A&O Psychology an der Universität Siegen

Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology is the scientific study of the employees, workplaces, and organizations.

Industrial and organizational psychologists contribute to an organization's success by improving the performance and well-being of its people.

Span of control is the area of activity and number of functions, people, or things for which an individual or organization is responsible. Usually it describes the number of subordinates a supervisor has.

• Wide span of control:
  • for simple jobs
  • managers can oversee & control many employees
• Narrow span of control:
  • for complicated/customized work
  • suitable for agile companies like new IT startups

• Hypothesis Generating
  • To explore and describe new field, when there is no assumption but only new problems
  • Find new insight, generate new assumptions/hypotheses
  • Uses Qualitative method
• Hypothesis Testing
  • To explain or to predict something in already existing field
  • To prove, verify/falsify hypotheses
  • Uses Quantitative method

Information Systems and HCI are design sciences:

- Designing technical artifacts for social practice

- Intervention into life of users and social systems

IS and HCI are applied to social/organizational practice

e.g. buyers, clients, customers, contractors                                                

We are organization members ourselves:

Working for a company, running a company, belonging to a network/community etc.

• Grand theories are universal, it explains a whole phenomena. Example: Freud's theory of psychosexual dev
• Mini theories are empirically derived small explanations of single aspects of certain behavior. They adapt Grand Theory to particular problems. E.g. experiments on trust: building, losing, etc.

• Behaviourism, Cognitivism
• Pragmatism, Constructivism
• Socio-cultural theories
• Neurological theories
• Philosophical theories
• Political theories, ecological theories
• Economical theories, game theories
• Learning Theories, evolutionary and development theories
• Epistemological and methodological theories

• Formal Communication:
  • Official structures and processes
  • Standardized and controlled communication
• Downward Communication/Top-down approach:
  • Top Level Management communicates to the lower levels
  • Implement policies
• Upward Communication/Bottom-up approach:
  • Top Level Management needs information from lower levels
  • Feedback, improvement, suggestions, etc.
• Informal communication:
  • Interpersonal, horizontal communication

  • Increasing relevance and attention

• Bounded Reality: People making decisions in organizations seldom have complete information, and tend to pick the first acceptable option
• Theory on Learning Organization
• Theory on Systems Thinking
• Communication-in-context model

Classical Test Theory/True Score Model

• Parallel tests
• Control groups
• Repeated measures
• Full control of all independent variables

• Efficiency and productivity for industrial production
• With Scientific Task Analysis, company improved efficiency by cutting out unimportant steps
• Helps adjust workload for the workers so that they are not overworked
• Improved Health of the workers

Organisation and Management can be

characterized by the relationship between Theory X and Theory Y

• Social unit of people, systematically structured
• Pursue collective goals on a continuing basis
• All have management structure that
  • determines relationships between function & position
  • subdivides
  • delegates roles, responsibility & authority to carry out defined tasks
• Open systems that affect/are affected by environment