Industrial-Organizational Psychology: Understanding the Workplace PDF

CHAPTER I/O Psychology: Then and Now 1 CHAPTER OUTLINE What Is I/O Psychology? How Are I/O Psychologists Trained? I/O TODAY The Scientist/Practitioner Gap What Do I/O Psychologists Do? Over a Century of History Pre–World War I World War I Through the 1920s The 1930s to Pre–World War II World War...

CHAPTER I/O Psychology: Then and Now 1 CHAPTER OUTLINE What Is I/O Psychology? How Are I/O Psychologists Trained? I/O TODAY The Scientist/Practitioner Gap What Do I/O Psychologists Do? Over a Century of History Pre–World War I World War I Through the 1920s The 1930s to Pre–World War II World War II to the Mid-1960s The Mid-1960s to the Mid-1980s The Mid-1980s to 2000 2000 to Today Where Does I/O Psychology Go from Here? What Does I/O Psychology Mean to You? Summary LEARNING OBJECTIVES This chapter should help you understand: How I/O psychologists are trained The work of I/O psychologists and how it benefits organizations and employees alike The diverse historical trends associated with the development and growth of I/O psychology The very important role currently being played by I/O psychology in the changing workplace, as well as the field’s great potential to contribute to organizational functioning in the future For most of us, who we are is in large part defined by what we do. If you were to ask me to describe myself in a few sentences, I would say something like the following: My name is Paul Levy. I have been fortunate enough to be married to Sylvia Chinn-Levy for 24 years and have three terrific young boys named Christopher, Sean, and Jared. I am a psychology professor and department chair at the University of Akron, where I specialize in industrial/organizational psychology. I teach both undergraduate and graduate students and do research in the areas of performance appraisal and feedback. I’m a big sports fan (particularly of the Baltimore Orioles), a youth sports coach, and I play basketball and run for exercise. You can see from this simple example how prominent my job is in my self-description, even though I think of myself as a husband, father, and psychology professor (in that order!). Most of us spend over one-third of our day at work, traveling to and from work, or preparing to go to work. Many individuals bring work home with them or are called into work at night, on weekends, or even in the early morning hours. We have cell phones, Androids, and iPhones so that our coworkers can reach us when they need to, even if we are at a ball game or a wedding or a concert. Although most of us would concur that family is the most important element in our lives, work is probably a very close second. In this book, I present the world of work from the perspective of I/O psychology and attempt to provide a better understanding of the complexities that are inherent in the interactions between employees and organizations. This chapter introduces I/O psychology by focusing on its history, implications, and trends. WHAT IS I/O PSYCHOLOGY? Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology is the application of psychological principles and theories to the workplace. I/O psychologists study, among other things, the attitudes and behaviors of employees and employers; interpersonal relationships at work; the structure of organizations and organizational policies; the complex processes of motivation and leadership; both individual and organizational performance; the context, culture, and climate of organizations; and the match between people and jobs. industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology The application of psychological principles and theories to the workplace. Traditionally, industrial psychology and organizational psychology have been distinguished from each other based on their respective content areas. Industrial psychology (sometimes called personnel psychology, which shouldn’t be confused with personal or personality psychology) has long been associated with job analysis, training, selection, and performance measurement/appraisal, whereas organizational psychology deals with motivation, work attitudes, and leadership, as well as the structure, culture, and processes of organizations. The topics of industrial psychology have traditionally been more technical, focusing on the assessment, measurement, and selection of people into various jobs; organizational psychology’s topics tend to include more of the relational elements of the workplace, such as motivation, leadership, employer–employee relations, and job attitudes. In a sense, however, the dichotomy is a false one given the great overlap among the issues involved in each area. Finally, there is no broad line that divides workplace problems into organizational or industrial ones. For instance, a performance problem that might traditionally be defined within the industrial domain (the term performance has always been more closely aligned with industrial psychology) is likely to be caused by attitudinal or motivational factors that are traditionally associated with organizational psychology. In addition, most I/O psychologists are trained as exactly that—I/O psychologists—not as industrial psychologists only or as organizational psychologists only. Nevertheless, I use the distinction here to be consistent with other treatments of the topic and, even more important, to provide a framework for the discussion. I want to reiterate that I and O are put together into I/O for good reason: They are interdependent, related areas that form one applied subspecialty of psychology. Before tracing the history of I/O psychology, we must consider at length how I/O psychologists are trained and what it is that I/O psychologists do. This background will help you gain a better understanding of what skill sets I/O psychologists possess and what they do in their jobs. HOW ARE I/O PSYCHOLOGISTS TRAINED? The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), Division 14 of the American Psychological Association (APA), is the professional association with which most I/O psychologists affiliate. Most I/O psychologists have obtained a PhD (or a PsyD, which is a similar degree with less research emphasis) from one of the 70 or so I/O psychology programs currently available in the United States and Canada, but there are programs elsewhere in the world as well. For a detailed look at these numerous programs, see Graduate Training Programs in IndustrialOrganizational Psychology and Related Fields (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, n.d.). The work of I/O psychology can also be done by people without PhDs in I/O (e.g., there are many I/O psychologists with master’s degrees), as well as by people without specific training in I/O. Many of those without training in I/O receive their instruction in a graduate program housed in a business school. Another professional association that many I/O psychologists belong to is the Society for Human Resource Management [SHRM], which is focused on enhancing the professional practice of human resource management across 160 countries. SIOP publishes guidelines for doctoral training in I/O psychology, called Guidelines for Education and Training at the Doctoral Level in IndustrialOrganizational Psychology (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1999). These guidelines clearly stipulate that the underlying approach to training I/O psychologists is the scientist/practitioner model, which maintains that I/O psychologists