Psychology applied to industrial problem:
The industrial psychology specializes in study in human behavior as its occur in business and industrial settings. Perhaps the greatest barrier to understanding the function of the industrial psychologist is the fairly prevalent confusion between industrial psychology and “efficiency expert”. The latter terms call to mind an image of man more stop watch than human the stereotype of an efficiency expert is that he equates efficiency with production and regard acceleration or speedup of the activities of each employee as the list expensive road to increased productivity.
Such as stereotype is invalid, bearing no relationship to the activity of industrial psychologist. He is committed promoting individual initiative and strengthening personal dignity.
Selecting, Placing, and Training Employees:
This part focuses upon the job applicant and the new employee. The company is often confronted first by problem of selecting form a group of job applicants those who best fulfill certain requirement. Which applicants, if hired, will mostly likely prove to be efficient and reasonably well-satisfied employees and which ones will find the job too easy, too difficult, or otherwise unsuited to their particular needs and desires?
This is a prediction problem requiring that psychologist be familiar with the tools and techniques of personnel selection and placement. It may lead into studies of the predictive efficiency of tests, inventories, interviews, application l\blanks, and letters of recommendation. He may have to devices new predictive instruments or to modify already existing devices. He must also develop adequate criteria of the outcomes he is attempting to predict, including industrial efficiency and job satisfaction.
Most companies place considerable emphasis upon training programs of various kind for both new and experienced employees. The primary purpose of Industrial training is to develop certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes and to alter working behaviors demonstrated to be relatively inefficient.
A systematic training program is mandatory when a company is compelled to hire inexperienced employees. New employees with prior job experienced also benefit from training with respect to company policies and practices. Psychologists can make important contributions to the conduct of such programs. Problem concerning training methods, simulation of working condition, and teaching approaches have been of significant concern to psychologists for many years.
Industrial training is by no means restricted to new employees. Management may have a number of problems for which a continual program of training for employees already on the job is the only feasible solution. Among these we may simply list as representative the problems of the job enlargement, development of potential supervisory personnel, maintenance and improvement of quality employees to take on new jobs created by an ever-expanding technocracy.
Worker Efficiency:
This part is concerned with a constellation of factors affecting the efficiency of employees on the jobs, and with certain criteria for appraising worker efficiency.
The physical working environment presents a number of problems concerning such things as optimal ventilation, illumination, machine location, and so on. More recently, psychologists have contributed significantly to problems of machine design and the structure if man-machine systems. This activity is particularly critical whenever the complexity of the equipment is such that careless design would strain or exceed human capability. Consider, for example, some of the design problems in developing high-speed aircraft in which a five-second delay during which the pilot fumbles to find a particular lever , knob, button, or dial, may well represent a traveled distance of one mile. Less dramatic perhaps, but equally important, are engineering psychology studies of the optimal location of controls and dials on automobile dashboards and industrial equipment.
In spite of technological advances, and often because of them fatigue and boredom are often characteristics of work. The deleterious effect of these conditions upon morale, output, and safety are self-evident as problems for psychological analysis.
Organizational Management:
This part emphasis shifts form worker to management. Management has a responsibility for maintaining both industrial harmony and efficiency. A part of this responsibility is exercised by pursuing justifiable wage and promotional policies.
However, effective organizational management involves much more than this. One of the factors conditioning an employee’s responses to almost anything that transpires in the industrial setting is his relative degree of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Employees who feel secure, enjoy there work, and feel amply rewarded both in terms of personal recognition and in terms of salary are predispose to react favorably to management polices and practices.
This does not mean that such employees always agree with or indorse decisions by management. As a matter of fact they may feel sufficiently comfortable in their working environment to be quite vociferous in voicing objections and criticism to particular practices. They do not, however, regard every new decision with the suspicion and mistrust characteristic employees who are dissatisfied with their jobs. Consequently, industrial psychologists are frequently called upon to investigate the sources of dissatisfaction in a particular environment.
Industrial behavior is often clarified by the study of group affiliations and allegiances of the employees. Union and nonunion employees, for example, may react quite differently to salary and promotions polices. Similarly subgroup of employees by sex, seniority, and level of skill may be responding from different frames of reference.
This part is terminated with a discussion of leadership in industry. The fact that a man occupies a leadership position by no means guarantees that he will have a willing group of followers. The selection and training of management personnel are generally regarded as critical problems in most companies.
Although effective leadership at all levels of company hierarchy is a requirement for industrial harmony, it does not guaranty such harmony. Every company is segmented, to some degree, in the management and worker subgroups. The needs and vested interest of these subgroups may, on occasion, be essential conflict erupting as a dispute. Industrial disharmony is always costly both to labor and management. The field of social psychology, in particular, has made noteworthy contributions to understanding the dynamics of such conflict.
Consumer Behavior:
A company survives consumer buys its product or services. Thus, all parties to the manufactures, distribution, and sale of products or services have vital interest ion predicting and controlling consumer behavior.
One of the psychologist’s unique contributions in this general area is his application rigorous scientific methods of inquiry to such diverse problems as the size of constituency of markets, the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, consumer reactions to product company manufacturing it, and the needs and motive underlying consumer behavior, to list a few.
To the extent that there is psychology of consumer behavior, it has been significantly bolstered by activities of psychologist in the clinical and experimental areas. Motivation researchers to discover the “hidden” or unconscious resons underlying consumer behavior have used clinical tools. Advertising has capitalizes for years upon well-established findings from traditional laboratory-type space research in experimental psychology. More recently considerable attention has been made focused upon the possibility of subliminally presented advertising.
Although psychologists have, to the present, devoted relatively little attention to studying the process of salesmanship, considerable research has been directed toward the problems of selecting and training salesmen.
REFERENCE:
“Industrial Organization”, Laurence Siegel (Ph.D),1962
“Psychology and Industrial Productivity”, Michael M. Graneberg.
