What Is Organizational Psychology?

What is Organizational Psychology?

Richard Hayford

Psych/570

Dr. De Sousa

January 28, 2013

What is Organizational Psychology?

Organizational psychology is a field of study that uses scientific mythologies to promote the understandings of people working within organizational environments. Once this information is measured, by a variety of assessment techniques, it is utilized in helping organizations more successful. Organizations defined as being successful routinely are considered to be more productive and habitually demonstrate better quality assistance to the community they serve and those working within the organization. Characteristically they are more economically profitable than other organizations that are not as successful.

Organization psychology, especially during our country's economic downturn, has become an important need for organizations across the United States, no matter the size of the organization. In the retail industry there are an increasing number of competitors each one offering similar services and high expectations of on-going success in making sales goals. From a customer service stance this proves to be of the upmost importance. Organizational psychologists provide organizations neutral, new ways of thinking in such areas of overall improvement and progression using different means of research and data analysis. This paper will begin be defining organizational psychology. The evolution of the field of organizational psychology will be explained. There will be a comparison and contrast of organizational psychology with two related disciplines. In the field of organizational psychology, this paper will conclude with the analysis of the role or research and statistics.

Organizational Psychology

To study the human behavior in the workplace, organizational psychology applies psychological principles. These principles are vital to understanding and acquiring the tool to be successful in explaining the human behavior in organizational setting. Organizational psychology is relevant to numerous work places, and organizational psychology uses techniques to increase productivity in the workplace. The scientific study of individual and group behavior in an organizational is known as organizational psychology (Jex & Britt, 2008). The work relationship between employees in different organizations is explained in the field of organizational psychology. The use of the systematic data approach to studying organizational processes and solving organizational issues are used by organizational psychologists (Jex and Britt, 2008).

Organizational psychology has become very important within companies throughout the world. This branch of psychology has proven to have significance in providing service to the competitors in the world. Many techniques have been used to assist organizational psychologists to make organizations around the world more successful (Jex & Britt, 2008). Organizational psychologists provide companies with psychological and scientific data in the process of assisting the company to function well with itself. The study of organizational psychology has increased over the years with more people becoming interested in the field. Organizational psychologists are susceptible to understand the techniques to support and be beneficial to help the organization become a better company. Organizational psychology has become the vital importance in the organizational world to help them be more successful with workplace difficulties.

Evolution of Organizational Psychology

During the early 1960s, organizational psychology was explored closer to establish a closer look into organizational and group behavior (Moorhead & Griffin, 1998). Rather than the entire workforce, organizational psychology was mainly involved with individuals. More psychologists wanted to understand the behavior of individuals in the workplace. These psychologists were interested in exploring employee relationships with one another and manager relationship with staff (Moorhead & Griffin, 1998). Throughout the early 1970s and 1980s, organizational psychology established points in theory and research, which helped explain the process of behavior in the workplace (Moorhead & Griffin, 1998). Organizational psychology started to focus on job attitudes and the issues that impacted the attitudes of employees. Organizational psychology began to focus on job-related stress during this time as well (Moorhead & Griffin, 1998). Psychologist wanted to understand why the individual was stress out because of their work. Psychologists also wanted to understand if work related stress could be a reason for a company's drop in income (Moorhead & Griffin, 1998).

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