Industrial and organizational psychology

Historical overview[edit]

The historical development of I-O psychology was paralleled in the US, the UK,^[22] Australia, Germany, the Netherlands,^[23] and Eastern European countries such as Romania.^[24] The roots of I-O psychology trace back to almost the beginning of psychology as a science, when Wilhelm Wundt founded one of the first psychological laboratories in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany. In the mid–1880s, Wundt trained two psychologists, Hugo Münsterberg and James McKeen Cattell, who went on to have a major influence on the emergence of I-O psychology.^[25] World War I was an impetus for the development of the field simultaneously in the UK and US.^[26] Munsterberg, one of the founders of I-O psychology, wrote, "Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science which is intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics: the psychological experiment is systematically to be placed at the service of commerce and industry" (p. 3).^[27]


Instead of viewing performance differences as human "errors," Cattell was one of the first to recognize the importance of differences among individuals as a way of better understanding work behavior. Walter Dill Scott, who was a contemporary of Cattell and was elected President of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1919, was arguably the most prominent I-O psychologist of his time. Scott, along with Walter Van Dyke Bingham, worked at what was then Carnegie Institute of Technology, developing methods for selecting and training sales personnel.^[28]


The "industrial" side of I-O psychology originated in research on individual differences, assessment, and the prediction of work performance. Industrial psychology crystallized during World War I, in response to the need to rapidly assign new troops to duty. Scott and Bingham volunteered to help with the testing and placement of more than a million U.S. Army recruits. In 1917, together with other prominent psychologists, they adapted a well-known intelligence test the Stanford–Binet, which was designed for testing one individual at a time, to make it suitable for group testing. The new test was called the Army Alpha.^[29] After the War, increasing employment in the U.S. created opportunities for I-O psychology practitioners who called themselves "industrial psychologists"^[30]


The "organizational" side of the field was focused on employee behavior, feelings, and well-being. During World War I, with the U.K. government's interest in worker productivity in munitions factories, Charles Myers studied worker fatigue and well-being.^[31] Following the war, Elton Mayo found that rest periods improved morale and reduced turnover in a Philadelphia textile factory.^[32][33] He later joined the ongoing Hawthorne studies, where he became interested in how workers' emotions and informal relationships affected productivity. The results of these studies ushered in the human relations movement.^[34]


World War II brought renewed interest in ability testing. The U.S. military needed to accurately place recruits in new technologically advanced jobs. There was also concern with morale and fatigue in war-industry workers.^[35] In the 1960s Arthur Kornhauser examined the impact on productivity of hiring mentally unstable workers.^[36] Kornhauser also examined the link between industrial working conditions and worker mental health as well as the spillover into a worker's personal life of having an unsatisfying job.^[37][38] Zickar noted that most of Kornhauser's I-O contemporaries favored management and Kornhauser was largely alone in his interest in protecting workers.^[36] Vinchur and Koppes (2010) observed that I-O psychologists' interest in job stress is a relatively recent development (p. 22).^[39]


The industrial psychology division of the former American Association of Applied Psychology became a division within APA, becoming Division 14 of APA. It was initially called the Industrial and Business Psychology Division.^[40] In 1962, the name was changed to the Industrial Psychology Division. In 1973, it was renamed again, this time to the Division of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. In 1982, the unit become more independent of APA, and its name was changed again, this time to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.^[40]


The name change of the division from "industrial psychology" to "industrial and organizational psychology" reflected the shift in the work of industrial psychologists who had originally addressed work behavior from the individual perspective, examining performance and attitudes of individual workers. Their work became broader. Group behavior in the workplace became a worthy subject of study.^[40] The emphasis on the "organizational" underlined the fact that when an individual joins an organization (e.g., the organization that hired him or her), he or she will be exposed to a common goal and a common set of operating procedures. In the 1970s in the UK, references to occupational psychology became more common than references to I-O psychology.^[41]


According to Bryan and Vinchur, "while organizational psychology increased in popularity through [the 1960s and 1970s], research and practice in the traditional areas of industrial psychology continued, primarily driven by employment legislation and case law".^[42]p. 53 There was a focus on fairness and validity in selection efforts as well as in the job analyses that undergirded selection instruments. For example, I-O psychology showed increased interest in behaviorally anchored rating scales.^[42] What critics there were of I-O psychology accused the discipline of being responsive only to the concerns of management.^[42]


From the 1980s to 2010s, other changes in I-O psychology took place. Researchers increasingly adopted a multi-level approach, attempting to understand behavioral phenomena from both the level of the organization and the level of the individual worker.^[42] There was also an increased interest in the needs and expectations of employees as individuals. For example, an emphasis on organizational justice and the psychological contract took root, as well as the more traditional concerns of selection and training.^[42] Methodological innovations (e.g., meta-analyses, structural equation modeling) were adopted. With the passage of the American with Disabilities Act in 1990 and parallel legislation elsewhere in the world, I-O psychology saw an increased emphasis on "fairness in personnel decisions."^[42] Training research relied increasingly on advances in educational psychology and cognitive science.^[42]