are often both the generators of knowledge (scientists) and the consumers of such knowledge (practitioners). Accordingly, doctoral education in I/O psychology must focus on both the theory and applications associated with the various content areas; the dual emphasis on theory and practice is needed regardless of one’s career path. Indeed, to be a strong researcher, one needs to understand both the theory involved in the research and how to apply the knowledge that could potentially come from that research. (These guidelines are in the process of revision with a draft document available on the SIOP website— http://www.siop.org/ProposedGuidelinesChanges.pdf—for those interested; as I write this, the formal vote on them has not occurred.) scientist/practitioner model An approach used to train I/O psychologists maintaining that because I/O psychologists are both generators and consumers of knowledge, training must be focused on both theory and application. To effectively teach future I/O psychologists, one must be able to share insights at both a theoretical and an applied level. Similarly, to apply the knowledge in an organization, one must have a theoretical understanding of I/O issues and practices in order to make them work and to enable other employees to understand the potential benefits of the procedures or interventions being implemented. I/O TODAY The Scientist/Practitioner Gap Imagine that you are an I/O practitioner who needs to design a new training program and evaluate its effectiveness. You received a doctorate a long time ago, and you haven’t had the time or resources to keep up with the latest research on training evaluation. You know you should take the time to conduct some research and design an effective survey for trainees, but you need to have this ready to go in the next two weeks, and you have plenty of other projects that need your attention. So you do your best, knowing that it probably is not a scientifically-supported measure. Now imagine that you are a researcher at a university. In order to keep your job, you need to get a certain number of papers published this year. Journals are more likely to publish papers that suggest new theories about training evaluation, even if they aren’t particularly applicable to the workplace. You know that it would be beneficial to use training data from an organization for your research, but you are worried that the data will not be high-quality enough to get published. So, you conduct a lab study, knowing your research might not be relevant to an actual organization. As these two scenarios suggest, the scientist/practitioner gap is difficult to overcome. Fortunately, there are some potential solutions. First, improvements in technology allow practitioners access to large amounts of data—certainly more than they would have time to examine. However, many researchers are interested in these data and have the time and resources to publish the results in a paper. This collaboration is one example of how scientists and practitioners are bridging the scientist/practitioner gap. Another recent change that can help researchers and practitioners work together is a movement among journals for “open access”—that is, instead of having to have an expensive subscription to obtain scientific articles, many sciences are moving toward posting articles in online depositories so that anyone can read them (Björk et al., 2010). One recent example is the International Personnel Assessment Council (IPAC)’s open-access journal Personnel Assessment and Decisions, which started in 2015 as a remedy to the “prohibitive costs associated with traditional journals.” While this has caused concerns about the quality of articles and how journals will adapt to this new business model, allowing open access helps practitioners who are not directly involved in research stay up-todate about new developments. Some journals also encourage writers to avoid complicated jargon and emphasize practical results of studies, so that the findings can more readily be used by practitioners (see Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives in Science and Practice, which was first published in 2008, for an example of a journal that mixes science and practice). Finally, professional organizations such as SIOP have been finding ways to help scientists and practitioners interact. For example, SIOP has started my.SIOP.org, a social networking site where scientists and practitioners can share ideas, ask questions, and make plans to conduct research together. Other researchers have taken action by creating newsletters, student groups, and online tools that make it easier for practitioners to implement science-based interventions (O’Neill, 2012). The scientist/practitioner gap is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. However, many I/O psychologists are making use of social media, blogging, online courses, and similar tools to help ensure practitioners are using modern, science-based techniques in the workplace, and to continue to use organizational data to forward theories. Discussion Questions 1. As the text explains, though I/O psychologists are trained as scientist/practitioners, most will choose a career that favors either practice or research. How do you think a day in the life of an I/O psychologist might differ if he or she is a scientist versus a practitioner? What types of skills or characteristics should a scientist have? A practitioner? 2. We have discussed some ways to bridge the scientist/practitioner gap. What are some other ways that research psychologists and practicing psychologists can use technology and other resources better share their findings? References Björk, B., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T., & Guǒnason, G. (2010). Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009. PLoS ONE, 5(6). Retrieved from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article? id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011273 O’Neill, T. (2012). Canadian scholars working to bridge the perceived scientist-practitioner gap. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 49, 63–66. Additional Readings Silzer, R., & Parson, C. (2012). Industrial-organizational psychology journals and the science-practice gap. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 49, 97–117. These guidelines also maintain that the goal of graduate training in I/O psychology is to develop competencies, which are the skills, behaviors, and capabilities that allow employees to effectively perform specific functions— or, in this case, to be effective members of the I/O psychology profession. Table 1.1 summarizes the competencies that have been identified as important for I/O psychologists. This comprehensive list is, in reality, only a guide to be used by graduate programs in the training of I/O psychologists. It is safe to say that no I/O psychologist graduates from school having attained complete competence in every one of these areas, but certainly most graduates have attained some degree of competence in most. competencies The skills, behaviors, and capabilities that allow employees to perform specific functions. Another issue addressed by SIOP’s guidelines is the importance of diversity in the training of I/O psychologists. The guidelines point out that, just as science and practice are inherent in each competency, an appreciation of diversity can be applied to each as well. Diversity in this sense refers to an awareness and understanding not only of