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Psychology,
Seventh Edition
Douglas A. Bernstein, University of South Florida and University of Southampton
Louis A. Penner, University of South Florida
Alison Clarke-Stewart, University of California, Irvine
Edward J. Roy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Chapter Outlines
- AN OVERVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Industrial/organizational psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes in the workplace. Such scientists engage in both research and practice with two main goals: (1) promoting effective job performance and (2) improving the health, safety, and well-being of employees.
- ASSESSING PEOPLE, JOBS, AND JOB PERFORMANCE
- Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics
Knowledge, skills, abilities, or other characteristics (KSAOs) are the human attributes needed to do a job successfully. Knowledge refers to what one knows. Skill refers to how good a person is at doing something. Ability is a person's potential for learning a skill. Other personal characteristics might be anything else relevant to the job, such as an attitude or personality trait.
- Job Analysis
Job analysis involves collecting information about jobs and job requirements. The job-oriented approach to this describes tasks involved in doing a job. The person-oriented approach describes the KSAOs needed to do the job. The Occupational Information Network (or O*NET) compiles analyses of thousands of jobs.
- Measuring Employee Characteristics
- Psychological Tests. A psychological test is a systematic procedure for observing behavior in a standard situation and describing it on a number scale or a system of categories. I/O psychologists use standard IQ tests, personality tests, as well as integrity tests.
- Selection Interviews. A selection interview is designed to determine an applicant’s suitability for a job. Structured interviews involve a prepared list of questions the interviewer asks in a particular order. Unstructured interviews are more spontaneous and variable. Research has consistently found structured interviews to be related to better hiring decisions than unstructured.
- Assessment Centers. An assessment center is an extensive set of exercises designed to determine an individual’s suitability for a particular job. They are most often used to hire or promote managers, though they can be used for other positions. The in-basket task is a typical assessment center exercise for managers that involves working through an overflowing in-basket left by a “previous manager.” Performance is graded on a variety of dimensions.
- Measuring Job Performance
Job performance appraisal provides an evaluation of how one is doing in various aspects of their work. To conduct an appraisal, one needs to first have an idea of the criteria of "good" performance.
- Establishing Performance Criteria. Criteria define what is meant by good or bad performance in an organization. A theoretical criterion is a statement of what good or poor performance is, in theory. An actual criterion specifies what should be measured to tap whether the theoretical criterion has been met. The match between theoretical and actual criteria is imperfect, however, and often several actual criteria are needed.
- Methods of Performance Appraisal
- Objective Measures. Objective measures of job performance include counting the frequency of particular behaviors, or the results of those behaviors. These are useful for some jobs, but not all, as some jobs do not have “countable” criteria.
- Subjective Measures. Subjective measures involve supervisor judgments about employees’ work. Graphic rating forms list several dimensions of job-performance and provide a space for a rating (e.g., on a scale from 1 to 10). Such judgments are prone to a variety of errors such as the leniency and halo errors. To minimize these errors, I/O psychologists recommend behavior-focused rating forms, which ask supervisors to rate specific behaviors rather than dimensions of performance.
- RECRUITING AND SELECTING EMPLOYEES
- Recruitment Processes
The first step in recruitment is to determine what employees are needed. Next, organizations need to persuade people with the right kinds of KSAOs to apply for the open positions using a variety of methods such as newspaper advertising or working with employment agencies. Research has found that nominations made by current employees are the best source of good candidates for a job.
- Selection Processes
Validation studies are used to determine how well a particular test, interview, or other assessment method predicts an employee's job performance. A large body of evidence is available in I/O psychology to tell organizations which types of tests or assessments are valid in predicting performance in particular jobs.
- Legal Issues in Recruitment and Selection
Laws have been designed to protect employees and job candidates from discrimination. Special safeguards exist for protected classes-age, ethnicity, gender, national origin, disability, or religion. I/O psychologists helped the U.S. government create the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures to help assure fairness in hiring.
- TRAINING EMPLOYEES
- Assessing Training Needs
A training needs assessment helps organizations identify which employees need what kind of training. Other strategies, such as a personal development plan, allow employees and their supervisors to identify the kinds of training employees would like to have. These plans involve evaluating strength and weaknesses of an employee, and using the weaknesses to determine where training is needed.
- Designing Training Programs
Successful training programs attend to several design issues.
- Transfer of Training. Transfer of training involves teaching knowledge and skills that are generalizable, or transferable, to the workplace.
