IOP3702 – Personnel psychology LATEST SUMMARY

Study unit 1 – The historical background of industrial psychology  Personnel psychology is concerned with all aspects of the theory of psychology applied to understanding differences between individuals in work settings. Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and the mind. Industrial psychology is a field of specialisation in psychology.  Major fields of industrial psychology: 1. Personnel psychology:  Scientific study of individual differences in work settings.  Personnel psychology represents the overlap between psychology and HR management (HRM).  This is an applied discipline that focuses on individual differences in behaviour and job performance and on methods of scientifically measuring and predicting such differences to enhance the quality of personnel decisions. 2. Organisational psychology:  Focuses on the influence organisations may have on the attitudes and behaviour of their employees.  Organisational psychology is more concerned with social and group influences, culture and climate, and leadership behaviour on the overall effectiveness or performance of the organisation.  Fields of interest: Leadership, group dynamics, conflict, decision-making, communication, motivation, power, organisational culture and climate, organisational change, and organisational development and structure 3. Ergonomics:  Objective of this field is to modify the work environment to be compatible with the characteristics of human beings.  Human-machine interface; interactions between humans and systems 4. Career psychology:  Concerned with counselling employees and assisting them in making career choices.  Core focus is the psychological contract between organisations and employees.  Focuses on areas such as the career development of employees, the meaning of work in people’s lives, individual vocational behaviour across the lifespan, career counselling and guidance, etc. 5. Organisational development:  Concerned with improving or changing organisations to make them more efficient.  Involves the planned, deliberate change in an organisation to resolve a particular problem. The change may involve people, work procedures or technology. 6. Consumer psychology:  Behaviour that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services, behaviour that they expect will satisfy their needs.  Looks at the way consumers make decisions to spend their resources on products or services. 7. Employment relations:  Aka labour or industrial relations  Focus is primarily the behavioural dynamics related to the juxtaposition of conflict and common ground in any employment relationship.  Emphasis falls on the collective relationship and trade union-related dynamics are therefore relevant. 8. Cross-cultural industrial psychology:  Looks at similarities and differences in individual psychological and social functioning in various cultures and ethnic groups.  Licensing and certification of psychologists: o The Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) is a statutory body, established in terms of the Health Professions Act, which, together with the professional board, is committed to promoting the health of the population, determining standards of professional education and training, and setting and maintaining fair standards of professional practice. o In order safeguard the public and indirectly the professions, registration in terms of the Act is a prerequisite for practising any of the health professions with which the council is concerned. o Registration confers professional status upon a practitioner and therefore the right to practise his chosen profession. o Practitioners enjoy the security of being registered in terms of an Act in the knowledge that no unqualified person may practise the profession. o Mission of the HPCSA: “Protecting the public and guiding the professions” Page 1 of 23 o If any person feels that he has been abused by people who claim to be knowledgeable about the field of industrial psychology or claim to have been registered as an industrial psychologist, a formal complaint can be lodged with the HPCSA. o The council will protect the human rights of practitioners and the public. Any complaint made against a practitioner by any member of the public will be investigated by the council. o All professional and practicing psychologists must be registered with the HPCSA, which through the Professional Board for Psychology controls and applies the laws regarding psychological training and professional actions. o The requirement for registration at the Board for Psychology as a psychometrist, HR counsellor, career counsellor, or employee wellbeing counsellor is a 4-year or honours degree in I/O psychology and a completed approved 6 month practicum. o In order to register as an industrial psychologist with the Professional Board, a master’s degree and a formal internship are required. The duration of the internship is one year. Study unit 2 – Research methods in industrial psychology  The role and use of research in personnel psychology: o Knowledge of research methods makes us better able to find useful solutions to problems rather than merely stumbling across them by chance. o Research can be used to develop new practices, such as a new selection procedure. o Knowledge of research will enable you to evaluate the work of others or new practices or procedures introduced by others before the organisation implements these at a considerable cost and not being convinced of their effectiveness.  The research process: 1. Step 1: Formulating the research question:  The research process begins with the identification of the problem: What question or problem needs to be answered?  Based on the kind of answer that is required, we distinguish between various types of questions: i. Exploratory questions:  Often asked when a relatively new field or area is investigated.  Results can often be used to generate more specific research questions that should be addressed in consecutive studies. ii. Descriptive questions:  Provides a picture of a state of events.  Researchers may describe levels of productivity, numbers of employees who left during the year, average levels of job satisfaction, etc. iii. Predictive questions:  Researchers try to predict which employees will be productive, which ones are likely to leave, and which ones will be dissatisfied.  This info is used to select applicants who will be better employees. iv. Evaluative questions:  Set to determine the quality or effectiveness of a programme, practice or procedure. v. Causal questions:  Question asking why events occur as they do.  Tries to find causes: why production is at a certain level or why employees leave  Variables: i. Independent / predictor variables – variables that are manipulated or controlled by the researcher. ii. Dependent / criterion variable – most often the object of the researcher’s interest. Usually some aspect of behaviour.  Types of research: i. Qualitative research – aims to provide in-depth information and a deeper understanding of behaviour at work. Best kind of research method for discovering underlying motivations, feelings, values, attitudes, and perceptions. ii. Quantitative research – aims to describe or explain a variable or situation. This type of research collects some type of numerical data and uses statistical analysis to answer a given research question. Page 2 of 23 2. Step 2: Choosing an appropriate design for the study:  How do you design a study to answer the question?  A research design is a plan or blueprint of how one intends to conduct the research. Research design can be distinguished from one another in terms of 2 aspects: i. Naturalness of the research setting  Refers to the environment in which the study is conducted.  The natural environment of the organisation is desirable, because we would like to investigate the variable exactly as it occurs. ii. Degree of control that the researcher has  In a natural organisational setting there are a number of other aspects / variables present that do not necessarily form a part of the study.  The perception of fairness is a possible variable in a selection process, apart from the feedback provided. This is called an extraneous variable.  Within quantitative research, there are 3 types of research-design: Non-experimental, experimental, and quasi-experimental.  Within qualitative research, the most common research-designs are: Case study, ethnography (the art and science of describing a group or culture), grounded theory, phenomenological research and narrative research. 3. Step 3: Collecting the data:  How do you measure the information that you need and collect the necessary data in order to answer the research question?  In this stage, there are 3 activities that should be completed: i. The people from whom the data will be collected should be identified. ii. The tools that will be used to collect the data should be selected or developed. iii. The tools should be applied in order to actually collect the data.  In the first s