Organizational psychology, research methods, and workplace behavior analysis

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.

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.

Currently many human resource employees make use of observational methods and research surveys when selecting the qualified candidates for the workplace. In order to predict an employee's job performance they will use structured interviews, personality test, and knowledge tests. Organizational psychology can also be used when determining if a specific employee has work behavior that is counterproductive. Some of the counterproductive behaviors are absenteeism and ineffective job performance. These behaviors can be discovered by observation or experiments, which are better referred to as empirical data.

Currently organizational psychology is mostly used by human resource consultants and coordinators, but in the past organizational psychology was used by scientists. The methods of organizational psychology can be used to get information from workplaces and non-workplaces. Using the strategy of organizational psychology, the behavior of individuals and organizations can be discovered to be interesting.