Focuses of organizational psychology include:
- Job satisfaction
- Work-family balance
- Management and Leadership
- Work Teams
- Organizational culture
- Workplace violence
- Scientific management
- Strengths-based management

Focuses of Organizational Psychology

Organizational psychology encompasses various professional roles. These include positions such as professor, test developer, leadership developer, project consultant, personnel psychologist, and specialists in human resources (HR), such as an HR research specialist.

Types of Jobs in Organizational Psychology

A Personnel Psychologist is a professional role within organizational psychology that focuses on personnel matters such as employee recruitment, selection, and performance evaluation.

Personnel Psychologist

A Test Developer is a professional role, often within organizational psychology, responsible for creating and validating assessment tools and tests, such as those used for employee selection or evaluation.

Test Developer

A company experiences a decline in productivity. In response, management upgrades the office lighting and provides more comfortable chairs. After several months, productivity has not improved. From the perspective of a specialist focused on the social and group influences within a workplace, what is the most likely reason the company's actions were ineffective?

Organizational psychology is the second major branch of study and practice within industrial and organizational psychology. It focuses on social interactions and their effects on individuals and on the functioning of the organization. Areas of study include job satisfaction, management styles, leadership styles, organizational culture, and teamwork; in this context, organizational culture is treated as a significant topic for understanding work organizations.

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- Industrial psychology 
- Organizational psychology
- Occupational health psychology
- Human factors psychology 
- Humanitarian work psychology
- Process management
- Collective intelligence
- Workplace design
- Productivity

Focuses of Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Structured groups of people collaborating to achieve common goals.

Organizations

The Hawthorne Studies were a series of long-term research projects conducted by Elton Mayo and his team from 1929 to 1932 at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. These studies are considered the origin of organizational psychology because they expanded the scope of industrial psychology beyond employee selection to include complex issues like interpersonal relations, motivation, and organizational dynamics. A key finding was that psychological and social factors were more influential on productivity than physical aspects of the work environment. First-hand video accounts of the original studies are available and offer further insight into the research.

Hawthorne Studies

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

The discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate processes, which can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, enabling technologies are often used.

Process management

The ways in which environments are created and run to optimize workplace operations. Workplace design can have notable effects on industrial/organizational concepts such as productivity, work-related motivation, wellbeing, and teamwork/group dynamics. 

Workplace Design

Productivity generally refers to the ability of an individual, team, or organization to work efficiently within a given time in order to maximize output. In control management, productivity is a measure of how efficiently a process runs and how effectively it uses resources.

Productivity in Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals. When groups of people work together, they create intelligence that cannot exist on an individual level.

Collective Intelligence

Because of its focus on real-world applications, I-O Psychology research is often concerned with the study of human behaviors in industrial-organizational settings. 

Research in Industrial-Organizational Psychology

* Human Resource Management
* Workplace Management
* Organizational Management

Application of Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Industrial psychology focuses on the specifics of jobs and the individuals who might fill them. It involves analyzing job requirements, assessing applicant suitability through methods like testing and interviews, and determining the best fit. Furthermore, this field covers the integration of new hires through orientation and their continuous development via ongoing training. A critical aspect of industrial psychology is ensuring that hiring processes are fair and legally compliant to prevent bias. It also includes the research and application of performance appraisal systems.

Industrial Psychology

Organizational Psychology

Human factors psychology, also known as ergonomics, is the study of the interface between workers, their machines, and their physical environments. The primary goal of this field is to design machines and systems that better support the workers who use them. This involves researching and designing tools to align with human requirements, considering both physical and cognitive integration. Unlike other areas of I-O psychology, human factors psychology focuses on the individual worker's interaction with specific elements like machines, workstations, and information displays.

Human Factors Psychology

Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the stress, diseases, and disorders affecting employees due to workplace factors. It examines how an organization influences an employee's quality of work life and the subsequent psychological and behavioral responses. These reactions can extend beyond the workplace into an employee's personal life, an effect known as work-life spillover, particularly when work-life balance is poor. The field is informed by a wide range of research from medicine, biology, psychology, organizational studies, human factors, human resources, and industrial psychology. Its primary goal is to improve the health and well-being of individual workers, which in turn enhances the overall health of the organization.

