Organization Psychology:
Organizational behavior is the study of both group and
individual performance and activity within an organization. Internal and
external perspectives are two theories of how organizational behavior can be
viewed by companies.
Organizational Behavior
Why do people behave a certain way
in an organizational environment? What factors affect job performance, employee
interaction, job commitment, leadership and managerial styles? Individuals have
studied this very topic for decades in order to find ways of increasing
organizational performance. Organizational
behavior is the study of both
group and individual performance and activity within an organization.
This area of study examines human
behavior in a work environment and determines its impact on job structure,
performance, communication, motivation, leadership, etc. Internal and external
perspectives are two theories of how organizational behavior can be viewed by
companies. Let's take a look at how the perspectives are different through
examining Ninja Corporation.
Internal Perspective
The Ninja Corporation has two human
resource managers at their headquarters. Julia and Nick have different opinions
regarding how to use organizational behavioral factors to improve work
conditions. Julia embraces the internal
perspective and believes that
employees' behavior is in large part based on their own personal feelings,
interactions, thoughts and experiences.This theory revolves around the idea
that, in order to understand individuals in an organizational environment, an
individual must understand the person's thoughts, feelings and personal values.
Recently, a manager mentioned to Julia that she was having difficulty with
motivating one of her subordinates in the sales division. Julia met with the
manager and employee to see what advice she could offer in this situation.Julia
spoke with the subordinate, who revealed that he wanted to achieve his sales
goals and felt that his co-workers were getting the best territories and extra
feedback. Once Julia was able to uncover the subordinate's internal employment
issues, she then could explain what motivational techniques would improve his
performance to the manager. Her human resource coworker, Nick, had the opposite
view of organizational behavior.
External Perspective
Nick was also a human resource
manager at Ninja Corporation. He took an external
perspective of organizational
behavior. He believed that external events and environmental factors affected
an individual's job performance and behavior. A recent example of this theory
would be when Nick told numerous managers to increase their subordinate's
salaries by $5,000 in order to further motivate the sales team.
Industrial-Organizational
Psychologists are versatile Behavioral Scientists specializing in human
behaviour in the work place.
Industrial-Organizational
(called I-O) Psychologists recognize the interdependence of individuals,
organizations, and society, and they recognize the impact of factors such as
increasing government influences, growing consumer awareness, skill shortages,
and the changing nature of the workforce. I-O Psychologists facilitate
responses to issues and problems involving people at work by serving as
advisors and catalysts for business, industry, labor, public, academic,
community, and health organizations.
They are:
§
Scientists who derive
principles of individual, group, and organizational behavior through research;
§
Consultants and staff
psychologists who develop scientific knowledge and apply it to the solution of
problems at work; and
§
Teachers who train in
the research and application of Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
I-0
Psychologists as scientists and professionals
Scientific
aspects of I-O Psychology include both applied and basic science.
§
Applied aspects are oriented around scientific solutions to human
problems at work.
§
Basic aspects are quite variable, following the investigator's
interests. Examples include research on methods of behavioral measurement,
communication, motivation, social interaction, and leadership. Professional
aspects of I-O Psychology include personnel research, training and development,
psychological testing research, counseling and consulting, advising management,
setting personnel policy, human resource planning, organizational development
and analysis, and other human resource functions.
