ZeePedia

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHLOGY:Hawthorne Effect

METHODOLOGIES OF DATA COLLECTION:Observational method, Stability of Measures >>
img
Organizational Psychology­ (PSY510)
VU
Lesson 01
INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHLOGY
Organizational Psychology is the understanding, prediction and control of human behaviour in
organizations. As noted by well-known international management scholar Geert Hofstede, "Because
management is always about people, its essence is dealing with human nature. Since human nature seems to
have been extremely stable over recorded history, the essence of management has been and will be equally
stable over time." Therefore the essence of Organizational Psychology remains in trying to better
understand and effectively manage human behaviour in organizations.
Foundations/Background of organizational psychology reveals two main sources of information:
·
Anthropology: It is the study of man
·
Sociology: It is the science of society, study of social aggregates
Management is considered to be faced by three major dimensions, technical, conceptual, and human.
Psychologists realized the importance of the human dimension of management to the extent that theories
were developed to understand human behaviour in organizations. An example of such a theory was
Douglas McGregor's Theory X according to which most managers thought that their employees were
indolent and lazy. This approach was considered to be successful in managing the human element for a long
time. Later it was revealed that that the approach no longer worked with the current environmental
demands. The impact of globalization, technological advancement, fast pace of life and all such changes in
the organizational environment have caused the behaviour of employees in the organization to be
influenced dramatically. The old approaches hold little worth today and new research is being done under
the umbrella of Organizational Psychology in order to understand human behaviour in the modern day
environment. It was realized by scientists that through little simulation, lab knowledge can be applied to
organizations such as industry, banks, stock exchanges, colleges, universities, offices.
It is important that we adopt the new approaches towards organizational psychology and it can be done by
looking at old models and paradigms to be scrutinized and new concepts and models to be discovered and
applied by empirical research.
Organizational psychology is also known as the study of organizational behaviour. It is a diverse branch of
psychology which incorporates various aspects of other fields of psychology and human resource
management, including, social psychology, personality psychology, quantitative psychology including
psychometrics.
Initially, Organizational Psychology was not distinguished from vocational psychology or the study of
human factors. Today Organizational Psychology is considered to be a separate discipline in all over the
world, being taught in almost all universities offering psychology courses. Organizational psychologists
specialize in one of the following aspects: psychometrics; quality; employment law; personnel selection;
training; leadership selection, coaching and development; organizational design and change. Some
Organizational Psychologists are academic (working in both business and psychology departments) or non-
academic researchers, while many others are engaged in practice, holding positions such as executive coach;
counsellor; diversity consultant; legislative compliance officer etc.
Financial compensation of industrial and organizational psychologists generally is among the highest in the
whole field of psychology. While salary and benefits tend to be significantly greater in the private sector,
academics who specialize in industrial and organizational psychology may command greater compensation
than their faculty peers. Teaching (and sometimes research) opportunities exist in business schools as well
as in psychology programs. Business schools typically offer more generous salaries and benefits than do
psychology programs.
Coming to the history of Organizational Psychology, it differs country by country. In the United States, its
origins are those of applied psychology in the early 20th Century, when the nation was experiencing
tremendous industrialization, corporatization, unionization, immigration, urbanization and physical
expansion. Arguably, the field's greatest early pioneers were Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916), Walter Dill
Scott (1869-1955) and Walter Van Dyke Bingham (1880-1952). As in other countries, wartime necessity
(e.g., World War I and World War II) led to the discipline's substantial growth. Business demand for
scientific management, selection and training also has promoted and sustained the field's development.
One of the tools that organizational psychologists commonly utilize in the field is called a job analysis. Job
analyses identify essential characteristics associated with any particular position through interviews of job
1
img
Organizational Psychology­ (PSY510)
VU
incumbents, subject matter experts, supervisors and/or past job descriptions. Job analysis measures both
worker facets necessary to perform the job adequately (aka KSAOs - knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
characteristics such as personality, beliefs, and attitudes) as well as unique facets of the job itself. Once a job
analysis is complete, I/O psychologists will typically utilize this information to design and validate systems
to select new applicants, restructure employee performance appraisals, uncover training needs, and analyze
fairness in employee compensation. Though a thorough job analysis takes time, resources and money, its
benefits tend to outweigh the costs. Organizational psychologists also may employ psychometric tests to
measure employee attitudes such as morale, job satisfaction, or feelings towards management or customers.
The major determinant of organizational performance is the human factor in an organization. Psychologists
therefore advise senior managers on the management of organizational climate or culture, on dealing with
organizational change, or on group dynamics within an organization. This all is a part of organizational
psychology.
Hawthorne Effect
The Hawthorne effect was discovered in 1924 at Hawthorne works at Western Electric Company; Chicago,
USA. The Hawthorne effect refers to the phenomenon that when people are observed in a study, their
behavior or performance temporarily changes. A series of experiments was conducted in the factory
between 1924 and 1932.
