Organizational
Psychology
Lectures
Content
Lecture 1 – Introduction and attitudes at work ............................................................................. 2
Lecture 2 – Emotions at work ...................................................................................................... 6
Lecture 3 – Teamwork in organizations ..................................................................................... 10
Lecture 4 – Guest lecture company Emotome ........................................................................... 14
Lecture 5 – Leadership .............................................................................................................. 16
Lecture 6 – Decision making in organizations ............................................................................ 21
Lecture 7 – Fairness .................................................................................................................. 26
Lecture 8 – Ethics in organizations ............................................................................................ 30
Lecture 9 – Creativity and innovation in organizations ............................................................... 35
Lecture 10 – Conflict management ............................................................................................ 40
Lecture 11 – Negotiations .......................................................................................................... 44
Lecture 12 – Change management and communication ............................................................ 49
Lecture 13 – Organizational psychology across cultures ........................................................... 53
Examples of exam questions ..................................................................................................... 57
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,Lecture 1 – Introduction and attitudes at work
1. Introduction to Organizational Psychology
What is Organizational Psychology?
An organization is a group of people who are regularly working together to achieve some
common goal. For example, Mac Donalds, Tilburg University, or the Dutch football team.
Psychology is the study of human mind and behavior.
So, Organization Psychology is the study of human mind and behavior in an organizational
context. It applies psychological principles, theories and research to the work setting. But, it also
studies factors that influence work (personality, cultural differences) or the influence of work on
non-work behaviors bad day at work can influence conflicts with family or friends).
There are three levels which you can study:
If you study on an individual level, you can study motivation, personality, values, attitudes,
emotions, decision making, cognitive processes, etc. There are a lot of more options.
If you study on a group level, you can study teamwork, negotiation and conflict
management, leadership, etc.
If you study on an organization level, you can study the culture of the organization,
diversity, change management, etc.
In the organizational psychology we are looking for causes for performed behavior. For example,
we know that individuals prefer to work in homogenous groups and in the short run the
performance is better if there is no diversity (difference is age, gender, ethnicity, etc.).
So, shouldn’t we promote diversity? Should we make homogeneous groups? Before we can
answer this question, we have to know why. It could also be the case that homogenous
groups preform worse on other measures, or that homogeneity is more common in less
complex organizations, so heterogeneous groups perform worse because it is more complex.
Why is it important to study psychology at work?
We spend a lot of time working in our lives. So, therefore it is
important to understand our working behavior. But, we are
working less than we did in the past (see graph).
Working is also important, because we earn money with it. However, if you ask people “If you
have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life, would you stop working?”, 70%
answers “No”. Work also defines who we are, so our identity, and unemployment individuals are
less satisfied with their lives.
Management and managers
Organizational Psychology is often about managements and managers. Managers get things
done through other people.
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,Early studies determine three managements roles that the management performs:
Interpersonal roles Have the leadership roles, being the figurehead, handing out
diploma’s
Informational roles Search for information, communicating new policies, being the
spokesperson of the company, present the company to the world
Decisional roles Handle disturbances, allocate resources, negotiate with others
There is also another classification to determine management roles:
Traditional management Make decisions, plan, and control
Communication Exchange routine information and process paperwork
Human resource management Motivate, discipline, manage conflicts, staff, train etc.
Anything that has to do with people in your company.
Networking Socialize, politick, interact with outsiders (and insiders)
But, what makes managers successful and
effective? What managers do, is almost
equally divided in these four classifications
(graph 1). Successful managers get promoted
more quickly and mostly do networking (graph
2). Effective managers have a really good
performance, their employees are more
satisfied and more committed. They mostly do
communication (graph 3)
2. Attitudes at work
Attitudes are evaluative statements about objects, people, or events. These can favorable or
unfavorable. An attitude has three components: cognitive (thinking. evaluation), affective
(emotions, feelings) and behavioral (action).
The major attitudes in Organizational Psychology research are:
1. Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is the evaluation of someone’s job. You have expectations about the job, so this
is a cognitive attitude.
