Lecture 22- Organizational Psychology

Question 1

What is organizational psychology also sometimes referred to as?

Answer 1

Industrial psychology (terms are interchangeable)

Question 2

What is organizational psychology generally? What is it sometimes confused with?

Answer 2

• Involves work processes but more from a people perspective
• Often confused with human factors which focuses on the ergonomics/ tools side of a work place environment
• Note: There is a decent amount of overlap though

Question 3

What program is more common organizational or human factors psychology?

Answer 3

Organizational

Question 4

What are some current and future problems of the organizational psychology field?

Answer 4

• Aging work force
• More remote working
• Increasing participation by historically disadvantaged groups
• Changing job types
• Increasing work loads
• Internationalism

Question 5

What are work teams?

Answer 5

At least 2 interdependent individuals who are collectively in charge of the achievement of one or several tasks

Question 6

What are the six types of work teams?

Answer 6

project, service, action/ performance, production, management, parallel

Question 7

What is the difference between taskwork and teamwork?

Answer 7

Taskwork= Contribute to task completion. Relate to technical aspects (interact with tools). Do not necessarily need a team to occur.

Teamwork= An individual cannot exhibit teamwork behaviours. Involve interactions/ communication in order to achieve a common goal.

Question 8

What is the difference between taskwork and teamwork?

Answer 8

Taskwork= Contribute to task completion. Relate to technical aspects (interact with tools). Do not necessarily need a team to occur.

Teamwork= An individual cannot exhibit teamwork behaviours. Involve interactions/ communication in order to achieve a common goal.

Exists in a two by two matrix. Teams can be high on both or low on both or low on one and high on the other.

Question 9

What is the IPO model of teamwork?

Answer 9

Teamwork occurs in 3 stages=
-Input is the persisting conditions that occur before the work starts

-Processes are the behavioral, cognitive and affective phenomena
that allow transition from input to output

-Output is the valued results of the team activity (can include byproducts)

Question 10

If effective team work results in an affective state like happiness then what is this considered?

Answer 10

Happiness is considered an input not an output even though it has resulted from the teamwork because it would have effected the teamwork process the whole way along

Question 11

What are the 3 types of processes and the cycle that occurs between them?

Answer 11

• Transition= Planning, evaluating, adjusting strategies
• Action= Goal directed activity. Vary according to the context.
• Interpersonal= Focus on the management of relationships. Happen throughout transition and action stages.

Question 12

Describe the Rhythm of team task accomplishment…. How does it vary according to the task?

Answer 12

• Transition, action routine doesn’t refer to the overall cycle of the team but to specific subtasks within it
• There is a cycle of transition states and actions
• The temporal rhythm can vary according to the task (i.e. varying lengths of cycles)

Question 13

What are the 3 dimensions of the transition process?

Answer 13

• Mission analysis
• Goal Specification
• Strategy formation

Question 14

What are the two types of mission analysis? Which one is more important?

Answer 14

• There is forward= planning, looking to the future
• And backwards= reflecting, evaluating the past

Forwards is objectively more important because you can’t do backwards if you haven’t done forwards effectively. Also if forwards goes well there might not even be a need for reflection.

Question 15

What does goal specification involve?

Answer 15

• Deciding which goals to prioritize if there is multiple
• The goals that are chosen to be the focus should be ones that align with the overall mission and should be doable but provide just enough challenge to be interesting
• They should also capture everyone in the team in order to foster a sense of team purpose/ engagement

Question 16

What are the three types of planning?

Answer 16

• Deliberate (Plan A= the ideal)
• Contingency (Plan B= activate if plan A fails)
• Reactive strategy adjustment: things go pear shape and adjust

Question 17

What are the four types of action processes?

Answer 17

• Monitoring progress toward goals
• Systems monitoring
• Team monitoring and backup behaviour
• Coordination

Question 18

When is systems monitoring particularly important?

Answer 18

When the system is changing or dynamic need to monitor internal + external resources as well as the environment

Question 19

In coordination what information is important to share with team members and what isn’t?

Answer 19

Important to share novel information. Not so important to share not novel information.

Question 20

What are the 3 interpersonal processes?

Answer 20

• Conflict management
• Motivation and confidence building
• Affect management

Question 21

What are the two types of conflict management?

Answer 21

• Resolving disagreements that have already happened

- Pre-emptive conflict management e.g. workshop that encourage collaboration as opposed to competition

Question 22

What is an example of affect management for teams?

Answer 22

Team building to boost moral. Can back fire though if not planned well.

Question 23

In order for teamwork to be a success what are the two things you have to manage?

Answer 23

• Regulation of team performance (managing the task work)

- Management of team maintenance (people + ensuring they feel okay emotionally)

Question 24

What some direct benefits of working remotely?

Answer 24

People don’t need to travel: same time, reduce congestions

Company saves money: physical environment doesn’t need as much facilities

Question 25

What are some indirect benefits of working remotely?

Answer 25

Decrease absences

Reduce chances of getting diseases

Reduced emictions and environmental damage

Reduce real-estate cost: don’t have to concentrate things in certain areas

Increase accessibility for those that might not otherwise be able to access work places (disabilities)= reduce unemployment in those people

Include people living in remote areas: avoid need to employ from overseas

Question 26

What are some factors positively correlated with working remotely? In what population was this found? What do we need to be aware of?

