Industrial-Organizational Psychology Flashcards Preview

Introduction to Psychology > Industrial-Organizational Psychology > Flashcards

Flashcards in Industrial-Organizational Psychology Deck (59)
Loading flashcards...
1
Q

Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology

A

•A branch of psychology that studies how human behavior and psychology affect work and how they are affected by work

2
Q

Industrial Psychology

A

•Concerned with describing job requirements and assessing individuals for their ability to meet those requirements

3
Q

Organizational Psychology

A

•A discipline interested in how the relationship among employees affect those employees and the performance of a business

4
Q

Human Factors Psychology

A

•The study of how workers interact with the tools of work and how to design those tools to optimize workers’ productivity

5
Q

James Cattell

A

•Contribution to Industrial Psychology is largely reflected in his founding of a psychological consulting company – Psychological Corporation

6
Q

Hugo Münsterberg

A
  • A pioneer in the areas of forensic psychology, business and industrial psychology, and film criticism
  • Wrote extensively on philosophy, psychotherapy, experimental and educational psychology, and current affairs
7
Q

Walter Dill Scott

A
  • Applied psychology to advertising, management, and personnel selection
  • Published books that describe the use of psychology in the business world
8
Q

American Psychological Association

A
  • Professional association in the United States for clinical research psychologists
  • Performs a number of functions including holding conferences, accrediting university degree programs, and publishing scientific journals
9
Q

Surgeon General’s Office (SGO)

A
  • Organised by Robert Yerkes
  • Developed methods for screening and selecting enlisted men
  • Developed Army Alpha test to measure mental abilities
  • The Army Beta test was a non-verbal form of the test that was administered to illiterate and non-English-speaking draftees
10
Q

Adjutant General’s Office (AGO)

A
  • Organized by Scott and Bingham
  • Goal to develop selection methods for officers
  • Created a catalogue of occupational needs for the army, essentially a job-description system of performance ratings and occupational skill test for officers
11
Q

Millicent Pond

A

•Worked at several businesses and was director of employment test research at
Scoville Manufacturing Company

•Researched the selection of factory workers, comparing the results of pre-employment tests with various indicators of job performance

12
Q

Elton Mayo

A
  • Began a series at a plant near Chicago, Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works
  • Took industrial psychology beyond just employee selection and placement to a study of more complex problems of interpersonal relations, motivation, and organizational dynamics
  • These studies mark the origin of organizational psychology – examined how human interaction factors, such as supervisorial style, enhanced or decreased productivity
13
Q

Hawthorne Effect

A

•Describes the increase in performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and paid attention to by researchers or supervisors

14
Q

Kurt Lewin

A
  • Conducted research on the effects of the various leadership styles, team structure, and team dynamics
  • Studied the effect of leadership style on aggression, group dynamics, and satisfaction
15
Q

Frederick Taylor

A
  • An engineer
  • Published a book that examines management styles, personnel selection and training, as well as the work itself, using time and motion studies
  • Taylor showed that the workers could be more productive by taking work rests
16
Q

Gilbreth

A

•Using time and motion studies, Gilbreth and her husband, Frank, worked to make workers more efficient by reducing the number of motions required to perform a task

•She investigated employee fatigue
and time management stress and found many employees were motivated by money and job satisfaction

17
Q

Job Analysis

A
  • Refers to accurately describing the task or job
  • Organization must identify the characteristics of applicants for a match to the job
  • Training employees from their first day on the job throughout their tenure within the organization, and appraising their performance along the way
18
Q

Task-oriented

A
  • Lists in detail of the tasks that will be performed for the job
  • Typically rated on scales for how frequently it is performed, how difficult it is, and how important it is to the job
19
Q

Job Specification

A
  • Describes the characteristics required of the worker to successfully perform the job
  • Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) that the job requires are identified
20
Q

Unstructured Interview

A
  • Interviewer may ask different questions of each different candidate
  • Questions are often, though not always, unspecified beforehand
  • Responses to questions asked are generally not scored using a standard system
21
Q

Structured Interview

A

•Interviewer asks the same questions of every candidate, the questions are
prepared in advance, and the interviewer uses a standardized rating system for each response

•Accurately compare two candidates’ interviews

22
Q

Training

A
  • Formalized for the employee
  • Educate the new employee about the organizational culture, the values, visions, hierarchies, norms and ways the company’s employees interact
23
Q

Mentoring

A

•A form of informal training in which an experienced employee guides the work of a new employee

•Mentors will be formally assigned to a new employee, while in others a
mentoring relationship may develop informally

24
Q

Performance Appraisals

A
  • Typically documented several times a year, often with a formal process and an annual face-to-face brief meeting between an employee and his supervisor
  • Important that the original job analysis play a role in performance appraisal as well as any goals that have been set by the employee or by the employee and supervisor.
  • Often used to motivate employees to improve performance and expand their areas of competence
  • Used to identify opportunities for training or whether a particular training program has been successful
25
Q

360-degree Feedback Appraisal

A
  • The employee’s appraisal derives from a combination of ratings by supervisors, peers, employees supervised by the employee, and from the employee herself
  • Provide different perspectives of the employee’s job performance
  • Help employees make improvements through their own efforts or through training
26
Q

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

A

•Responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information

27
Q

Equal Pay Act

A

•Requires that equal pay for men and women in the same workplace who are performing equal work

28
Q

Human Capital Theory

A
  • A theory of human capital investment and labor market earning
  • Explains both individuals’ decisions to invest in human capital (education and training) and the pattern of individuals’ lifetime earnings
29
Q

Immutable Characteristics

A

•Refers to traits of an individual that are fundamental to her identity, in hiring, benefits, promotions, or termination of employees

30
Q

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

A

•A civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public

31
Q

Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications (BFOQs)

A
  • Employment qualifications that employers are allowed to consider while making decisions about hiring and retention of employees
  • The qualification should relate to an essential job duty and is considered necessary for operation of the particular business
32
Q

Job Satisfaction

A

•Describes the degree to which individuals enjoy their job

33
Q

What are the Factors that Affect Job Satisfaction?