There were many types of experiments conducted on the employees, but the purpose of the original ones
was to study the effect of lighting on workers' productivity. When researchers found that productivity
almost always increased after a change in illumination, no matter what the level of illumination was, a
second set of experiments began, supervised by Harvard University professors Elton Mayo, Fritz
Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson. They experimented on other types of changes in the working
environment, using a study group of five young women. Again, no matter the change in conditions, the
women nearly always produced more. The researchers reported that they had accidentally found a way to
increase productivity. The effect was an important milestone in industrial and organizational psychology and
in organizational behaviour. However, some researchers have questioned the validity of the effect because
of the experiments' design and faulty interpretations.
As mentioned earlier the Hawthorne studied included a number of experiments which includes;
·  Illumination studies
·  Relay assembly experiments
·  Bank wiring room experiments
·  Mica splitting test room
The results of the studies were:
1. Small groups were better
When people in an organization worked in small groups, their performance improved. This was one of
the conclusions drawn from the Hawthorne Studies.
2. Type of super-vision matters
The performance of the workers in organization is also influenced by the type of supervision given to
them.
3. Interest matters
The interest of the workers in the work and the interest of the managers in the performance of the
workers play a role in improving their performance.
4. Novelty of situation matters
The novelty of the situation into which a worker is put also matters. A worker may perform better in a
novel working situation.
As mentioned earlier, the Hawthorne studies were a break through in the field of Organizational
Psychology. It was perhaps the first experiment of its kind that laid the foundation of further studies in the
field.
2
Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHLOGY:Hawthorne Effect
  2. METHODOLOGIES OF DATA COLLECTION:Observational method, Stability of Measures
  3. GLOBALIZATION:Aspects of Globalization, Industrial Globalization
  4. DEFINING THE CULTURE:Key Components of Culture, Individualism
  5. WHAT IS DIVERSITY?:Recruitment and Retention, Organizational approaches
  6. ETHICS:Sexual Harassment, Pay and Promotion Discrimination, Employee Privacy
  7. NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONS:Flat Organization, Neoclassical Organization Theory
  8. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:Academy Culture, Baseball Team Culture, Fortress Culture
  9. CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:Move decisively, defuse resistance
  10. REWARD SYSTEMS: PAY, Methods of Pay, Individual incentive plan, New Pay Techniques
  11. REWARD SYSTEMS: RECOGNITION AND BENEFITS, Efficiency Wage Theory
  12. PERCEPTION:How They Work Together, Gestalt Laws of Grouping, Closure
  13. PERCEPTUAL DEFENCE:Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Stereotyping
  14. ATTRIBUTION:Locus of Control, Fundamental Attribution Error
  15. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT:Impression Construction, Self-focused IM
  16. PERSONALITY:Classifying Personality Theories, Humanistic/Existential
  17. PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT:Standardized, Basic Categories of Measures
  18. ATTITUDE:Emotional, Informational, Behavioural,Positive and Negative Affectivity
  19. JOB SATISFACTION:The work, Pay, Measurement of Job Satisfaction
  20. MOTIVATION:Extrinsic motive, Theories of work motivation, Safety needs
  21. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION:Instrumentality, Stacy Adams’S Equity theory
  22. MOTIVATION ACROSS CULTURES:Meaning of Work, Role of Religion
  23. POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY:Criticisms of ‘Traditional’ Psychology, Optimism
  24. HOPE:Personality, Our goals, Satisfaction with important domains, Negative affect
  25. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:EI IS Related To Emotions and Intelligence
  26. SELF EFFICACY:Motivation, Perseverance, Thoughts, Sources of Self-Efficacy
  27. COMMUNICATION:Historical Background, Informal-Formal, Interpersonal Communication
  28. COMMUNICATION (Part II):Downward Communication, Stereotyping Problems
  29. DECISION MAKING:History, Personal Rationality, Social Model, Conceptual
  30. PARTICIPATIVE DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES:Expertise, Thinking skills
  31. JOB STRESS:Distress and Eustress, Burnout, General Adaptation Syndrome
  32. INDIVIDUAL STRESSORS:Role Ambiguity/ Role Conflict, Personal Control
  33. EFFECTS OF STRESS:Physical Effects, Behavioural Effects, Individual Strategies
  34. POWER AND POLITICS:Coercive Power, Legitimate Power, Referent Power
  35. POLITICS:Sources of Politics in Organizations, Final Word about Power
  36. GROUPS AND TEAMS:Why Groups Are Formed, Forming, Storming
  37. DYSFUNCTIONS OF GROUPS:Norm Violation, Group Think, Risky Shift
  38. JOB DESIGN:Job Rotation, Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Skill Variety
  39. JOB DESIGN:Engagement, Disengagement, Social Information Processing, Motivation
  40. LEARNING:Motor Learning, Verbal Learning, Behaviouristic Theories, Acquisition
  41. OBMOD:Applications of OBMOD, Correcting Group Dysfunctions
  42. LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Managers versus Leaders, Defining Leadership
  43. MODERN THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Transformational Leaders
  44. GREAT LEADERS: STYLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:Globalization and Leadership
  45. GREAT LEADERS: STYLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:Planning, Staffing