Industrial-Organizational Psychology History

Early History of I-O Psychology

• Mental ability tests have always played a crucial role in industrial psychology practice.
• Most industrial psychologists focused on improving productivity and reducing counterproductive behavior, such as absenteeism and turnover.
• The three branches of I-O psychology were often seen as unrelated, and possibly in competition, to explain industrial behavior.
• The unit of analysis was primarily the individual worker, rather than the work group, organization, or culture.

Evolution of I-O Psychology

• Today, mental ability is just one of many important attributes in I-O psychology practice.
• Personality characteristics are increasingly important in understanding and predicting work behavior.

Areas of Concentration for I-O Psychologists

• Selection and placement
  • Developing tests
  • Validating tests
  • Analyzing job content
  • Identifying management potential
  • Defending tests against legal challenge
• Training and development
  • Identifying training and development needs
  • Forming and implementing technical and managerial training programs
  • Evaluating training effectiveness
• Career planning
• Organizational development
  • Analyzing organizational structure
  • Maximizing satisfaction and effectiveness of employees
  • Facilitating organizational change
• Performance measurement
  • Developing measures of performance
  • Measuring the economic benefit of performance
  • Introducing performance evaluation systems
• Quality of work life
  • Identifying factors associated with job satisfaction
  • Reducing stress in the workplace
  • Redesigning jobs to make them more meaningful
• Engineering psychology
  • Designing work environments
  • Optimizing person–machine effectiveness
  • Making workplaces safer

Organizational Psychology

• A field that combines research from social psychology and organizational behavior to address the emotional and motivational side of work.

Evidence-Based I-O Psychology

• I-O psychologists focus on making evidence-based decisions in their work, using empirical research to inform practice.
• The trend towards evidence-based practice is also seen in the human resources (HR) field.