A
  • Autonomy – individual responsibility, control over decisions
  • Work Content – variety, challenge, role clarity
  • Communication – feedback
  • Financial Rewards – salary and benefits
  • Growth and Development – personal growth, training, education
  • Promotion – career advancement opportunity
  • Coworkers – professional relations or adequacy
  • Supervision and Feedback – support, recognition, fairness
  • Workload – time pressure, tedium
  • Work Demands – extra work requirements, insecurity of position
34
Q

Job Stress

A

•Affects job satisfaction

•A result of an employee’s perception that
the demands placed on them exceed their ability to meet them

*Stress is the perception and response of
an individual to events judged as ovewhelming or threatening to the individual’s well-being

35
Q

Downsizing

A

•An increasingly common response to a business’s pronounced failure to achieve profit goals, and it involves laying off a significant percentage of the company’s employees

36
Q

Corporations often grow larger by combining with other businesses. This can be accomplished through a ______ (i.e., the joining of two organizations of equal power and status) or an ______ (i.e., one organization purchases the other).

A

merger; acquisition

37
Q

Acquisition

A

•Purchasing organization is usually the more powerful or dominant partner. In both cases, there is usually a duplication of services between the two companies, such as two accounting departments and two sales forces

38
Q

Mergers

A

•Determine how the organizational culture will change, to which employees also must adjust

39
Q

Work-family Balance

A

•Refers to the juggling of work life with the demands of their home life

40
Q

Three sources of Work-family Conflicts

A
  • Time devoted to work makes it difficult to fulfill requirements of family, or vice versa
  • Strain from participation in work makes it difficult to fulfill requirements of family, or vice versa
  • Specific behaviors required by work make it difficult to fulfill the requirements of family, or vice versa
41
Q

Ways to decrease work-family Conflicts

A
  • Support in the home – emotional (listening), practical (help with chores)
  • Workplace support – flextime, leave with pay, and telecommuting
42
Q

Flextime

A

•Usually involves a requirement of core hours spent in the workplace around which the employee may schedule his arrival and departure to meet family demands

43
Q

Telecommuting

A

•Involves employees working at home and setting their own hours, which allows them work during different parts of the day, and to spend part of the day with their family

44
Q

Douglas McGregor’s Scientific Management

A

•A theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows with the main objective of improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity

45
Q

McGregor’s Theory X Approach to Management

A
  • Managers assume that most people dislike work and are not innately self-directed
  • Managers perceive employees as people who prefer to be led and told which tasks to perform and when

•Goals are achieved through rules and
punishments

•People avoid responsibility

46
Q

McGregor’s Theory Y Approach to Management

A

•People enjoy work and find it natural

•People are more satisfied when given
responsibility

•People want to take part in setting their own work goals

•Employees are able to provide
input on matters of efficiency and safety.

47
Q

Donald Clifton

A
  • Focused his research on how an organization can best use an individual’s strengths, an approach he called strengths-based management
  • Interviewed 8,000 managers and concluded that it is important to focus on a person’s strengths, not their weaknesses
48
Q

Transactional Leadership

A
  • The focus is on supervision and organizational goals, which are achieved through a system of rewards and punishments
  • Maintains the status quo: they are managers
49
Q

Transformational Leadership

A

Possess four attributes to varying degrees:

  • charismatic (highly liked role models)
  • inspirational (optimistic about goal attainment)
  • intellectually stimulating (encourage critical thinking and problem solving)
  • Considerate
50
Q

Work Teams

A

•A group of people within an organization or company given a specific task to achieve together

51
Q

Why are certain teams inefficient?

A
  • Poor decision-making due to conformity
  • Poor communication
  • Conflicts
  • Halo effect: Teams are given credit for their successes. but individuals within a team are blamed for team failures
52
Q

Three Basic Type of Teams

A
  • Creative teams – develop innovative possibilities or solutions
  • Problem resolution teams – solve a particular problem or issue
  • Tactical teams – execute a well-defined plan or objective
53
Q

Organizational Culture

A

•Encompasses the values, visions, hierarchies, norms, and interactions among its employees

54
Q

Three Layers of Organizational Culture

A
  • Observable artifacts – symbols, language, narratives, and practices that represent the underlying cultural assumptions
  • Espoused values – concepts or beliefs that the management or the entire organization endorses
  • Basic assumptions – generally unobservable and unquestionable
55
Q

Diversity Training

A

•Educates participants about cultural differences with the goal of improving teamwork

56
Q

Quid Pro Quo Harassment

A

•Often between an employee and a person with greater power in the organization

57
Q

Workplace Violence

A

•Refers to any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening, disruptive behavior that occurs at the workplace

58
Q

Procedural Justice

A

•Refers to the fairness of the processes by which outcomes are determined in conflicts with or among employees

59
Q

Howell’s Study in Humans Factors Psychology

A
  • Attention – Includes vigilance and monitoring, recognizing signal in noise , mental resources, and divided attention
  • Cognitive Engineering – Includes human software interactions in complex automated systems, especially the decision-making processes of workers as they are supported by the software system
  • Task Analysis – Breaking down the elements of a task
  • Cognitive Task Analysis – breaking down the elements of a cognitive task