INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHLOGY:Hawthorne Effect

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Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

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

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

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.

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