Organizational Psychology Productive and Counterproductive Behaviors Paper

Organizational Psychology

Productive and Counterproductive Behaviors Paper

Organizational psychology involves the settings based on office or workplace psychology. It is a field of psychology that uses scientific methodologies in order to understand individuals' behavior in organizational settings. Organizational psychology can also be defined as the scientific study of group and individual behaviors in a formal organizational setting. Organizational psychology is part of a broader field of industrial and organizational psychology. Organizational polices and job descriptions form the structure for organizations. It should be noted that organizational psychology is mainly concerned with the study of formal organizations and not informal organizations. According to Guion (1965)

organizational psychology is the scientific study of relationships between individuals and their world of work.

Although the main focus of organizational psychology is groups, it also focuses on individual behavior in order to obtain information pertaining what influences individual's in these groups Jex, 2002.

Individuals behave in certain ways that groups or organizations will not. One can get a person's sense of taste, humor, and other behaviors, but not from the organizations or group they belong. Focusing on how a person's behavior is influenced in a group explains the organizational processes, which are different from social science disciplines. Many times organizational behavior has been confused to be organizational psychology. The main difference is in what the two focuses upon. Organizational behavior focuses on the organization while organizational psychology will focus on the interventions within an organization's objectives.

Role of statistics and research in organizational behavior

Research and statistics play a role in organizational behavior because they are part of industrial and organizational psychology, which is the broader field of organizational psychology Miner, 2007.

The method of psychology and principles applied to various work places is referred to as industrial and organizational psychology. Making use of evidence-based findings allows for the proper analysis of information collected. The information is mainly obtained from leadership, employee job performance, employee stress, and selection techniques, which are reliable sources and valid measurements. These same processes have been used throughout history, and they used the percentages in order to get different variables, reduce final results, and develop theories.

Systematic researchers have been used by organizational psychologists to measure competency in employee attitudes. The systematic researchers paved the way for the organizational psychologists to examine and determine the employees' behavior at the workplace. This examination was based on various stress levels, which involved work and home experiences. The effects of effort reward imbalances, effort distress, and occupational stress have been examined carefully by using intense methods of organizational psychology. As early as 1903, methods of observation were used in data collection, and they have helped in studying behavior. Simple observational method was the most basic method used during this data collection. It involved observing and recording systematically the employees' behaviors. Archival data is another popular method of studying behavior. In organizational psychology archival data is most prevalent when comparison is made to other observational methods. This is mainly because there is an absolute abundance of sources that are available to researcher from archival data.

In applied social research, the method known to be most important is survey research. It has a broad area that includes the basic questionnaires, asking direct questions to respondents, determining respondent's behaviors, attitudes, and personalities. Surveys are mainly used when gathering a wide variety of information and they use interviews or questionnaires.

Use of organizational psychology in organizations

Using the various research methods available, an organization can use organizational psychology to establish the reason why employees are not able to function as a team, or work together. Obtaining information regarding each employee on their attitude, opinion, personal growth, feedback loops, and adaptations will provide the employer with crucial insights regarding the employees' interactions with each other especially when they are working on a group task. Organizational psychology can also be used to enlighten individual job performances. An organization can be able to control the fate of an employee within the organization when the employee's responsibilities are well understood.

Some of the things that the employer should consider during this strategic method are the employee's efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity, which all lead to the overall utilization of their position. Using organizational psychology an organization can also be able to make hiring decisions Shams & Jackson, 2006.