I-0
Psychologists work with organizations in the areas of:
Selection and Placement
§
Developing assessment
tools for selection, placement, classification, and promotion of employees
§
Validating test
instruments
§
Analyzing job content
§
Developing and
implementing selection programs
§
Optimizing placement
of personnel
§
Identifying management
potential
Training and Development
§
Identifying training
and development needs
§
Formulating and
implementing technical training and management development programs
§
Evaluating the
effectiveness of training and development programs relative to productivity and
satisfaction
§
Planning careers
Organizational Development
§
Analyzing
organizational structure
§
Maximizing the
satisfaction and the effectiveness of individuals and work groups
§
Facilitating
organizational change
Performance Measurement
§
Developing criteria
§
Measuring utility
§
Evaluating
organizational effectiveness
Quality of Work life
§
Enhancing the
productive outputs of individuals
§
Identifying factors
associated with job satisfaction
§
Redesigning jobs to
make them more meaningful
Consumer Psychology
§
Assessing consumer
preferences
§
Identifying consumer
reactions to new products
§
Developing market
segmentation strategies
Engineering Psychology
§
Designing work
environments
§
Optimizing
person-machine effectiveness
§
Developing systems
technologies
Job titles of I-O Psychologists include:
Staff
member, Manager, Director, Vice President of:
§
Personnel,
§
Human Resources,
§
Organizational
Planning,
§
Personnel Development,
§
Organizational
Development,
§
Management
Development,
§
Personnel Research,
§
Employee Relations,
§
Training,
§
Affirmative Action
Assistant,
Associate, Full Professor of:
§
Psychology,
§
Management,
§
Organizational
Behavior,
§
Industrial Relations
Management
Consultant
Behavioral
Scientist
Personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch
of psychology that studies personalityand
its variation among individuals. Its areas of focus include:
·
Investigation of
individual psychological differences
"Personality"
is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that
uniquely influences their environment, cognitions, emotions,motivations,
and behavioral science in various situations. The word
"personality" originates from the Latin persona,
which means mask.
Personality
also refers to the pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments, and behaviors
consistently exhibited over time that strongly influences one's expectations,
self-perceptions, values, and attitudes. It also predicts human reactions to
other people, problems, and stress.[1][2] There is still no universal consensus
on the definition of "personality" in psychology. Gordon Allport(1937)
described two major ways to study personality: the nomothetic and theidiographic. Nomothetic
psychology seeks general
laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization or the trait ofextraversion. Idiographic
psychology is an attempt
to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual.
The study of personality has a broad and varied history in
psychology with an abundance of theoretical traditions. The major theories
include dispositional (trait) perspective, psychodynamic, humanistic,
biological, behaviorist, evolutionary and social learning perspective. However,
many researchers and psychologists do not explicitly identify themselves with a
certain perspective and instead take an eclectic approach. Research in this
area is empirically driven, such as dimensional models, based on multivariate statistics, such as factor analysis,
or emphasizes theory development, such as that of the psychodynamic theory. There is also a substantial
emphasis on the applied field of personality testing. In psychological
education and training, the study of the nature of personality and its
psychological development is usually reviewed as a prerequisite to courses in abnormal psychology or clinical psychology.
Individual
Differences
That
people differ from each other is obvious. How and why they differ is less clear
and is the subject of the study of Individual differences (IDs). Although to
study individual differences seems to be to study variance, how are people
different, it is also to study central tendency, how well can a person be
described in terms of an overall within-person average. Indeed, perhaps the
most important question of individual differences is whether people are more
similar to themselves over time and across situations than they are to others,
and whether the variation within a single person across time and situation is
less than the variation between people. A related question is that of similarity,
for people differ in their similarities to each other. Personality psychology
addresses the questions of shared human nature, dimensions of individual
differences and unique patterns of individuals. Measurement issues of most
importance are those of reliability and stability of Individual
Differences.Research in Individual Differences addresses three broad questions:
1) developing an adequate descriptive taxonomy of how people differ; 2)
applying differences in one situation to predict differences in other
situations; and 3) testing theoretical explanations of the structure and
dynamics of individual differences.
References:
·
Brody, N. and
Ehrlichman, H. (1997) Personality Psychology : Science of Individuality.
Prentice Hall Press; A thoughtful introduction to the broad field of
personality. Cooper, C. (1997) Individual Differences: London :
Arnold A broad
overview of the field that includes a review of measurement methodologies.
·
Eysenck, H.J. (1994)
Personality: Biological foundations. In P.A. Vernon (Ed.) The neuropsychology
of individual differences. London :
Academic Press.
·
Eysenck, H.J. and
Eysenck, M.W (1985) Personality and individual differences: a natural science
approach. Plenum: New York .
Although dated, perhaps the best treatment of the scientific method as applied
to the study of personality and individual differences.
·
Hogan, R., Johnson, J.
& Briggs, S. (Eds) (1997) Handbook of Personality Psychology. San Diego : Academic
Press. The definitive handbook of the field includes chapters on evolutionary,
biological, and social bases of individual differences.
Jensen, A.R. (1998) The G Factor : The science
of mental ability. 