Answer 26

• Traditionally (pre-pandemic) remote work associated with high economic status, increased autonomy, increased relationship with supervisor, decreased conflict between work + family life = lead to increased job performance, increased satisfaction, decreased stress, lower need to go to other jobs
• But correlation doesn’t equal causation. Workers chose it so more likely to like it and individual factors of those individuals may have been confounding. For example, an employee was unlikely to approve someone to work at home that couldn’t be trusted.

Question 27

What are negative factors associated with working remotely?

Answer 27

Feeling socially isolated, lack of opportunities for advancement (by-product of lack of interaction: feeling less connection)

Question 28

What are some barriers and ethical concerns surrounding remote work?

Answer 28

Barriers= own their own computers, employees have to essentially provide the equipment at personal cost

Ethical= privacy issues if you are required to install software that tracks what you are doing especially on personal devices

Question 29

Why is research conducted on remote working in the times of covid particularly confound heavy?

Answer 29

• Most people were not prepared + trained (it was a sudden situation that would not have been handled the way it was if implemented with a plan)
• Also there were lots of other stressors during covid (confounds)

Question 30

What is zoom fatigue when is it particularly prevalent (described in the context of a study in the lecture)?

Answer 30

• Participants were randomly assigned to have camera on or off
• Variables accounted for were gender, tenure and time spent in zoom meetings
• Had greater fatigue when cameras on and this in turn had effect on engagement
• Larger effect for women and newer employees
• Possible reason for this: psychologically upsetting if don’t like the way you look.
• Solution could be to hide yourself view or use a digital avatar: can still communicate through gestures +expressions but avoids feeling self conscious

Question 31

How does virtual and in person brainstorming compare?

Answer 31

-In person= more creative ideas and more ideas
-Meeting modality didn’t effect communication: liking, trust the same although
virtually didn’t swap speakers as much
-Key difference in movements: when in person an individual looks around more taking in more of the world around them.
-They can therefore come up with more creative ideas (better for work places that value this)

Question 32

What are the two key assumptions that underpin personnel selection procedures?

Answer 32

People are not equally suited to all jobs due to individual differences in aptitudes, skills and other personal qualities.

Future job performance is predictable and can be estimated using selection and assessment procedures.

Question 33

What stages are involved in selecting personnel for a job? What is involved at each stage?

Answer 33

Most selection processes require candidates to go through a number of stages before selection decisions are made. There is typically first a selecting out phase, where candidates who do not meet essential criteria ( e.g. academic qualifications or experience) are filtered out of the process. The subsequent stage(s) then select in to the organization using the chosen selection methods.

Through job analysis of the tasks involved and the particular characteristics of successful involves required to inform the selection process (acts as foundation/ base to make decision)

Then need to identify selection instruments (I.e. testing, work stimulation tasks, interviews, application forms). These tasks need to be well designed so that they dive an accurate measure of suitability for the role otherwise what is the point in them?

Question 34

Define and give examples of the different types of validity – which is most useful/important in personnel selection?

Answer 34

Criterion-related validity: this is the strength of the relationship between the predictor ( e.g. psychological test scores or interview ratings) and the criterion (e.g. subsequent work behavior). Ideal way to collect criterion-related validity data is to use a predictive (or follow-up) design.

Faith validity: Sometimes organizations might believe that a selection method is valid because a reputable company sells it, and it is packaged in a very expensive-looking way

Face validity A selection test or procedure displays face validity if it ‘looks right’. For example, requiring an applicant for a carpenter’s job to make a T-joint from two pieces of wood would show face validity. One key advantage of face validity is the positive impact it has upon user acceptability: candidates are less likely to feel unfairly treated and challenge the outcomes of selection processes if they believe that the selection process looks relevant to the job role.

Content validity is established on a logical basis rather than by calculating validity coefficients or following other technical statistical procedures. A predictor shows content validity when it covers a representative sample of the behaviour domain being measured. For example, a content-valid test of car-driving ability would be expected to cover all of the essential activities of a competent driver

Construct validity: This involves identifying the psychological characteristics (or constructs) such as intelligence, emotional stability or manual dexterity that underlie successful performance of the task (such as a test or performance on the job) in question. Since construct validity involves relationships between predictors and characteristics that are not directly observable (e.g. cognitive processes), it can be assessed only by indirect means.

Question 35

Define different types of reliability. Why is reliability important?

Answer 35

The extent to which it measures consistently under varying conditions= reliability (can we count on our personal selection methods?- free from selection errors). Test cannot be valid if it isn’t reliable.

Test-retest reliability= high correlation at time 1 and time 2

Parallel forms= where test developers might design two tests to be equivalent, including items of similar content and equal difficulty. Avoid practice effects. High reliability is characterized by a strong positive correlation between participant scores on both tests

Both test-retest and parallel= external forms of reliability as scores on the measure in question are compared with an external reference point

Internal reliability always concerns the extent to which different parts of the same measure produce results consistent with each other. In essence it is a measure of the extent to which questions designed to measure the same thing produce similar, consistent, results. The type of scale and its content determine the specific approach to assessing internal reliability