ethnic, racial, and cultural differences among employees but also of age and gender differences. Developing competency in the areas outlined by SIOP and graduating with a PhD in I/O psychology usually require at least four to five years of graduate school (following completion of an undergraduate degree). The last portion of this time is spent on a dissertation, which is a unique piece of scholarly research; in I/O psychology, it is usually a piece of empirical research. The doctoral student finds a topic of interest and exhaustively reviews the current literature in that area. The student then decides what needs to be done in that area and designs a study to answer a series of research questions, working closely with a faculty member who has some degree of expertise in the topic. Some students choose to attain a master’s degree in I/O; this is typically a two-year degree with a bit less emphasis on research training. One of the fastest-growing demands in the field of psychology is for individuals with master’s degrees in I/O. In fact, in 2014 “industrial-organizational psychologist” was labelled as the fastest growing occupation in the United States, with a projected growth rate of 53% between 2014 and 2022 (Farnham, 2014)! In addition, I/O psychologist is ranked as the 37th best job overall and the #1 best science job on the U.S. News 100 Best Jobs list (U.S. News & World Report, 2016). dissertation A unique piece of scholarly research that is usually the last hurdle before obtaining a PhD. TABLE 1.1 Areas of Competence to Be Developed in Doctoral-Level I/O Psychology Programs Attitude theory, measurement, and change Job/task analysis and classification Career development Judgment and decision making Consulting and business skills Leadership and management Consumer behavior Organizational development Criterion theory and development Organizational theory Ethical, legal, and professional contexts of I/O psychology Performance appraisal and feedback Fields of psychology Personnel recruitment, selection, and placement Health stress in organizations Research methods History and systems of psychology Small-group theory and team processes Human performance/human factors Statistical methods/data analysis Individual assessment Training: Theory, program design, and evaluation Individual differences Work motivation Job evaluation and compensation Source: Information from Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1999). WHAT DO I/O PSYCHOLOGISTS DO? Although I/O psychologists are trained according to the scientist/practitioner model, most choose a career that, in a relative sense, emphasizes either science and research or practice. The point here is not that academics don’t ever deal with the application of research and theory to the real world, because most do on a regular basis; rather, it’s that their emphasis is still on the research and teaching. Similarly, there are practitioners who are also involved in research and establish excellent research reputations by publishing their applied work in scholarly journals, as well as in more practice-oriented journals, but who maintain a focus on the application of I/O to their organizations. Figure 1.1 categorizes I/O psychologists by the various employment settings in which they work. As you can see, a large percentage of I/O psychologists—40%—are employed as professors by universities. These individuals typically teach in psychology or business departments, in addition to doing empirical and theoretical research. Other research-oriented I/O psychologists are employed by research consortia or institutes or by public or private organizations. FIGURE 1.1 Primary Employment of Doctoral SIOP Members (Information from Khanna, Medsker, & Ginter (2013).) Those I/O psychologists who do not work in academic settings devote the majority of their time to applying psychology to the workplace, doing so in consulting firms (26%), private organizations (20%), and government and nonprofit organizations (13%). Many of these practitioners work in the human resource departments of companies in the manufacturing, financial services, telecommunications, and consumer products industries, among others. Among those in the public sector, many work in federal, state, and local government, as well as in the military. Table 1.2 shows a selection of job titles for I/O practitioners and Table 1.3 shows a sample of companies that have traditionally employed I/O psychologists. But what exactly are these I/O psychologists doing? You got a sense of what I/O psychologists do from the competencies presented in Table 1.1. From this table, it is clear that I/O psychologists have very broad training, but let’s get a little more specific and discuss the major areas in which they work. In the ensuing chapters, these areas will be examined in greater detail. TABLE 1.2 I/O Psychologists in the Workplace: Sample Job Titles Director of personnel Compensation analyst Vice president of personnel Project manager Manager of human resources Senior scientist Organizational development specialist Management consultant Personnel psychologist Research scientist Senior consultant Behavioral scientist TABLE 1.3 Companies with Tradition of Employing I/O Psychologists Procter & Gamble Johnson & Johnson United Airlines Amazon Frito-Lay Ford Motor Company IBM Dow Chemical Google PepsiCo AT&T Wells Fargo SIOP, whose motto is “Science for a Smarter Workplace,” publishes a pamphlet called Building Better Organizations (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2006a) in which major areas are listed; I will highlight the most significant. First, the area in which more I/O psychologists work than any other is selection. Here, experts work on the development and administration of tests used for employee hiring (i.e., selection and placement). An important element in this process is the validation of selection instruments to ensure that they adequately predict job performance. Many I/O psychologists spend a lot of time administering tests to applicants and current employees and then relating those test scores to performance on the job as a way of seeing if the test is a good one. A good test is one in which we can predict who becomes an effective employee in a particular job —that’s the true bottom-line goal for organizations. We will examine issues of selection in Chapters 6 and 7. A second area in which many I/O psychologists work is training and development. Companies spend a great deal of time and money on training programs that teach new employees how to do their jobs and more established employees how to do new jobs with new equipment. I/O psychologists develop these training programs. First, they carefully analyze the organization and the job; then they conduct the training program with the company’s employees to improve performance on the job; and, eventually, they evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Training will be the focus of Chapter 8. Organizational development (OD) is a third area of concentration for many I/O psychologists. Experts in this area analyze organizational structures, cultures, and climates and develop interventions appropriate for a particular organization that might make the organization run more effectively. Organizational change is a large part of OD and one that companies are very interested in, given the many changes that are taking place in organizations of the 21st century. We will discuss organizational development in Chapter 14. A fourth area of emphasis