- Feedback. Feedback involves a trainer or fellow trainees telling someone how they are doing with constructive suggestions following error or failure, and reinforcement following progress.
- Training in General Principles. Training in general principles involves putting new information in broader context so that it fits into a bigger picture.
- Overlearning. Overlearning allows trainees to practice using information and skills until they reach a high level of performance, often to the point of using the information/skills automatically.
- Sequencing. Sequencing refers to the timing of the training. Massed training is cheaper, but less effective. Distributed training is more expensive and less disruptive to employee’s schedules, but less effective in the long run.
- Evaluating Training Programs
I/O psychologists need to determine if a training program produced enough benefits to make it worth the time and money it cost. Several types of criteria are used to evaluate training programs.
- Evaluation Criteria. Training-level criteria includes data collected immediately after a training session about how much trainees liked or perceived value in the training. Trainee learning criteria involves information about what trainees actually learned from the program. Performance-level criteria evaluate the degree to which transfer-of-training occurred. Programs may have high ratings on one type of criteria, with low ratings on others.
- EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
- ERG Theory
Existence, relatedness, growth (ERG) theory places human needs into three categories. Existence needs are things required for survival. Relatedness needs include need for social contact. Growth needs involve the development and use of capabilities. ERG theory suggests that the strength of people's needs in each category is rising and falling from time to time and from one situation to another. It is applied by helping organizations recognize that employees may not be as motivated to pursue job-related growth needs if other categories are frustrated or unfulfilled.
- Expectancy Theory
Expectancy Theory assumes that employees behavior in accordance with what results they expect their actions to bring (expectancy), and how much they value those results (value). Strong empirical support exists for this theory, and this theory is applied through helping organizations make high performance worthwhile to their employees.
- Goal Setting Theory
Goal setting theory proposes that performance at work is influence by employees' intentions to achieve specific goals. Employees are expected to choose, engage in, and persist at behaviors that take them closer to their goals. Goals that are most motivating are chosen by employees, difficult but not impossible, and specific rather than vague.
- JOB SATISFACTION
Job satisfaction is the degree to which people like or dislike their jobs. It comprises cognitive, affective and behavioral components.
- Measuring Job Satisfaction
Some scales take a global approach to measuring job satisfaction while others take a facet approach. Global approach measures attitudes toward a job in general; facet approach measures assess various aspects of work separately.
- Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction
- Job Requirements. In general, people tend to be more satisfied with work that is more complex. However, individuals who lack the knowledge and skills to do complex work may not experience increased satisfaction with increased complexity.
- Salary. Higher salaries alone do not increase job satisfaction. Knowing that salary decisions are made in a fair way may be more important than the salary itself. Knowing others are paid more for the same work leads to the experience of relative deprivation.
- Work-Family Conflict. Needing to care for a sick child or attend a school play are examples of this conflict. Many organizations deal with this by developing family friendly work policies such as flextime.
- Gender, Age, and Ethnicity. Gender has not been found to impact job satisfaction, but age has. Older workers tend to be more satisfied than younger, perhaps because older workers have the education and experience to be involved in more complex, highly paid jobs. Research on ethnicity and job satisfaction has produced mixed results.
- Thinking Critically: Is Job Satisfaction Genetic?
What am I being asked to believe or accept?
Differences in job satisfaction reflect genetic predispositions toward liking or not liking a job.
What evidence is available to support the assertion?
Research has shown that genetically influenced personality traits are related to job satisfaction. Also, a study directly examined this assertion using the following method. Thirty-four pairs of identical twins who had been separated and raised in different environments completed a job satisfaction questionnaire. The results showed a strong positive correlation between the twins' responses.
Are there alternative ways of interpreting the evidence?
Although the positive correlation is supportive of the assertion, it is merely a correlational study and factors other than genetic predisposition could have influenced job satisfaction. It may be that genes don't shape job satisfaction itself, but do shape the characteristics that influence people's access to satisfying work.
What additional evidence would help to evaluate the alternatives?
Information about the impact of job characteristics on the high correlation between twins' job satisfaction ratings would be helpful. Researchers did examine this, and found that the twins tended to hold very similar jobs in terms of complexity. A more complete assessment of the jobs and job environments would be helpful.
What conclusions are most reasonable?
