The Field of Organizational Psychology - Essay Example

Final Summary The Field of Organizational Psychology Aamodt defines the organizational psychology as a branch of psychology that makes use of the principles of psychology to the workplace. Organizational psychology enhances the performance of human beings at the workplace benefitting organizations themselves. The organizational psychology focuses on the factors that affect the people directly. This is in stark contrast to the other aspects of running an organization such as finance, marketing, accounting or channel networking, costing. Organizational psychology employs quantitative methods, research, and testing techniques for the solutions. That is why Organizational psychologists are trained in using statistics and empirical data instead taking and judgmental decisions. Organizational psychologists do not design any therapy for workers as done by clinical psychologists. In stricter sense, they are not counselors as some psychologists help organization and its employees in the matter of drug or alcohol abuse. They are differentiated from other branches of psychology by virtue of their reliance on scientist-practitioner model. Organizational psychologists work as scientist-practitioners by applying their research findings so as to enhance the organizational effectiveness working directly on people. Organizational psychology is constantly gaining popularity because they are found to exert a positive impact on the lives of people. The reason being people spend one-third of their time in their job every day. Happiness on the job is of paramount importance to the people as it will have a residual effect on other aspects including family and leisure life (Aamodt, 2012). Effective Organizational Performance Effective Organizational Performance is a key to success and extremely important in this highly competitive arena. Right Management (2010) suggests several measures to achieve organizational effectiveness. They are described as strategy, leadership, people systems and processes, culture and values, structure and capability, employee engagement and customer experience. Strategy summarizes the work of the organization in terms of the role, purpose and strategic direction. Leadership is important because effective leadership has capacity to convert any business into success. Proper systems and processes create consistency and trust by making well-informed decisions across all the section of business. Cultures and values align all the employees of the organization to a common business strategy making the work process smooth and devoid of any conflict. Right structure and the work assigned as per the capability of the people and making them accountable is a part of achieving organization effectiveness. Employee engagement to their jobs and organization is essential for their job satisfaction and satisfied employees are more committed to their organization. High level of customer satisfaction is a last measure of organizational performance in terms of their effectiveness. According to the Right Management, it is necessary to achieve excellence across all above mentioned elements to achieve competitive strength in the business. Sustainable organizational effectiveness cannot be achieved by focusing only on few of them as all of them are interlinked for smooth and effective performance of the organization (Right Management, 2010). Motivation Gormon (2007) describes motivation as a desire to perform something. The desire is so strong that it propels one to act on it. A deep intense feeling of achieving something that directs one to have position, health, wealth or possession by some action that one needs to take in order to achieve it. Motivation is so strong a desire that it forces one to act to achieve it. When the feeling is not strong enough to make someone act, it can simply be called a want or need. Wants and needs are not motivation. Most of the people have wants and needs but it is only few who really take action to fulfill their needs or wants. Motivation can be broken into several parts such as action, feeling, decision, and result. Motivation causes action but it is preceded by feeling. Thus, a strong desire is a feeling that leads one to action. There are two barriers– External and Internal to motivation. External Barriers can be defined as physical realities such as illness, scarcity, death or any other natural limitations that imposes constraints to achieve what we desire. External barriers offer grave challenges but they can be overcome by applying skill, technology, time, knowledge and effort. Internal Barriers are within us in our mind that restricts us to use our ability to continue with our motivation. In fact, we have more control over internal barriers than external barriers. Internal barriers are mostly our mindsets toward our goals such as fear, belief system, behaviors, and thoughts. Behaviors and belief system hamper our motivation and one need to overcome them before one is set for a strong motivation to achieve something (Gormon, 2007). Group/Team Effectiveness The measures of group effectiveness are based on several criteria such as output, goal-achievement, efficiency, organizational growth, control over the environment and many more. The opinions about team effectiveness can be summarized as per the following. Working atmosphere is such that all the activities take place in an atmosphere where ideas, criticisms or suggestions are received and offered in a respectful way. Members of the team are committed to their work and exude high level of confidence and trust. Individual needs are not only acknowledged but even differences are accepted. Roles are well-defined and they strike a balance between productivity and relationship-building. Group goals are structured cooperatively instead competitively. Goals are formulated such that members can commit and achieve them. Team members are fully committed to the task and work toward achieving team goals building smooth relationships with the other members of the team and with other groups. Innovation, creativity, self-development are not only valued highly but encouraged. Communication among the members is open and two-way. Members express their opinions and thoughts freely without any fear of punishment. The leader of the group is competent and never tries to dominate. The leader is also sensitive to the needs of the other team members. How best to achieve the task is a primary focus rather than undue efforts on the control. Conflict is viewed as a necessity to achieve teams mission and members are comfortable with disagreement and resolve the conflict through negotiation. Decision-making is done through consensus with all members sharing the process (Tyson, 1998). Change The change or for that matter planned change is to aim at organizational development. The change process involves implementing the sequence of activities, processes to effect organizational improvements. Organizational change is a much wider concept than organizational development. Organizational Change deals with any kind of change such as managerial or technical innovations or the evolution of a system over time. The behavioral sciences help organizations to manage the change process using concepts and methods to adapt with changing environments, globalization, technological innovation or restructuring. The planned change can solve the problems arising due to change in the external environment. The planned change is to improve performance of the organization, to reframe shared perceptions, to learn from experience and even to influence future changes. There are three major theories of organization change. They are called the action research model, Lewins change model, and the positive model. Lewins change model speaks about modification of a particular set of behaviors. He viewed change process in the three steps beginning with unfreezing, moving and then refreezing. Lewins model offers a general framework for organizational change. The action research model aims at planned change by using information gained through initial research to carry out subsequent action. The results of the action are evaluated to gain further information for subsequent action. The action research model put great emphasis on data mining and diagnosis to plan for further action. The positive model concentrates on positive dynamics in organization effecting extraordinary results (Cummings & Worley, 2008). References Aamodt, M. (2012), Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, CA Cummings, T.; Worley, C. (2008), Organizational Development & Change, South-Western Cengage Learning, OH Gormon, T. (2007), Motivation, Adams business, Avon, MA Right Management (2010), http://www.right.com/thought-leadership/research/organizational-effectiveness-discovering-how-to-make-it-happen.pdf Tyson, T. (1998), working with Groups, Macmillan Education, 2nd edition, South Yarra Read More