"Industrial and organizational psychology (often shortened to I/O psychology) is a somewhat deceptive title for the field. Even when industrial psychology alone was used to label it, practitioners were involved with issues and activities far beyond solving industrial problems—for example, designing procedures for selecting salespeople, advertising methods, and reducing accidents on public transportation. “Organizational” suggests the application of knowledge to organizations, but the intended meaning is closer to “the study of forces that influence how people and their activities at work are organized.”
Industrial and organizational psychology borrowed much from many other areas of psychology during its growth and has retained the strong research orientation common to them, along with many of the research methods each has developed and many of the findings that each has generated. Bringing psychological methods to work settings where experts from many other disciplines are studying some of the same problems has resulted in conflicts, but it has also produced a richness of information beyond the scope of any one of the disciplines.
In most cases, the most feasible approach to data collection for I/O psychologists is field research , an approach in which evidence is gathered in a “natural” setting, such as the workplace; by contrast, laboratory research involves an artificial, contrived setting. Systematic observation of ongoing work can often give a psychologist needed information without greatly disturbing the workers involved. Generally, they will be told that data are being gathered, but when the known presence of an observer likely would change what is being studied, unobtrusive methods might be used. Information from hidden cameras, or observations from researchers pretending to be workers and actually engaging in whatever must be done, can be used when justified.
Studying within the actual work setting, I/O psychologists may sometimes take advantage of natural experiments, situations in which a change not deliberately introduced may be studied for its effect on some important outcome. If, for example, very extreme, unseasonable temperatures resulted in uncontrollably high, or low, temperatures in an office setting, a psychologist could assess the effects on employee discomfort, absenteeism, or productivity (Source: EBSCO, 2024)."
Video Credit: Job Canary, Sep 30, 2019.
Video Credit: Organizational Communication Channel, Feb 21, 2017.