Industrial organizational psychology concepts and applications

How To Succeed in the Business World

1. Overview of the Paper The continuous pursuit of becoming a more efficient, effective, and productive as individuals and collectively has been a long, rich, diverse and dynamic activity across history. Although the science and practice of Industrial/Organizational Psychology can be considered new when compared to other natural sciences, it still is one of the strongest drivers of organizational conflict and resolution. Taking a view to the development of Industrial/Organizational Psychology and its powerful impact upon the elements and measurement of job performance will assist the reader in achieving a higher level of appreciation for how the different cycles of interest in performance and work efficiency have shaped and continue to reshape the research and the application of new knowledge in this field. The changing nature of work along with globalizing economic scenarios challenges organizational psychologists to become balanced scholar- practitioners in order to continue expanding the field to meet the needs of people at work. It is the intent of this account to consider the contributing elements of organizational psychology. Therefore, the discussion hereafter will address such important areas as preparation for success, workplace communication, group and team orientation, leadership and personal balance. Each of these topics of discussion is central to understand that which promotes a positive workplace and provides the psychological conditions for productivity and success in the business world.

2. Preparing to Succeed Preparation is tantamount to eventual success in objectives large and small. Indeed, proper strategic preparation promotes a vital set of steps within which is contained the opportunity to reach a definition and a shared vision for an organization. There are several commonly identified and sequential steps which are said to produce an effective and actionable preparation. Among them is effective internal organization. The organization must first and foremost recognize its qualities. Decision makers must ask key questions concerning target consumers, potential partners, identity issues, resource availability and a host of other factors relating to core potential functionality. This self-assessment must be the initial step as all future steps will hinge heavily on the profile thereby yielded. Once a thorough evaluation of these features has been established, it should be measured against a thorough external analysis. It is thusly that we might measure how an organization will perform against competitors, how it can price itself to effectively target its key demographic, what costs will impact its prices and bottom line and broader economic patterns and indicators dictating ways of doing business. This will allow the company to define credible objectives. An understanding of its scale relative to the conditions and patterns of the market will help to project realistic goals which are indicative of the organization's capability for growth. The final step of this strategic preparation is implementation. It is here that a plan must be formulated with the input of all interested parties with intent to make executable decisions designed to produce the outcomes identified as credible objectives. The eventual ability of an organization and its individual members to achieve some measure of success will often be founded in the degree to which proper preparation, planning and strategic orientation have been applied. This can help prepare individual members and whole organizational structures to prepare for unexpected challenges and adversity. 3. Communicating with Others Another key factor in constructing an organization that is both functional and instigative of positive morale is the institution of effective communication measures and tactics. Where members and leaders are concerned, the ability to communicate and the receive and interpret information properly will have a substantial bearing on the morale of those in an organization and on the effectiveness with which certain goals and objectives are met. Of course, communication remains always a great challenge. As we have seen, in the workplace or any other context, an absence of trust can be an impediment to effective communication. This, again, is a psychological barrier to communication wherein the parties recipient to an offered message are incapable of making the emotional or psychic commitments to an individual speaker as one qualified on a subject. Naturally, this is a difficult obstacle to overcome, especially in the context of long-term relationships such as those that will arise in the workplace by necessity and by mutual orientation toward common end goals. Likewise, an incapacity to achieve conflict resolution in the face of obstinate communicational partnerships can be a significant obstacle to organizational success. This can occur on a variety of terms, with cultural barriers often playing a part in the challenges impacting verbal interaction. Such is to say that often, individuals will approach conflict with an orientation based on strong personal conviction, experiential background or cultural affiliation. These personal attributes can be complicating as they frequently allow little room for integration of the information proposed by others, provoking something of an entrenched obstacle to communicational effectiveness. Active listening, a method of message receipt proposed by the Hamlin (2006) text does offer a framework for rectifying such an impasse by promoting an essentially more nuanced approach to defining understanding and participating in the process of communication. Indeed, one of the great benefits of becoming a more active listener in all contexts is that it aids in the process by which one is able to expand his or her own knowledge resources. (Hamlin, 12) Quite certainly, this denotes that effective methods of communication can actually significantly improve the ability of individuals and groups not just to resolve conflict but also to use conflict as a way of forging new insights and achieving progressive compromise. Conflict management through better communication can prove to be something of an elastic quality, the improvement of which is stimulated by the presence of more clearly received data. This is a lesson that has helped my personal management of school responsibilities and social interests, but which I also expect to channel into my experiences in future professional setting. With regard to organizational communication, improved listening will lead to a greater comprehension of the needs of partners, the specific nature of delegated responsibilities and the unique qualities or skills in others which, if channeled properly, can help to resolve conflict and provoke a collective achievement of new ideas and innovations.

