학술: 산업/조직심리학
Workplace Psychology: What Can We Do to Serve Both Workers and Managers?
By Park Hyung-in Park, Professor, Dept. of Psychology
The Chonnam Tribune will introduce recent research trends in different academic disciplines to promote CNU students to have knowledge and interests in various fields through this page. – Ed.
When people think of psychology, they usually think of reading others’ minds or matching a couple based on personality. While these are part of psychology, there is so much more to it. One branch of it is Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology.
I/O Psychology is an applied area of psychology. “Applied” means that basic principles and theories of psychology are applied with real world situations. In I/O Psychology, knowledge is applied to the workplace in order to improve human performance and the organizational environment. Industrial Psychology develops and manages human resources, whereas organizational psychology develops and changes groups and organizations in a broad level. Although there are distinctions between the two, they are closely related. Let me specify the two one by one.
Industrial psychology: Job Performance of Employees
Industrial psychology begins with job analysis. We analyze a job so that we can identify which knowledge, skills, and abilities would be required for a given job, for example, police. Based on KSAs such as knowledge of laws, communication skills, physical abilities, and so on, we set criteria for police officers and develop selection tests with appropriate cut-off scores. Once the tests are validated, we recruit people and administer the tests. After the selection is completed, we train people so that they can reliably perform their job in the most effective way possible.
Mission accomplished? Well, not quite. Even after each of the selected individuals is assigned to a division, we need to systematically assess their job performance in order to maintain their performance level. Developing a performance appraisal system and providing proper feedback are some other tasks of industrial psychologists. Furthermore, how to fire people without any hectic law suit is within the area of industrial psychology. In short, industrial psychologists work on the job performance of employees, using psychological science.
Organizational psychology: Work Environment of Employees
Now then, what’s the job for organizational psychologists? Is there anything left for them? Oh, yes. Organizational psychologists work for a better environment; making the members happy and satisfied. There are many topics that organizational psychology reaches out to; socialization, team building, leadership development, occupational health and safety, restructuring, change intervention, and organizational culture and climate, to name a few.
There are many rising topics in organizational psychology as well. With the importance of customer service these days, emotional labor of the employees (i.e., displaying positive emotions when you are actually angry at the customer) has also become a hot topic. Globalization has led organizations to become demographically diverse, which has stimulated research and practice for demographic diversity. Quality of work life matters in this century, so work-family balance and recovery from work has also become important.
Studies on Occupational Health Psychology
I got my doctorate degree in I/O psychology, and I can certainly work for both. However, my research area focuses more on organizational psychology. Within organizational psychology, I do not limit my specific interests, but I am currently conducting many studies on occupational health psychology. Let me explain two of them here. I have one manuscript that has been recently accepted to a journal. The study (Park, Jacob, Wagner, & Baiden, in press) meta-analytically (meta-analysis combines many studies out there to compute a grand average of effect sizes) examined the relationship between job control and burnout. There are three facets of burnout; emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (distancing oneself from others), and reduced personal accomplishment. We expected that job control would be differently related to the three facets, which was supported by our data. We also examined specific conditions that could change the relationship, such as occupational types, national culture, and types of measurement (Park et al., in press).
The second study (Park, Beehr, Han, & Grebner, 2012) was based on my dissertation. It examined if the mismatch between personal ability and job demands would explain psychological strain (depression and anxiety) of workers and if personality would change the relationship. For example, an optimistic person may develop less strain than a non-optimistic person when they perceive the same level of mismatch, because an optimist generally expects a good outcome. If we found some factors that can alleviate the detrimental relationship, we can take advantage of it, developing intervention programs targeting the factors. Therefore, we can help employees cope with stressful situations in their workplace.
As you can guess by now, I/O psychology is growing fast. According to O*Net data base (it is an online data base for information on various occupations within the United States), the median wages of I/O psychologists in the years of 2011 was $45.54 hourly and $94.72 annual. There were 2,000 I/O psychologists working somewhere, and the projected growth between 2010 and 2020 was “much faster than average,” expecting 1,500 job openings between 2010 and 2020 (O*Net Online, http://www.onetonline.org/ Retrieved on February 21st, 2013).
Although the above numbers were from America, I think it is just a matter of time for Korean organizations to employ many I/O psychologists. Grounded on our scientific methods and rigorous principles of psychology, I/O psychologists will bring positive energy into our workplace. Are you not attracted to I/O psychology yet?
References
Park, H. I., Jacob, A. C., Wagner, S. H., & Baiden, M. (in press). Job control and burnout: A meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model. Applied Psychology: An International Review.
Park, H. I., Beehr, T. A., Han, K., & Grebner, S. I. (2012). Demands-abilities fit and psychological strain: Moderating effects of personality. International Journal of Stress Management, 19, 1-33.
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