for I/O psychologists is performance appraisal (sometimes also referred to as performance management). The emphasis here is on developing both individual and organizational measures of performance and using these measures to improve performance. An I/O psychologist might be responsible for developing an appraisal measure, deciding how to implement it, and overseeing its actual administration. Performance appraisal will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. A CLOSER LOOK How do you think work setting affects a person’s job satisfaction? How might it affect productivity? The last major area I’ll mention is what I call quality of work life. The chief concerns for people who work in this area are the measurement and improvement of job-related attitudes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. An I/O psychologist might develop and administer an attitude survey to employees in an attempt to understand what employees like and don’t like about their jobs. The data from surveys of this kind are often linked to performance; then a plan is devised to improve attitudes by enhancing not only the work climate but also organizational efficiency. Chapter 10 provides a detailed analysis of quality of work life in the context of job attitudes. Though not mentioned specifically in SIOP’s pamphlet, a relatively new and rapidly growing area of focus in I/O psychology is social justice and prosocial work. SIOP devotes an entire section of their website to the prosocial activities of the society and its members (see http://www.siop.org/prosocial/). This work can be defined as volunteer or extra-role behavior (see Chapter 4 for a discussion of extra-role behavior or OCBs) that makes use of I/O methods and research to benefit society, and is performed in exchange for little or no compensation. An example of a prosocial project that has recently engaged many SIOP members is the Veteran Transition Project, which is aimed at helping veterans as they return home from deployment to reintegrate into their communities and into the workplace. Specific services performed by SIOP members include helping veterans with their resumes, helping employers create policies and cultures that are supportive and welcoming of veterans, and coaching veterans through the job search and interview process. In another example of prosocial work, the Poverty Research Group, made up of SIOP members sponsors Project INCUBATE (International Collaboration Between Universities By Aligning Their Expertise), which seeks to motivate and coordinate antipoverty research globally and locally through interdisciplinary collaboration (http://www.siop.org/Prosocial/Incubate.aspx). Finally, the Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA), which was created and is managed by the Organizational Science Doctoral Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has as its vision to help nonprofits assess and understand their volunteer workforce better through the use of I/O psychological methods and research. This assessment has been administered to over 100 different organizations since its inception in 2009 (https://vpa.uncc.edu). Certainly, there are other areas in which I/O psychologists work, such as consumer psychology and engineering or human factors psychology, but the areas discussed above account for the largest portion of their work. In the remainder of this text, we will take a much more detailed look at what I/O psychologists do; but first we should examine at some length the history of I/O psychology, for nothing is as relevant to the future as the past. OVER A CENTURY OF HISTORY Although I/O psychology is often regarded as a newer branch of psychology, its roots actually go back almost to the founding of psychology itself (Lowman, Kantor, & Perloff, 2007). For those interested in a more detailed history of the field, I refer you to a fine resource by Laura Koppes (2007) on the history of I/O psychology. I will use an organizational structure, which breaks down the last 100-plus years into seven periods (Katzell & Austin, 1992). Pre–World War I The initial phase of this history started around the turn of the 20th century and ended with World War I. In 1901, Walter Dill Scott, a professor at Northwestern University and former student of Wilhelm Wundt, who is one of the founding fathers of modern psychology and the first person to call himself a psychologist, was invited by the western advertising manager of a chain of magazines to give a talk at the Agate Club in Chicago on the psychological aspects of advertising. Because of the content of the talk and the connection of psychology to business, many refer to the date of this talk—December 20, 1901—as the beginning of business and industrial psychology, or what we now call industrial/organizational psychology. Scott published The Theory of Advertising in 1903. Twelve years later, in 1915, the Division of Applied Psychology was established at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University), with Walter VanDyke Bingham as its head, and in 1916 Scott became its first professor of applied psychology. At about the same time, Hugo Munsterberg (another Wundt student) moved to the United States, continued doing the applied work he had begun in Germany, and published his textbook Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (Munsterberg, 1913). It’s interesting to note that, as virtually all psychologists at this time were trained as experimental psychologists, Scott, Munsterberg, Bingham, and others with applied interests had to fit these interests in amidst their full-time jobs in experimental psychology (Katzell & Austin, 1992). Koppes and Pickren (2007) note that many assume that all of this early development in the field of I/O psychology was happening in the United States, but, in fact, this is not true. During these early years, there was more financial and governmental support for the development of the field in Europe than in the United States. According to Moore and Hartmann (1931; cited in Koppes & Pickren, 2007), I/O psychology was developing earlier and faster in Europe (England, Germany, Russia, Italy, etc.), where centers were established to fund research and bring researchers together to collaborate on common interests with particular research objectives. Interestingly, in the United States, the development proceeded in more of an individual researcher paradigm, whereby lone faculty members spent time conducting their own research—there wasn’t much of a coordinated effort to move the field along. In some ways, the contrast between how the field developed in the United States and the rest of world is consistent with how individualistic our society is compared with the rest of the world. This important cultural difference will come up many times throughout the rest of this book as we consider cross-cultural issues in the field of I/O psychology. World War I Through the 1920s The second historical phase ranges from the World War I years through the 1920s. This is the period when I/O psychology really came of age and moved out from the hallowed halls of academia into the applied world. This was an intense and busy time for the military as thousands of young men were joining at rates never before seen and they needed to be assessed and evaluated for service. During this time, Scott and Bingham established a psychological program under the army’s personnel officer. Their staff was responsible for such things as the development of personnel files for