4. Working in Groups

In the modern organization, group orientation is a common aspect of success. From daily operations to such events as mergers, acquisitions and roundtable discussion of business practices, organizations often require specialized subsets of personnel to collaborate to address specific projects and needs. Therefore, an aptitude for team work is a desired quality in defining a successful group dynamic. The ability to function within the context of groups both large and small with help to shape both individual and collective outcomes may well be a defining attribute to one's value in an organization. The ability to participate compatibly with a team implies that one must be capable of communicating effectively, working inter-dependently and perpetuating mutual respect for fellow group members. During our course studies, we would learn that the process of achieving team compatibility and reaching a set of shared goals would provoke recognition of various important theoretical aspects of group and team behavior. This process would prove that in addition to the importance of integrating structural, cultural and individual aspects of team orientation, the organizational framework would be crucial, serving as a relative lynchpin for all other aspects of individual and collective perception. Thus, a quality which would be crucial in accommodating the conveyance of a team sentiment would be the development of effective communication there within. To this subject, dialogue is referred to throughout our studies as a key in "facilitating collaborative learning and transforming mental models within a group" (Holton, 2001). Indeed, this is essentially the organizational purpose of collective endeavoring, with the capacity to communicate providing for the all important goal of sharing ideas and information. Particularly, as we have shown in the broader organizational context, communication is quite an important instrument in contending with conflict, a subject which our studies denote is a natural consequence of team engagement. Our research findings would argue that when groups large and small engage in cooperative conflict management techniques, they develop efficacy or confidence in the ability to achieve results, which then leads to effective team performance. (Alper et al, 1) Conversely, teams that do not effectively seek to manage conflict, but allow themselves to be obstructed by disagreement or adversity, will ultimately become demoralized and prove unproductive.

5. Leadership in the Workplace

Organizational theory and academic business discourse examine, amongst a host of other key organizational principles, the formal idea that leadership is an essential part of effective management, or, for that matter, an essential part of comprising an effective contribution to any working team. Indeed, in all of the areas addressed in this account, leadership is a factor which is fundamentally relevant to effectiveness. However, like many academic concepts which do not easily make the leap into real world applicability, this theoretical conception of leadership is just that, and in practice, this type of educational content and perspective is actually quite a bit less relevant than the curricula of formal education might argue. (Koskella, 2002; 1) While leadership is unquestionably an inborn talent that can be honed and improved, it is nonetheless an individualized talent and therefore both rarified and special. Such is to say that the dually important aspects of experience and ability are those which cannot be taught in an academic context. Especially in the organizational sense, one must gather and sharpen these respective qualities, suggesting that leadership theory bears only a passing relationship to those instincts and principles which one must know or of which one must be capable in order to function successfully in an organizational leadership role. Ultimately, this means that a leader with the proper merits to effectively steward an organization is one who will demonstrate the capacity for a formal application of proven leadership methods and who will simultaneously adapt to the demands which are specific to the organization in question. This mode of discussing leadership is useful because it demonstrates the need for balance between abiding some of the universal principles pertaining to leadership and managerial competence and tailoring leadership methods and practices toward the unique characteristics of the organization. Within the framework of our discussion on leadership, it is appropriate to consider motivation now defined as an organizational priority. This is to note that "the study of motivation is the exploration of the energization and direction of behavior. Psychological theories are motivational theories only insofar as they address these two aspects of behavior." (Deci, 3) Namely, managerial leadership must today be armed with the ability to recognize these conditions as they are evident in individual employees. The increasing diversity of gender, ethnicity and cultural background is likely to experience a proportion of these two behavioral aspects that is distinct. This proposes a clear challenge for leadership to be able to recognize and seize on such proportions while simultaneously abiding traditional organizational goals relating to individual and collective performance outcomes.