1 - History of Organisational Psychology Flashcards
What is Industrial/Organisational Psychology?
The study of behaviour in work settings and the application of psychology to change work behaviour
What is the earliest (20th Century) history of organisational psychology?
Walter Dill Scott
- Applied psychology to advertising, employee selection and management issues.
- Talked about psychology to solve organisational problems
Hugo Munsterburg
- Advocated use of psychological tests in selection
Explain the tests used for selection in WWI
Two intelligence tests for placement of Army recruits
- Alpha: recruits who could read and write
- Beta: recruits who could not read ad write
After the war, tests were adapted for civilian use
What is the Hawthorne effect and how was it found?
- Worker productivity increased by attention being paid to workers (recent research has debunked this)
Went into factory and increased illumination for some workers and not others. Productivity increased.
Made other changes and productivity increased again.
What is a job analysis?
The procedure for determining the duties and skill requirements of a job and the kind of person who should be hired for it.
What is the information from a job analysis used for and why is this important?
Developing job descriptions and job specifications
- Recruitment and selection decisions (e.g. colour blindness)
- Performance appraisal and promotion
- Job evaluation, wage and salary decisions (compensation)
- Training requirements
What is a job description?
A list of what the job entails
What is a job specification
A list of the human requirements of a job, or what kind of people to hire for the job.
How do you conduct a job analysis?
- Identify purpose
- Identify who to include to gather information
- Chose method to acquire information
- Communicate the project
- Collect all relevant materials
- Analyse the job
- Write up and integrate the data
- Review
- Feedback outcomes
Who can you include in a job analysis to acquire information?
Subject Matter Experts;
- Job incumbent,
- Supervisor
- Trained job analyst
Incumbents and supervisors the best for job info and analysts better for comparison amongst set of jobs
What is a Subject Matter Expert?
A person with direct, up-to-date experience with a job for long enough to be familiar with all of its tasks
What methods can you use in a job analysis?
- Review Written Material (e.g. previous job description, needs to be relevant and contemporary).
- Standardised Measures (e.g. PAQ)
- Job Participation (job analyst performs job or operation to get first-hand understanding).
- Interviews (ask SMEs about major duties etc., may be biased)
- Job Diaries/Activity logs (job incumbents record daily activities but can be time consuming)
- Observations (Validates previous job descriptions and gets better understanding of job).
- Survery Questionnaires
- Focus Groups (Obtain more qualitative information but small sample sizes)
Best is a combination
What are the issues with a job analyses?
- Jobs change over time, so they need to be conducted periodically
- Concept of a job has been changing so organisations need to be flexible and responsive. Jobs are less well-defined now so need to have clear responsibilities.
