An introduction to Contemporary Work Psychology
Chapter 1 – Introduction: People at work
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. The three key elements of work are:
1. Goal directed
Work consists of a set of goal-directed activities. The goal of the work is to
produce a good or to deliver a particular service.
2. Coordinated
Work consists of a set of coordinated activities: to achieve the intended goal,
workers do not act randomly.
3. In exchange for something else
The activities involved in working require some degree of physical, emotional
/or mental effort, and this effort is usually compensated in some way.
Contemporary work psychology aims to promote what might be called sustainable
performance = maximizing work performance as well as worker health and well-being.
Work psychology = the way workers’ behaviors, motivations, thoughts, emotions, health and
well-being relate to each other, and about ways to influence these concepts.
The main focus is on work psychology (psychological study of work activities), but other
related fields are:
Organizational psychology = the psychology about the context in which the activities are
conducted by workers (organization, work team, leadership).
Personnel psychology = the psychology about the characteristics of the person conducting a
particular work task (gender, age, ethnicity, education, experience, personality), and also
about selecting or hiring new staff.
1.2 Who do we mean when we talk ab out workers?
The world’s labour force = all people who supply labour for the production of goods and
services during a specified period.
- Comprises people aged 15 and older who meet the International Labour
Organization
- Includes both the employed and the unemployed
- Workers in the unpaid and informal sector are excluded
When considering international labour statistics, a distinction is generally made between
three different work sectors:
1. Agriculture: forestry, hunting and fishing
2. Industry: manufacturing, mining and construction
3. Services: transportation, communication, public utilities, trade, finance, public
administration and private household services.
,There is a selection bias in contemporary work psychology. Work psychological research is
predominantly conducted in Western-oriented economies. And even there, is an inclination
to focus on white-collar, professional and middle to highly educated employees working in
large organizations. There is little research on the lower segment of the labour market and
on ethnic/racial minorities.
1.3 The meaning of working
People are not just working for money; work serves many other functions as well. One way of
examining the functions of working is to compare the quality of life of unemployed versus
employed people, which shows that employed people are usually considerably happier than
the unemployed people.
Marie Jahoda’s (1982) explains the reason why unemployment yields negative consequences
in the Relative Deprivation Model:
Apart from providing an income, having employment also provides five classes of social
benefits:
1. Time structure
2. Opportunities for social contact
3. Sharing of a common purpose
4. Social identity or status
5. 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.
1.4 The roots of work psychology
Contemporary work psychology nowadays is focused with encouraging long-term
performance, that is, driving high levels of productivity while also sustaining (and even
improving) worker health and well-being.
When researchers started to study work and organizations (middle 19th century), the focus
was on the best way to organize work and the work organization, as well as the socio-political
ramifications of this.
Systematic thinking about the organization of work
Early work on how particular task should be conducted, largely rested on common sense,
moral axioms, tradition, long-standing practices and laymen’ s psychological insights. A more
scientific approach to examining work and its effects and antecedents only emerged much
later, after the Middle Ages has ended.
,The birth of occupational medicine
The scientific study of work, worker health and well-being, and work performance can be
traced back to the 1500’s. Georg Bauer discussed technical details of mine operation, but also
paid attention to miners and their typical diseases. His work was followed upby Bernardino
Ramazzini, who wrote a seminal book on the typical diseases encountered by workers in 52
occupations. These works can be considered the starting point for the discipline now known
as occupational medicine.
Work psychology; 1850-1930
The industrial revolution of the 1750s-1850s marked a transition towards new manufacturing
processes, in that production processes were increasingly mechanized and industrialized.
These changes reformed the economic system into that of industrial capitalism. Working
people found increased opportunities for employment, leading to increased urbanization.
However, the working conditions in the mills and factories were harsh, working days were
long and pay was low.
The emergence of the industrial economy meant that young workers entering the labour
market could identify with jobs that were different from the job that their parents did. This
also implied that many young people struggled to find a career that suited their interests,
talents and accomplishments. The tasks in the factories were characterized by a high level of
division of labour and were usually simple, repetitive and boring.
The important issues in this era became: how can workers be motivated to work hard and how
can they be made more productive?
Psychotechnics or applied psychology promised answers to these issues.
Psychotechnics = It 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.
- Munsterberg and stern
Scientific management approach (Taylorism) = Optimizing productivity 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
- Frederick Taylor
- His ideas were controversial because they rested on two basic assumptions:
workers are lazy and stupid
Taylor proposed to counter the stupidy issue by:
- Simplifying tasks using scientific methods
- Examining the best way to conduct these tasks
- Training workers in ‘the one best way’
- Separating the planning of tasks from their execution
- Selecting workers for particular tasks
The laziness issue was addressed by introducing high levels of control and supervision.
Taylorism may be construed as being the start of contemporary work science, with
standardization and efficiency as its core concepts.
, Work psychology; 1930-present
Scientific management quickly became popular. The heyday of Taylorism (scientific
management) was over by the middle of 1930s.
Human relations movement = the adage to fit the job to the worker, paying special attention
to the human side of working, rather than fitting the worker to the job (as scientific
management had attempted).
Companies began to focus on workers’ well-being to promote worker commitment. They
called in Hawthorne studies (1924-1932), whereby 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. The most important
finding of all was in the general area of teamwork and cooperation.
Contemporary work psychology merges ideas from all these disciplines in an attempt to
promote sustainable performance: high productivity combined with much attention for
workers’ health and well-being.
1.5 The times, they are A-changin’
The world of work has changed considerably over recent decades. Many of these changes
arise from a combination of technological advances and economic trends.
The changing nature of work
Since the mid-1970s the developed economies have witnessed a vast increase in the service
sector and a decline in the number of employees working in manufacturing. Heavy
manufacturing jobs have been made easier with the help of new technologies. Service jobs
are associated with some degree of emotion labour in which employees have to adhere to
rules regarding the expression of emotions.
Another rapidly growing segment of the workforce is the knowledge worker = a highly
educated employee who applies theoretical and analytical knowledge to developing new
products and services.
Knowledge work is typically characterized by a high degree of cognitive load = the load or
effort related to the executive control of the working memory. In knowledge work, the level of
information processing is high in order to produce intellectual performances.
The changing workforce
About 50 years ago, the demographic features of most work organizations were fairly
homogenous (Similar ethnic backgrounds, males, working for the same employer). Nowadays
the workforce is more diverse in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, organizational tenure,
educational background etc. This means we have to look more deeply into issues of how we
can overcome prejudices and biases, and how we can make diversity work.