There is no single reason why people differ in job satisfaction. The results suggest a strong genetic influence, but this influence could be indirect by affecting worker characteristics that in turn determine access to jobs that tend to be more satisfying.
- Consequences of Job Satisfaction
- Job Performance. Satisfied workers tend to be more motivated, work harder, and perform better than dissatisfied ones.
- Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a willingness to go beyond formal job requirements to help coworkers and the organization. High satisfaction increases the probability of an employee showing high OCB.
- Turnover. High satisfaction is not always related to low job turnover. Employees tend not to leave one job until they have another, so dissatisfied workers tend not to leave until they have an alternative.
- Absenteeism. The correlation between job satisfaction and absenteeism is weak. Other factors, such as work-family conflicts, however, are more predictive of absenteeism.
- Aggression and Counterproductive Work Behavior. Job dissatisfaction is one cause of workplace aggression and other forms of counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Stress at work tends to lead to dissatisfaction and negative emotions, which in turn can result in CWB.
- Linkages: Aggression in the Workplace
Most workplace homicides are committed by strangers in contrast to murder victims who generally know their attackers. Most homicides at work involve instrumental aggression-meaning the aggressor's intent is not to injure but to achieve a goal such as getting money. Most cases of injury at work occur under stressful circumstances that foster aggression, such as an emergency room. In these situations, the aggressor generally intends to injure the employee victim. These are examples of aggression between employees and non-employees. Aggression between employees is more often verbal than physical.
- OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
Occupational Health Psychology is concerned with psychological factors that affect the health, safety, and well-being of employees in the workplace.
- Physical Conditions Affecting HealthB
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) establishes guidelines to minimize employees' exposure to hazards. Such guidelines and the procedures they advocate can be useful in reducing risk, but often workers do not follow the guidelines because of lack of encouragement from supervisors.
- Work Schedules, Health, and Safety
- Rotating Shift Work. Employees’ whose shifts change week to week experience disruption in their circadian rhythms that can cause fatigue, irritability, and reduced cognitive functioning.
- Long Shifts and Long Weeks. Although employees often like long shifts because they result in greater blocks of time off, extended work days may create health and performance problems for some. Work weeks that last over 48 hours can be especially problematic and are associated with health problems such as heart disease.
- Stress, Accidents, and Safety
Longer than normal work shifts and extended work weeks are one source of occupational stress that contributes to the fatigue, inattention, cognitive impairment, and sleepiness that elevate the risk of accidents at work. Other factors include the climate of safety-how much training and supervisory emphasis there is on workplace safety.
- WORK GROUPS AND WORK TEAMS
A work group is at least two people who interact as they perform different tasks. A work team is a special kind of work group in which (1) members activities are coordinated with and depend on one another, (2) each member has a specialized role, and (3) members share a common goal.
- Autonomous Work Teams
Autonomous work teams (AWT) manage themselves and do not report to anyone for routine daily supervision. Members of such teams tend to report higher job satisfaction levels and often perform better than members of more traditional arrangements. AWT's often cost less because fewer supervisors are needed.
- Group Leadership
- What Makes a Good Leader? Intelligence and trustworthiness have been identified as important traits of good leaders. In some countries, a willingness to take risks is identified as a positive leader trait; in other countries that same trait is viewed negatively.
- How Do Good Leaders Behave? Good leaders tend to be high on both consideration and on initiating structure. Consideration is concern for the welfare of employees. Initiating structure is the degree to which a leader coordinates employee efforts by assigning tasks and clarifying expectations.
- Leader-Member Interactions. Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory suggests that most leaders tend to adopt different styles with two kinds of subordinates. The most consideration and best treatment is given to the in-group, and the out-group employees are given less consideration. In-group members experience more job satisfaction and less occupational stress.
- Focus on Research Methods: Can People Learn to be Charismatic Leaders?
A charismatic leader is one who inspires followers to embrace a vision of success and make extraordinary efforts to achieve things they wouldn't have done on their own. I/O psychologists wondered if one could be trained to be charismatic. A study of 20 branches of a large banking organization randomly assigned branch managers to either a charisma training group, or a no training group. After training, results showed that the charisma training program had a positive impact on managers' charisma as rated by their employees. The trained managers had higher job satisfaction after training than untrained managers. Financial performance of trained managers' branches increased, untrained managers' branch performance decreased somewhat. Charisma can be taught to some extent, but future research needs to determine if the results are due to placebo effects, and how long the effects last over time.
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