that suggested
that workers' attitudes are very important and can affect performance.
➔ Goal: examine the relationship between physical aspects of work (lighting, workday
length, duration of breaks) and productivity.
◆ E.g. looked at how different lighting affected employees
➔ Results: Productivity increased regardless of whether physical conditions improved or
worsened.
➔ Explanation: they thought that it's not so much the changes in the physical conditions but
the attention that the workers in the experimental condition felt. They received special
attention and so that made the employees improve.
Hawthorne effect → Change in behaviour or attitude when experiencing increased attention
from researchers
,Major attitudes in Organizational Psychology Research
1. Job satisfaction
2. Work engagement
3. Organizational commitment
4. Perceived fit
5. Organizational cynicism → you believe that most people are dishonest by nature and so
people's actions are driven by self interest...so your organization is driven by greed,
exploitation, and profit obsession.
Job satisfaction
This is appraisal or the evaluation of one’s job. Job satisfaction is usually seen as a cognitive
attitude.
➔ Overall satisfaction: single overall evaluative rating of the job
◆ “Overall, how satisfied are you with your current job?”
➔ Facet satisfaction: Information related to specific elements of job satisfaction. For
example: Coworkers, Supervisors, Pay, Tasks, Job security, etc.
◆ Job description index → asks you about different elements of a job. When an
employee responds you calculate the average satisfaction level of all questions.
➔ What is better to measure job satisfaction; job description index or independent items?
→ Individual items are actually better.
➔ JDI also is time consuming and expensive. Its validity is not higher than individual items
:)
How satisfied are people in The Netherlands?
The first survey of working adults in Pennsylvania in 1935 reported that only 12% of workers
were classified as dissatisfied. This is surprising because back then the working conditions were
very poor, they had long working hours, little amount of breaks, and strict rules.
Now, judging by the Gallup Poll, 80% of employees in NL were satisfied or very satisfied in
2013.
Pay and job satisfaction
Pay often comes up when people discuss job satisfaction. But is this important for job
satisfaction?
→ Many studies have assessed the correlation between pay and job satisfaction. A meta
analysis in 2010 which included 86 studies, found that the correlation was 0.15 overall. This
correlation is positive so pay does increase job satisfaction but the correlation is still small.
So pay is important but not the most important factor!!
How important pay is, depends on the level of pay → it is stronger at lower levels of pay. For
example the differences in job satisfaction based on pay is much larger in lower income groups
than higher income groups. So the difference between 23K a year and 27K a year will have a
, bigger impact on job satisfaction than the difference between 200K a year and 230K. This can
be due to:
➔ It could give a larger difference in life comfort levels (e.g. higher income people have
already reached a comfortable pay level so pay becomes less important)
Is job satisfaction important? Why?
Job satisfaction and job performance tend to be related, and this is important for businesses.
Companies want their employees to be satisfied so they can perform better.
How strong is the correlation between job satisfaction and job performance? Yes, r=0.30 which
is a positive correlation and is moderately strong.
But is there another reason for this correlation? (causality)
➔ The better performers could just be more satisfied because they perform better :) (so the
effect is reversed basically, so causality is a bit confusing here)
This leads us to longitudinal study designs → a study conducted over a long period of time. You
assess the same participants multiple times over a period of time.
➔ You can look at changes in job performance depending on the baseline job
satisfaction/job performance.
➔ 2 longitudinal studies showed that job performance predicted satisfaction but not the
other way around. People performing better experienced an increase in job satisfaction
but satisfied individuals were not more likely to increase in job performance over time.
➔ But 2 other studies supported bidirectional results, that both performance and
satisfaction can influence each other.
Job satisfaction & organizational performance
Favourable job attitudes make the organization more profitable. A survey of 2178 business units
researched: job satisfaction predictors units’ financial performance 6 months later (e.g. better
performance, lower turnover, higher customer loyalty).
➔ They found that employees with higher satisfaction were more likely to have better
performance, which in turn showed that the businesses showed better financial statistics.
➔ A similar experience found that higher employee satisfaction related to companies
having higher stock prices.
Why is this the case?
➔ Satisfied employees work better with colleagues and are in better moods.
➔ Better relationships with others if you are satisfied...better communication
➔ When you are more satisfied with a job, you have more commitment to the job and care
more about it’s success. This can also be related to low turnover ;)