Occupational Health Psychology

Humanitarian Work Psychology (HWP) is a field of I-O psychology dedicated to assisting underserved and underprivileged populations. Originating from a shared goal among a group of I-O psychologists in 2009 and formally established in 2012, HWP applies psychological principles to help marginalized individuals, such as those with low incomes, find work. The field's practitioners also focus on delivering humanitarian aid during major catastrophes and supporting local community members who lack the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to secure stable employment. A central aim is to empower these individuals by developing durable KSAs, enabling them to improve their lives and reduce the need for aid.

Humanitarian Work Psychology

Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology is a specialized field that examines the bidirectional relationship between human psychology and the workplace. It investigates how individual and group behavior influences work processes and, conversely, how the work environment impacts the psychological and physical well-being of employees.

Definition of Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Work occupies a central role in the lives of most adults, representing a significant investment of their time and energy. For instance, 2019 data for the United States indicated that workers spent an average of 42 to 54 hours per week on work-related activities, a time commitment surpassed only by sleeping. This highlights the substantial portion of life that is shaped by the work experience.

Significance of Work in Daily Life

The substantial time and energy dedicated to work have far-reaching consequences that extend beyond the workplace, influencing the physical and psychological health of workers and their families. These effects can be either positive, contributing to fulfillment and stability, or negative, leading to stress and other health issues.

Impact of Work on Well-being

A manufacturing plant is experiencing a high rate of on-the-job injuries and errors related to the operation of a new piece of machinery. The management believes the issue is not with the employees' skills, but with the machine's complex and non-intuitive control panel. Which type of specialist would be most qualified to investigate and resolve this specific problem?

Types of Organizations

The ability to guide, influence, and inspire individuals or teams to achieve organizational goals.

Leadership

Corporate culture is an internal dimension of organizational effectiveness that acts as both the personality and the glue that binds an organization. Because culture is based on values, it influences employees' beliefs, behaviors, relationships, and ways of working, including how employees perceive coworkers' ethical priorities, organizational values, and willingness to share opinions.

Corporate Culture

A company's plan for achieving its goals and staying competitive in the marketplace.

Business Strategy

Overseeing, designing, and controlling production processes and redesigning business operations for efficiency.

Operational Management

The adaptation or restructuring of an organization's processes, culture, or strategies, influencing how tasks and work are structured.

Organizational Change

Organizational culture refers to the common patterns of thinking and behaving within an organization. It is rooted in underlying beliefs and assumptions people hold about themselves and the organization, and those beliefs and assumptions create mindsets that shape culture. More broadly, organizational culture can be characterized as the set of shared norms, values, and behaviors in an organization that reflect its core values and strategic direction. Some interpretations treat culture as a root driver of the organization itself, shaping behavior and interaction.

Organizational Culture

Applying I-O Psychology to business structure and organization can promote overall efficiency. 

Organizational Management

Managers need to understand when change is required and how to guide it. Organizational culture can evolve through intentional change efforts by management, and culture change may be attempted to reduce member turnover, influence behavior, improve the organization, reset objectives, rescale the organization, or achieve specific results.

Managerial Need for Organizational Change

Organizational change can take different forms, including structural change, technological change, and culture change.

Types of Organizational Change

Differentiation is the process of organizing employees into groups that focus on specific functions in the organization. As an organization hires more people, employees begin to specialize, and over time these areas of specialization mature through differentiation.

Differentiation in Organizations

A major outcome of the Hawthorne Studies was the discovery that psychological and social factors in the workplace had a greater impact on productivity than physical conditions. Initial research focused on variables like factory lighting, but the studies revealed that human interaction elements, such as supervisory style and group dynamics, were more significant. This finding marked a critical shift in focus for industrial and organizational psychology.

Shift from Physical to Social Factors in Workplace Studies

The Hawthorne Works was a large factory complex of the Western Electric Company, located near Chicago. This site is historically significant as the setting for the Hawthorne Studies from 1929 to 1932. The facility, as depicted in illustrations, was an expansive industrial plant with numerous buildings and two prominent smokestacks.

Hawthorne Works

The Hawthorne Studies were conducted within a factory setting, specifically a warehouse environment where numerous employees worked with machinery along assembly lines. This context is important for understanding the physical and social conditions that were being studied.

Work Environment during the Hawthorne Studies

The Hawthorne effect is a specific form of reactivity where people modify their conduct solely because they are aware that a researcher is observing them. This shift in behavior can undermine the validity of observational research since the recorded actions do not reflect the individuals' true, unobserved state.

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