Organizational Psychology Paper - Essay Example

and companies then learn how to make the workplace more efficient by examining these principles. I/O psychology is a field of applied psychology that is meant to examine the dynamics of a person and the work environment. The field began slightly after World War I and was meant to be used as an assessment to analyze worker productivity, etc. Thus, organizational psychologists are prominent for using statistics and other research methods in analyzing aspects of the workplace such as, but not limited to: recruitment, motivation, personnel evaluations, etc.

Thus the work of I/O psychologists has become important in helping businesses and companies run. This is why I/O psychology is considered to be a majority of applied psychological field because it takes psychological principles such as personality, development, etc. and applies it to a business sociological perspective that takes into account the psychological factors in the workplace. There are two types of research that psychologists primarily use in order to conduct studies: qualitative and quantitative research.

Both types have different methods of gathering and analyzing the data with statistics that give different meanings. I/O psychologists use for a majority quantitative research in the form of inventories, assessments, etc., but also use qualitative data in order to create correlations, make predictions, etc. This is important because not only does it provide companies with feedback on efficiency and performance, but it also allows data to be gathered on a personal level and analyzed on employees of the industry.

Another extremely important type of statistical area that I/O psychologists employ is the use of psychometrics. This is the field that uses assessments that is able to take abstract constructs such as personality, traits, etc. and apply mathematical principles to these constructs so they can be analyzed through statistics. Psychometric testing not only includes the usage of inventories, surveys, etc., but also allows I/O psychologists to make and revise inventories that can be applied to specific sectors of the economy or specifically made to capture a certain aspect of an organization for study and analysis.

This makes it easier for psychologists to study multivariable situations by being able to control for certain aspects by using statistics and mathematics. The use of statistical research is also important in the application of business and the economy because they primarily use statistics to analyze marketing trends, etc. It also gives company managers and region heads non-biased results based on company and individual performance that otherwise might be skewed based on the worker-manager relationship.

Organizations have many of the components that are the same as businesses, companies, etc. that allow I/O psychology to go past the realm of economics. Organizations are large collections of people who personally identify with the organization and work together in order to accomplish tasks that are both mutual to the organization by also to the members that work in it. Thus, there are psychological aspects that can be applied to organizations when both leading and serving. As a result, I/O psychologists can use psychometrics and other psychological statistics in order to diagnose and explore conditions, which are inherent to that particular organization.

This information can be taken and applied to the