military personnel and the creation of performance rating forms. Another group of psychologists led by Robert Yerkes (at that time the president of the American Psychological Association) worked for the government doing selection and placement of military personnel, using their newly developed tools—the Army Alpha and Army Beta mental ability tests. These tests, developed as multiple-choicebased intelligence tests that could be administered in groups, differed from the more typical individually administered intelligence tests that existed at the time. It became very clear during this period that those who studied and practiced I/O psychology had a great deal to offer the military—including the ability to administer these and other tests for the screening and classification of people. Army Alpha and Army Beta Mental ability tests developed by I/O psychologists during World War I that were used to select and classify army personnel. It was also at this time that I/O psychology began to expand beyond the academic and military realms into government and private industry. I/O psychologists started consulting firms such as The Scott Company (founded by Walter Dill Scott), which worked in the areas of mental ability testing, personnel planning, training, and personnel administration. The Psychological Corporation, specializing in test development, was founded in 1921 and still exists today as part of Harcourt Assessment. Also in 1921, Bruce V. Moore received from Carnegie Tech what is believed to have been the first PhD in industrial psychology. His is an interesting story, as he rose from assistant professor to become department chair at Pennsylvania State University (the psychology building at Penn State is named after him) and eventually, in 1945, the first president of Division 14 of the APA, which is the section of APA devoted to I/O psychology. While at Carnegie Tech, he was approached by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company with a problem: The company could not distinguish very well between new employees who should be directed toward careers in sales engineering and those who were better suited to design engineering (Gilmer, 1981). Moore and others worked on this problem, discovering that these employees were best differentiated on the basis of items that reflected their interests. This early work by Moore was expanded in later years by Edward Strong (and eventually David Campbell) in what became the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Men (Strong, 1927). In high school, I took a version of this inventory that told me my interests matched up with the interests of those who like to work with people and that teaching might be a good profession for me! And I’m sure that many of you have taken what is now called the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS, n.d.), which guidance departments commonly administer to high school and college students in an attempt to help students identify what careers they might find stimulating. Frederick Taylor’s approach to work motivation, called Scientific Management, became popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s (see Chapter 14 for more discussion of this work). Taylor argued that employees should be rewarded financially for using the best approach to their work and doing their work most effectively. Lillian and Frank Gilbreth built on some of these ideas but with much greater focus on the workers’ well-being, which they believed was ignored by Scientific Management. A CLOSER LOOK Testing for selection and classification was an important part of what psychologists did for the military during World War I and World War II. How might knowing the intelligence of military personnel help military leaders make job placement decisions? Lillian Gilbreth received her PhD in psychology (not applied psychology) from Brown University; her dissertation was published as a book, The Psychology of Management, in 1914 (Gilbreth, 1914). She was often called the first lady of management and the mother of Scientific Management (Vinchur & Koppes, 2007). Interestingly, she was also the inventor responsible for refrigerator door shelves and the foot-pedal trashcan. The book Cheaper by the Dozen (later made into a series of movies) was written by two of her children about their experiences growing up as 2 of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s 12 children. It’s interesting to note that women played an influential role in the development of I/O psychology during this time but that they did so through their roles in industry rather than academia (Koppes, 1997). Along with Lillian Gilbreth, women like Marion Bills and Elsie Bregman made huge contributions to the field through their work at Aetna Life Insurance and The Psychological Corporation, respectively. Koppes suggests that traditional academic positions were limited for these women because academic psychology departments were male-dominated and that industry provided much better opportunities. The 1930s to Pre–World War II The defining event of the next historical phase of I/O psychology was a series of experiments collectively referred to as the Hawthorne Studies. This period in our history, of course, was marked by the Great Depression, during which unemployment rose to all-time highs and growth in the economy was nonexistent. As a result of these historical trends, our culture became focused less on employee testing and training and more on the human condition (Austin & Davies, 2000). The Hawthorne Studies were a series of experiments, some of which examined the impact of illumination on productivity (see Table 1.4), that were conducted at the Western Electric plant in Hawthorne, Illinois. These experiments highlighted the importance of social relations and employee attitudes, among other things. The remarkable part of the story is that, after observing employees’ behaviors, researchers realized that the social and psychological conditions of work were often more important than the physical conditions, such as the amount of illumination (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). One of the interesting findings was that employees reacted positively to being paid attention to—someone taking an interest in them resulted in positive behavior change. We need to keep in mind that, to this point, the history of I/O had read more like the history of “I” alone! In other words, it wasn’t until the Hawthorne Studies that team development, supervision, group process, worker morale, and other organizational phenomena played much of a role in the I/O field. As Haller Gilmer (1981), one of the early I/O psychologists, noted in his later years, “Thinking about industrial-psychology problems changed. Simple answers to simple problems were not enough. Questions about motivation, leadership, supervision, and human relations began to emerge” (p. 13). Many view this time period, and the Hawthorne Studies in particular, as marking the birth of organizational psychology. TABLE 1.4 Hawthorne Illumination Study Description Manipulation Expectation Results Test group experienced three different intensities (24-, 46-, and 70-foot candles), whereas control group experienced no change in light intensity. Test group would show increased productivity, whereas control group’s productivity would remain unchanged. Test group’s productivity increased, but control group’s productivity increased by about as much. Test group’s lighting was decreased from 10- to 3-foot candles, whereas