What Is Organizational Psychology?

What is Organizational Psychology?

Cocou ATOHOUN

Psych/570

06-03-2013

Dr Kathleen Hughes De Sousa

What is Organizational Psychology?

The United States of America is a country were many people from different culture, background, education come in order to live, study and work. Since individuals have to live and pay their bills, they have to work. People from different country work for the same organization and have for goal to put their effort together so the organization can be prospered. The ways people behave when working together contribute for an important part to the result and the production level of the organization. What is organizational psychology? This paper will define organizational psychology; will then explain the evolution of the field of organizational psychology; will compare and contrast organizational psychology with at least two related discipline and finally, there will be an analyze of the role of research and statistics in the field of organizational psychology.

According to Jex and Britt (2008), organizational psychology is a field that utilizes scientific methodology to better understand the behavior of individuals working in organizational settings. The goal of organizational psychology is to raise the level of performance of employees working in an organization; improve fairness and equality of employees even if they are from different races, improve the relationship within the employees and increase their well-being. Each organization has it set of rules that employees must follow and the rules are the base so the employees can become productive. The way an employee behaves in an organization can influence his result in term of production and can also reflect on other employees in the working environment. In an organization that value team work for example, when an employee does not do his part of the job, some other employees from the same team have to step up and do it for him. When each one and all the employees do their part of the job, the organization is successful. The organizational psychologist is the one that can help organizations and employees so the job is done better. At the hiring process, the organizational psychologist can insure that the job fits the worker so people do what they like to do and are happy while working. On the production floor, the organizational psychologist can use scientific methods to find out why the goals are not achieve and also find the way to help employees deal better with their issues so the organization remain successful.

Katzell and Austin (1992) explained that the interest of people in behavior has its roots in the ancient time. According the authors; in Exod.18, Jethro was advising his son in law Moses on how to organize the ancient Israelites so they work efficiently but it is only recently that studies to understand and explain the behavior of people working in organization became effective. According to Jex and Britt (2008), the field of organizational psychology is a sub group of Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Katzell and Austin (1992) explain that the beginning of organizational psychology can be traced to the early part of the twentieth century with pioneers such as: Hugo Munsterberg, Walter Dill Scott, and Walter Bingham. It is important to notice that the pioneers work was more focused on skill acquisition and personnel selection than behavior. However, the organizational side of the field was influenced by nonpsychologists researchers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor who was the father of scientific management (Taylor, 1911). Taylor's work has three important aspects. First, people who design the work and people who perform the work must be two separate people. Second, workers will work harder if they get pay right and third; workplace issues can and must be analyzed scientifically (Jex &