Before the 1930s there was only a little interest in workers’ satisfaction. If they tried to measure
it, they looked at the payment (more loan = higher satisfaction) or asked the managers instead
of the workers.
The Hawthorne studies first suggested a link between job satisfaction and performance. They
wanted to examine the associations between physical aspects of work (lighting, breaks, length of
the workday) and productivity. They did research and found that productivity always increases in
the experimental group, even if the physical conditions were worse than the control condition.
This is explained by an increased attention to the workers by the researchers. So, the Hawthorne
effect is the change in behavior or attitudes due to increased attention from researchers.
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,With this research, the concept job satisfaction entered the Organizational Psychology. So, job
satisfaction is the perception of your work environment.
There are different ways to measure job satisfaction:
The overall satisfaction can be measured with only one item, namely: “How satisfied are
you with your current job?”. This single items shows a good reliability and validity.
The facet satisfaction can be measured by asking specific/different elements of job
satisfaction. For example, about co-workers, supervisors, payment, etc. This
measurement is useful if you want to know more about specific elements.
In 1935, people worked very hard, but only 12% of the
workers were classified as ‘dissatisfied’. The past
twenty years almost everyone is somewhat or
completely satisfied, there didn’t change much in the
satisfaction. This can be explained by the positively
bias, because the mean is very high, even in poor
countries. People like to see themselves as happy.
What causes job satisfaction?
Payment? The correlation between job satisfaction and payment is only .15. This is an
association, but it is very small. The correlation is stronger if you don’t earn that much.
Job performance? The correlation between job satisfaction and job performance is .30.
This correlation becomes stronger if the job is more complex. It could be that positive
emotions are needed and creativity leads to these positive emotions, or that they put
more effort in their jobs.
There is a correlation, but this doesn’t mean there is causality! We don’t know which variable
causes the other variable. Two studies have found that job performance has an effect on job
satisfaction, and two other studies have found that there is reciprocal effect between job
performance and job satisfaction.
Consequences of job satisfaction
Job satisfaction has several consequences. Employees who are satisfied are less likely to be
absent on their work, they are less likely to search for others jobs, and they don’t damage or
steal stuff from the company. Job satisfaction also has a positive effect on the performance of
the organization. It makes the organization more profitable. It predicts the financial performance
6 months later and the stock prices grew. Happy employees seem to let the organization
perform better.
Managers often don’t pay attention to the job satisfaction of their employees and they
overestimate it. To give managers information about the job satisfaction of the employees, a
survey can be used.
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, 2. Work engagement
Work engagement is a positive, full-fulling, work-related state of mind. It is characterized by vigor
(motivated), dedication (committed), and absorption (fully concentrated). It an affective attitude.
A measurement example is the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (“Time flies when I am
working” etc.). It is similar to intrinsic motivation, because you are motivated by the task it selves.
The work engagement around the world is
pretty low. Only a small proportion of the
individuals are highly engaged in their
work.
The correlation between work engagement and performance is around .30. Also here we don’t
know if there is causality, we only know that they go together. Job satisfaction also had a .30
correlation with performance. The correlation between job satisfaction and work engagement is
around .50, so this is high.
It is important to have
employees that are highly
engaged in their jobs, otherwise
they are more likely to leave to
another company. If the work
engagement stays low and
employees keep leaving, you
have to keep replacing them.
Work engagement is positively associated with customer satisfaction and profits and negatively
associated with safety incidents. These safety incidents are related to money, so a company
should really try to avoid these.
3. Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment is the involvement with the organization. The involvement is high if
there is overlap with your own identity and values and the identity and values of the organization.
It is again an affective attitude. A measurement example is the Organizational Commitment
Questionnaire (“I really care about the fate of this organization”).
The correlation between organizational commitment and performance is .13, this is a very small
association. This association decreases if the employee is longer hired. This is called the
honeymoon effect.
Employees who are highly committed to their organization are less likely to be absent on their
work and they are less likely to search for other jobs.
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