control group’s lighting did not change at all. Test group would show a decrease in productivity, whereas control group’s productivity would remain unchanged. Test group’s productivity still increased, as did control group’s productivity. Workers were led to believe that the lighting was being increased, but in fact it was still the same intensity. Original expectation was that there would be no effect; but if expectations were really important, then they might affect productivity or other variables. Productivity remained the same, but workers reported favorable reactions to the increase in lighting. (Lighting, of course, did not increase.) Workers were led to believe that the lighting was being decreased, but in fact it was still the same intensity. Original expectation was that there would be no effect; but if expectations were really important, then they might affect productivity or other variables. Productivity remained the same, but workers reported unfavorable reactions to the decrease in lighting. (Lighting, of course, did not decrease.) Experiment 1 Test group would work under different light intensities, whereas control group would work under constant light. Experiment 2 Test group would work under less intense light, whereas control group would work under same light intensity. Experiment 3 Workers’ lighting expectations were the focus of this study. Experiment 4 Workers’ lighting expectations were the focus of this study. World War II to the Mid-1960s Like the previous war, World War II was an important and dynamic time for the development of I/O psychology. Bingham, Scott, and Yerkes were brought back to the military to help match recruits to jobs. Selection, placement, evaluation, and appraisal all largely began during the World War I years, whereas World War II saw a great refinement in terms of the knowledge base and how best to apply the existing knowledge to specific situations. Organizational psychology became a more equal partner with industrial psychology and began to emphasize such areas as organizational dynamics, work groups, and employee morale. Whereas much of the military work initiated during World War I was shut down after that war, World War II work continued as the armed services created centers of research such as the Army Research Institute (ARI) and the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory (AFHRL), where studies are conducted to this day. During the 1950s, many companies, including AT&T, General Electric, Metropolitan Life, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, also established large research groups to do I/O work (Dunnette, 1962). The number and diversity of universities training students in I/O psychology increased during the same period. New programs were developed at the University of Maryland, Michigan State University, and George Washington University. In addition, several university-based programs were developed that emphasized organizational issues (as opposed to industrial ones), such as the Research Center for Group Dynamics established by Kurt Lewin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Katzell & Austin, 1992). Lewin, chiefly considered a social psychologist, was instrumental in developing theory and methodology in the area of work groups and leadership. His early work still influences modern I/O psychology through its impact on more recent motivational theories such as goal setting and expectancy theory (we’ll consider these in Chapter 9). Finally, personnel counseling developed during this time as an outgrowth of the Hawthorne Studies. The focus here was on helping employees deal with personal problems that had the potential to affect their work performance (Highhouse, 1999). The Mid-1960s to the Mid-1980s One strong indication of the increasing role of organizational psychology was the fact that, in 1970, Division 14 of the APA changed its name from “the Division of Business and Industrial Psychology” to “the Division of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.” Organizational psychology had truly arrived. On the industrial side, this period saw a great deal of work on selection and performance appraisal. These continue to be two of the largest and most researched topic areas in I/O psychology. One major theme at the time was a concern with ethnic and racial differences on selection tests and the fairness of those tests. This interest emerged as a result of the social, political, and legal climate of the 1960s. As you know, the civil rights movement defined this period; it was a time of great racial tension. Issues of discrimination and fairness permeated society and the workplace. I/O psychology began addressing these issues as well. In Chapter 7, we will discuss Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the legal framework for much of this work. Organizational topics of interest during this period included work motivation, job attitudes, and job characteristics. As we will note in Chapter 9, more than a few of the most popular theories of motivation—including goal setting and expectancy theory—came of age during this period. Indeed, Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham’s work on the motivating potential of jobs as a result of their characteristics is among the most cited work in the history of I/O psychology (Sackett, 1994). Similarly, much of the work on job attitudes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment (see Chapter 10), was conducted during this time. These two decades were a time of tremendous growth in I/O psychology. New doctoral training programs emerged at such places as Bowling Green State University (1966), North Carolina State University (1966), and the University of Akron (1965). In 1960, there were about 756 members of Division 14; by 1980 they totaled 2,005 (Katzell & Austin, 1992). The Mid-1980s to 2000 The field of I/O psychology grew very rapidly toward the end of the 20th century, with more work being done in traditional areas such as selection, performance appraisal, motivation, and leadership, as well as in new domains. For instance, issues of diversity and inclusion as manifested in a focus on the fairness of employment tests—reflecting the legal climate of personnel and labor law—became an even greater focus among I/O psychologists, as demonstrated by the increased frequency of I/O psychologists serving as expert witnesses in discrimination cases. Cognitive processes, too, became the focus of much research in the I/O area, reflecting the emergence of this cognitive framework in all aspects of psychology. In earlier sections, I highlighted the development of some of the early I/O programs, beginning with Carnegie Tech. The 1980s and 1990s saw a dramatic increase in the number of master’s and doctoral programs in I/O psychology or closely allied fields. Rogelberg and Gill (2004) note that, between 1986 and 2004, there was an increase in I/O doctoral programs of almost 50% and that master’s programs increased by over 200%. 