After reading Chapters one and two, I have learned that organizational psychology is the scientific study of group and individual behavior in formal organizational settings. Psychology has had an extremely large impact on individual and organizational groups. Organizational psychology is the study of workplace behavior among its employees. Organizational psychologist work in business positions dealing with employee training and worker productivity and human resources. Organizational psychology uses scientifically –based psychological principles and research methods to study many topics that are important for organizations to understand human behavior in different types of organizational settings. This is crucial to individual and organization performance and has a major impact on the quality of people’s livelihood.
To further explain, nowadays before a perspective individual is selected for employment, there are a lot of characteristic job descriptions and organizational policies that are researched by the human resources department within their organizations policies and procedures. In association with the application process perspective employees are asked many psychological assessment questions in order for the organizational psychologist to determine the right fit for the organizations need of service for a designated area within the organization that needs an addition of employment to succeed.
Employers want to know if the applicant is willing to take orders from upper management, for example, if your manager asked you to do something that you do not understand or you do not agree with would you still be willing to complete what is requested of you, or would you refuse to do what you are told? This is an example of one psychological question that it used to find out if this is the right fit for the organizations needs. Another example is asking perspective applicants’ If you were at work and your supervisor asked you to perform a duty that you know in your conscience that what is being asked of you is illegal, how would you handle the situation of the request from your supervisor, would you do it even though it is illegal or would you refuse to complete the illegal request. Personality is also measured by using developed psychological aspect questions, employers may what to know how you see yourself, and Employers ask applicants what other co-workers think about their work or how you rate your own work in comparison to other employees, can you handle stress and so on.
As the text book stated, Many organizations also have a more general set of values that they want employees to abide by. Thus, an organization cannot exist when people just do their own thing, without any awareness of the behavior of others. (Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Brett (2008). Organizational Psychology. A Scientific-Practitioner Approach, Second Edition: Chapter One). Katz and Kahn defined the characteristic of organizations patterned behavior. The world is made up of many organizations, for example, a group of friends who enjoy playing dominoes to a corporation. To determine formal an informal organizations we need to have an understanding on what they mean. A formal organization exists to for fill some formulated purpose. This purpose is usually clearly stated in writing, for example a mission statement that most businesses and industries have. An informal organizations purpose is less formulated than a formal organization, for example, friends who enjoy playing dominoes, the organization will fail when they lose a member from disinterest, or any other reason. Formal organization is the study of which the field of organizational psychology is centered on. When employers want their business or non-profit organization to be successful, they setup their mission (purpose) in writing and ensure that all employees and perspective employees are keeping it in focus, many evaluations are done periodically to
