General IO Psych Learning Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is I-O Psychology?
the scientific study of the workplace.
I- O psychologists apply the knowledge, principles, and scientific methods of psychology to issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, motivation, leadership, and performance (SIOP, 2019a). Specifically, I- O psychologists use science and practice to assist organizations and the people in those organizations to achieve maximum work effectiveness.
Event System Theory
Organizations are dynamic, hierarchically structured entities. Such dynamism is reflected in the emergence of significant events at every organizational level. Despite this fact, there has been relatively little discussion about how events become meaningful and come to impact organizations across space and time.
We address this gap by developing event system theory, which suggests that events become salient when they are novel, disruptive, and critical (reflecting an event’s strength). Importantly, events can originate at any hierarchical level and their effects can remain within that level or travel up or down throughout the organization, changing or creating new behaviors, features, and events. This impact can extend over time as events vary in duration and timing or as event strength evolves.
Event system theory provides a needed shift in focus for organizational theory and research by developing specific propositions articulating the interplay among event strength and the spatial and temporal processes through which events come to influence organizations.
Applying Event System Theory to Organizational Change: The Importance of Everyday Positive and Negative Events
Decades of research have examined how employees experience organizational-level change events (e.g., “the merger”). However, employees can also experience “everyday change events” that occur at the individual-level as the change becomes routinized for their jobs. That is, individuals can react to organizational change events that are occurring at different hierarchical levels.
Drawing on event system theory, we argue that employees’ commitment to the organizational-level change event can shape how employees anticipate and experience subsequent everyday change events. These negative and positive everyday change events can impact (a) how employees engage with their work, impacting their performance and (b) whether employees perceive that they are fairly treated, impacting their subsequent evaluations of organizationallevel change. Our hypotheses were generally supported in a field sample in which employees were surveyed immediately after a merger was announced, participated in a daily diary study as the merger was implemented, and completed a second survey 2 weeks after the diary study.
By applying event system theory to organizational change, we provide important theoretical and practical insights, including how an organizational-level event can exert top-down direct effects by impacting how employees anticipate and experience change on an everyday basis as well as how everyday negative and positive change events can subsequently impact employees’ commitment to the organizational-level change, creating bottom-up direct effects.
We also illuminate the importance of considering the frequency and strength of both negative and positive events to understand what it is about everyday negative and positive events that has implications for employees and organizations.
AI may be contributing to a negative mindset toward a shift to shorter workweeks
What is an organization?
Organizations are organized or coordinated bodies of people who come together to achieve a common goal.
voluntary simplicity
Proponents reject the normative cultural arrangement of full-time work to fuel participation in consumerism. To a voluntary simplifier, participating in the global division of labor for 40+ h per week and using the income generated to meet a growing list of wants are seen as barriers to happiness, something to escape rather than embrace (Boyle, 2019). This leads voluntary simplifiers to live frugally to minimize the role of work in their lives
stakeholder theory
Organizations “serve as sites of contested power,” whereby practices are predominantly determined by the stakeholders that possess the greatest power (Grimes et al., 2019, p. 825). Stakeholders are persons or groups with a vested interest in an organization, including employees, customers, suppliers, and shareholders (Donaldson & Preston, 1995).
Stakeholders often pose conflicting demands of organizations; meeting the demands of one stakeholder group may necessitate violating the expectations of other stakeholders (Pache & Santos, 2010). From shareholders’ perspective, “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” (Friedman, 1970, p. 32).
Employees, customers, and suppliers have broader interests, nudging corporations to focus on social responsibilities beyond profits, including environmental impact and fair working conditions.
organizational socialization
the process whereby newly hired employees learn the skills, knowledge, and behaviors required to accomplish their assigned roles and responsibilities in their new organizations.
Organizational socialization is an important research topic because successful socialization is linked to high positive job performance and increased retention.
Successful organizational socialization is also essential for employers to build and support a workforce.