2000 to Today The growth continues today, with over 220 programs offering graduate degrees in I/O psychology or closely allied fields and 1,200 new I/O PhDs since 2000 (J. Tegge, personal communication, February 9, 2016). There are more than 1,200 professors of I/O psychology today in both psychology departments and business schools around the globe (Silzer & Parson, 2015). A recent article on the SIOP website presents some recent trends in I/O psychology research and practice (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2015). I’d like to highlight just a few of those to give a feel for what’s been happening in the field over the past 10 or 15 years; see Table 1.5 for the complete list. First on SIOP’s list is globalization and the virtual workforce—two related issues that will come up throughout the rest of the book. Competition among companies is no longer local or interstate, but is increasingly intercountry. As a signal of the importance of globalization, the companies identified in Fortune’s Global 500 (their list of the world’s largest companies) combined to employ over 65 million people worldwide in 2014 (that’s more than the entire population of France). (See Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, for a great overview of globalization in the workplace). The globalization of business has been aided by the emergence of the virtual workplace, which is projected to comprise 1.3 billion people in the next few years. Research has identified three waves of virtual work: (1) virtual freelancers who don’t work for a single company, but instead work remotely and provide services to various companies, (2) virtual corporate colleagues who appreciate the collegiality of a stable work group and benefit from companies that also value those connections, and (3) virtual coworkers who take advantage of technology and the virtual work environment, but also connect physically to coworkers through urban hubs or other meeting places (Johns & Gratton, 2013). Virtual work has been the focus of a good bit of research in the last 10 years, such as the recent work of Hoch and Kozlowski (2014) on leading virtual teams, which highlighted both similarities and differences that result from this new approach to work. TABLE 1.5 Top 10 Trends in I/O Psychology 1. Globalization and the Virtual Workplace 2. Internet-Based Recruitment and Selection 3. Defining Limits for Online Searches of Personal Information 4. Innovation 5. Technology-Enabled Training 6. Heavy Focus on Developing Top Employees 7. Increased Coaching in the Workplace 8. Proactive Approaches to Improve Employee Health 9. Facilitating Work-Life Merge 10. More Tweeting, Blogging, and Electronic Platforms Source: Information from Harris & Hollman. (n.d.). Tip-topics: The top trends in I-O psychology: A graduate student perspective. Retrieved on February 27, 2016, from http://www.siop.org/tip/Apr13/19_TipTopics.aspx. We also recognize the growing importance of innovation and creativity within companies to help them stay competitive and to improve the lives of workers and their families across the globe. In a review of this dynamic research area (2002 to 2013) the authors concluded that creativity research has largely focused on idea generation whereas innovation research has targeted idea implementation (Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014). This outstanding review of the literature breaks creative work down by individual factors such as the importance of traits in creativity and innovation, as well as the task and social contexts in which employees live and work. Finally, I will combine two of the top trends from the SIOP list into one: coaching and development of top employees. Employee development has been a consistent theme of the last 15 years as employers have realized the importance of training, developing, and preparing their high-potential employees so that they are ready to step into the next position that needs to be filled. Succession planning, as this process is called, now routinely involves coaching employees who are on the fast track to get them ready for their next promotion. Research suggests that it’s imperative that the strategic initiatives necessary to create a talent management system include the linking of selection, development, performance management, and succession/career management. Some suggestions for making this work include the creation of a special learning and development track for high potentials; the rotation of employees across functions, divisions, and geographical locations; the development of technology-based learning; and the implementation of coaching/mentoring programs (Fulmer, Stumpf, & Bleak, 2009). Historians estimate that, in 1939, there were fewer than 100 I/O psychologists in the world (Katzell & Austin, 1992). That estimate grew to 760 by 1960. In 1992, there were about 2,500 members of SIOP and probably a few hundred more I/O psychologists who weren’t members, totaling around 3,000 I/O psychologists. The most recent SIOP data indicate that it has about 4,500 professional members and 3,500 student members (J. Tegge, personal communication, February 9, 2016). WHERE DOES I/O PSYCHOLOGY GO FROM HERE? Although the history of I/O psychology presented here seems to reflect a great deal of change over the past century, it is fair to say that this change is just the tip of the iceberg. The 21st century promises to be fast, competitive, and turbulent. Dramatic changes are taking place in the world of work. As American society and the American workplace continue to change, the field of I/O psychology will have potentially more to offer. A content analysis of over 200 dissertations in I/O psychology between 2003 and 2013 confirmed that the traditional areas of interest continue to dominate academic research, but it also revealed some exciting new areas of study including teamwork, counterproductive behaviors, employee well-being, and work–family issues (Piotrowski, 2014). Of course, this movement is in part a function of researcher interest, but it is also a result of practitioner focus and researchers attempting to answer questions posed by today’s organizational leaders. SIOP recently conducted an annual survey of top 10 workplace trends (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2015). The survey asked over 700 SIOP members to identify and rank the top trends or needs that businesses will face in 2016 and beyond; the top 10 trends are presented in Table 1.6. I will highlight a few that I expect will be addressed by the field through empirical research, theoretical development, and application of knowledge going forward. Big Data, #1 on SIOP’s list, has become a huge focus in organizations, universities, hospitals, and so on. The term big data is often used to represent predictive analytics, which is the use of large current and historical data sets to predict future probabilities and outcomes. A great deal of work in recent years has focused on the development of techniques to better use the large data sets that are available to us to improve our understanding of workplace practices and to help us plan and execute new initiatives. Companies have moved toward the use of big data and analytics to make better-informed business decisions. Universities are using analytics to identify courses and other variables that are especially predictive of success. In the years to come, I/O psychologists will be equipped with both the analytics/statistical training and the training in organizational science that will make them particularly competent for this work. (We will look more closely at big data, and some ethical issues around it, when we explore research methods in the next chapter.) Another trend that emerged from the SIOP survey is continued work to revolutionize performance appraisals by using frequent feedback delivered to employees from a variety of sources and by giving employees a larger role in their own evaluations. There has been a great deal of recent controversy in this