Industrial Psychology - Definition & Meaning
What is Industrial Psychology?
Industrial Psychology is a scientific study of employees, workplaces, organizations and organizational behavior. Industrial psychology is also known as work psychology, organizational psychology or I-O psychology. An Industrial psychologist contributes by improving the workplaces, satisfaction and motivation levels of the employees, and helping the overall productivity of the organization. There is research done, after which suggestions, additions and improvements are made to various aspects like the feedback procedures, training of employees, job designs, team performances, organizational research, employee policies, recruitment policy etc.
Generally this helps when the organization is going through a transition phase, or during some new developments.
Industrial psychologists are generally involved in research, and employ a variety of methods like surveys, case studies, interviews, experiments, observations and quasi experiments for organizational improvements. There are also numerous quantitative techniques that are employed like regression, variance analysis, and different statistical modeling.
Example:
Mary an I-O psychologist was employed after there were repeated performance dips in the customer service departments of Rob Enterprises. Mary used video recording for her pilot study, to understand how the team currently responded to customers. She quickly noticed a peculiar style in responding that almost every employee followed, which was not very polite. There was immediate action taken, and a briefing, training and mock sessions were conducted for employees to rectify the problem, which led to better results.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Industrial Psychology along with its overview.
This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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