As an individual, your efforts in the socialization process revolve around gaining as much information as you can to increase your understanding and ability to predict what is expected. An uncertainty is reduced, you as a newcomer can focus on learning the job, performing the job, and developing feelings of job satisfaction and commitment to the organization. Thus, socialization serves an important role in anxiety and uncertainty reduction for newcomers.
anticipatory socialization
the step just before entering the organization, reflecting that employees collect information as they anticipate entering the organization, and this information has long-lasting effects on their expectations and perceptions of the organization.
social cognitive theory
Social cognitive theory (SCT), used in psychology, education, and communication, holds that portions of an individual’s knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences.
This theory was advanced by Albert Bandura as an extension of his social learning theory. The theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of events and use this information to guide subsequent behaviors. Observing a model can also prompt the viewer to engage in behavior they already learned.
Depending on whether people are rewarded or punished for their behavior and the outcome of the behavior, the observer may choose to replicate behavior modeled. Media provides models for a vast array of people in many different environmental settings.
self-efficacy theory
Self-efficacy, a concept introduced by psychologist Albert Bandura, refers to an individual’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance outcomes. It’s the confidence in one’s ability to influence events and control over one’s environment.
People’s beliefs in their efficacy are developed by four primary sources of influence, including (i) mastery experiences, (ii) vicarious experiences, (iii) social persuasion, and (iv) emotional states.
It differs from self-esteem, which is more about overall self-worth. Self-efficacy focuses on capability in particular domains (e.g., academic tasks, athletic pursuits, work projects).
psychological capital
Introduced in 2004, PsyCap is a higher-order construct and describes an individual’s psychological capacity that can be measured, developed, and managed for performance improvement. It is formed by the psychological resources that best match the inclusion criteria defined in positive organizational behavior: self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency.
They defined that a variable needs to be state-like (as opposed to states, traits, and trait-like), positive, unique, validly measurable, developable, and can result in performance improvement in order to be included in the construct of PsyCap.
Individuals draw on their self-efficacy to intentionally set challenging goals and bring up the motivation to try to achieve them.
Hope and optimism allow them to positively assess their chances of success and to generate and pursuit different pathways to achieve their goals.
Resilience provides these individuals with the ability to recover from setbacks while trying to achieve their goals.
In combination, these four positive psychological resources form a synergistic resource set that enables an individual to uphold an internalized sense of control while goals are being successfully pursued.
broaden-and-build theory
suggests that positive emotions (such as happiness, and perhaps interest and anticipation) broaden one’s awareness and encourage novel, exploratory thoughts and actions.[1] Over time, this broadened behavioral repertoire builds useful skills and psychological resources. The theory was developed by Barbara Fredrickson around 1998.[2]
Positive emotions have no immediate survival value, because they take one’s mind off immediate needs and stressors. However, the skills that broadened behavior strengthens over time enhance survival.[2] For example, curiosity about a landscape becomes navigational knowledge, pleasant interactions with a stranger become a supportive friendship, and aimless physical play becomes valuable exercise. According to Fredrickson, the resources gained through positive emotions outlive the emotions from which they were acquired. Resources build up over time and increase the individual’s overall well-being. This forms a positive cycle: increased well-being leads to more positive emotions which lead to higher resilience, which leads to increased well-being.[3] Happiness, then, is not only the result of success and high-functioning behavior, but also a precondition for it.
people capital
comprised of psychological capital (who one is), human capital (what one knows), and social capital (who one knows).
Each can be developed in a workplace environment through trainings, interventions, and proactive management.
hope (construct)
The positive psychological resource of hope describes the existence of goals and the conviction and energy to pursue those goals and when necessary to redirect the paths to these goals in order to succeed (Snyder et al. 1991). People high in hope are motivated by their confidence to find a way to achieve their goals.
optimism (construct)
In positive psychology, optimism is defined as one’s positive attribution about current and future success (Bandura and Locke 2003; Seligman 1998). As a result, optimistic people take credit for favorable events and distance from unfavorable ones, which motivates their determination and helps them to deal with difficult situations.