area: Most practitioners and researchers agree that performance appraisals serve a variety of valuable purposes, but many organizations are finding that the traditional systems don’t work as well as they should and both supervisors and subordinates are often displeased with them. Managing performance is critical to organizations, and I expect that we will continue to see research that explores procedures and techniques with the potential to manage performance better. (Chapter 5 is devoted to issues in performance appraisal, including discussion of recent techniques.) TABLE 1.6 SIOP’s Top 10 Workplace Trends for 2016 1. Leveraging of big data and analytics when making business decisions 2. Increasing reliance on technology and automation 3. Management of virtual teams 4. Changing approach to performance management to foster employee development rather than competition 5. Encouraging employee engagement 6. Focusing on the mental and physical health and well-being of employees 7. Focusing on agility and flexibility to meet rapidly changing market and customer demands 8. Balancing of work-life issues across generations 9. Emphasizing building a workforce that values diversity 10. Using social media in selection and other employment-related decisions Source: Information from Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2015). The use of social media is another trend that many respondents feel will be influential in the near future. We are just starting to see I/O research in this area, as organizations are increasingly using sites like Facebook and LinkedIn for recruiting and screening of applicants, as well as monitoring and potentially firing employees for behaviors captured on these sites. SIOP believes that I/O psychologists can play a role by helping organizations balance the risks and benefits of the use of social media, and navigate the ethical and legal issues that have already begun to emerge. Research in this area will only grow as the use of social media continues to explode on both the social and organizational scenes. (We’ll discuss developments in the use of social media throughout the text, particularly in the discussion of selection decisions in Chapter 7.) A CLOSER LOOK What challenges do I/O psychologists face in helping companies that are going through downsizing? I will close this discussion with some other themes that have begun to emerge in the last few years and are likely to continue drawing the attention of scholars and practitioners alike in the years to come. First, whereas war defined the geopolitical scene of the 20th century, economics will be the defining issue of the 21st century. We discussed globalization of the workforce as one of the major hallmarks for the new century, but global competition is another aspect of this trend that will continue to be a major focus in the future. Workers and firms in the United States can no longer expect to freely and easily make a profit. Global competition will continue to require us to have a skilled, well-trained, and competent workforce to compare favorably with the many, many countries that are now our competitors. Furthermore, mergers and acquisitions will continue to force companies to bridge cultures as American companies such as Dell, Goodyear, and General Electric operate facilities in many different geopolitical settings. How to merge a production facility in Latin America with a parent company in North America is a complex issue. The collective knowledge of the field of I/O psychology has the potential to help in this transition. (This issue factors heavily into our discussion of training methods in Chapter 8.) Second, new technology has transformed the workplace, as we’ve discussed, but it has also decreased the number of traditional jobs for workers and organizations. At the same time, downsizing occurred at an alarming rate in the wake of the 2008 recession, and though the U.S. economy has continued to add jobs at a steady rate in the last few years, many individuals are still struggling with unemployment and underemployment. We have empathy, and rightfully so, for those who are laid off due to organizational cutbacks; but the rest of the story is that when these individuals are fortunate enough to be reemployed, it is often at a lower wage rate (Cascio, 1995). Further, many of those laid off were approaching retirement age but were not quite there yet. A recent review of the literature has found that age is negatively correlated with speed of reemployment (Wanberg, Kanfer, Hamann, & Zhang, 2015). In other words, older employees who have lost their jobs struggle finding reemployment, and the process, when they do find other employment, takes considerably longer. Companies are always looking to be more competitive, more efficient, and leaner, but the result of massive layoffs is that fewer employees are left to do the work that needs to be done, often being asked to do more for less. I/O psychology is thus important for (1) helping laid-off workers become competitive for other jobs and (2) helping those left behind handle more diverse jobs and sometimes a heavier workload. (We’ll revisit these concepts and others related to workplace stress in Chapter 11.) Third, companies will continue to address the needs of the workforce that is diverse in terms of race, gender, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. This diversity requires much more coordination and sensitivity to “differences” on the part of management and employees. An additional complication is that our workforce is diverse in terms of thoughts, expectations, and culture as well. In fact, some argue that generations develop their own unique cultures such that traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials differ significantly in terms of values that develop because of their experiences of different historical events (Doverspike & O’Malley, 2006). Organizations have to recognize and consider how organizational policies and procedures impact these different generations as well as help to ensure reasonable levels of communication between members of these different generations. Education and training regarding diversity among workers have become very important areas for I/O psychologists and will continue to grow in importance in the 21st century. (Legal and ethical issues around diversity and discrimination touch nearly every major topic in this text, including our discussions of selection, performance appraisal, training, teamwork, and leadership.) Fourth, we already considered issues around virtual work, which became much more prevalent in organizations during the 2000s, but the influx and development of technology goes well beyond virtuality and social media. One area that promises to be a real focal point is the role that technology will play in employee selection. The selection process will be more streamlined and make better use of technology in the future. We are already seeing some companies begin to automate the collection/review of resumes, assessments, and interviews. For instance, my son recently completed a virtual interview for an internship with a large Fortune 500 company; he logged in on his computer and was given a question prompt with three minutes to prepare an answer; his response was recorded and then uploaded for the interviewer to view. Other companies have begun using kiosks located at public places, like shopping malls, where applicants can simply log in to access application materials. Some companies are also doing