UNIT 3 INDUSTRIAL AND

ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
AS RELATED TO OTHER
DISCIPLINES
Structure
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Objectives
3.2 I/O Psychology: A Multidisciplinary Approach
3.2.1 I/O Psychology and Psychology
3.2.2 I/O Psychology and Social Psychology
3.2.3 I/O Psychology and Sociology
3.2.4 I/O Psychology and Anthropology
3.2.5 I/O Psychology and Economics
3.2.6 I/O Psychology and Political Science
3.2.7 Other Disciplines Also Use I/O Psychology Concepts

3.3 Let Us Sum Up

3.4 Unit End Questions
3.5 Glossary
3.6 Suggested Readings and References

3.0 INTRODUCTION
As you would’ve understood by now, the aim of I/O psychology is to understand
and explain the behaviour of organisations and the people within them. In order to
this, I/O psychology draws heavily on concepts and theories from other disciplines,
particularly social sciences, and applies these to an organisational setting. The reverse
is also true: the key concepts of I/O psychology are increasingly being used by other
disciplines. I/O psychology, as it faces the effects of organisations on individual goals
and individual perceptions of the environment, is truly multidisciplinary. In this unit,
we will examine the field of I/O psychology as related to other disciplines.

3.1 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you will be able to:
 Appreciate the multidisciplinary nature of I/O psychology;
 Describe the contributions of psychology and social psychology to I/O
psychology;
 Describe the contributions of other social sciences – sociology, anthropology,
economics, and political science – to I/O psychology; and
 Summarise the concepts of I/O psychology used by other disciplines.

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Introduction and Overview
3.2 I/O PSYCHOLOGY: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY
APPROACH
I/O psychology is built on contributions from a number of behavioural sciences. The
behavioural sciences include a number of disciplines, such as sociology, political
science, anthropology, economics, and of course psychology. The contributions of
psychology have been mainly at the individual or micro level of analysis, while the
other disciplines have contributed to our understanding of macro concepts such as
group or organisational processes. Other specialties that are closely related to the
behavioural sciences have also had an impact on industrial psychology. These are
management engineering, industrial design, industrial administration, and labour relations.
Differences among behavioural sciences are not always clearly demarcated. The
same phenomenon is sometimes studied by more than one discipline, each bringing
its own unique concepts and theories, and thus there are often several competing
explanations of the same phenomenon. This also does not mean that the findings and
explanations stay separate in discreet compartments. Sometimes scholars working in
the area integrate the findings to produce a more comprehensive explanation. The
major disciplines involved and their primary areas of focus are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Major Social Science Disciplines involved in I/O psychology
(From Rollinson & Bradfield, 2002, p. 19)

Social Science Discipline Organisational phenomena of interest

Individual Psychology Individual differences, intelligence,
personality, aptitude, motivation,
learning, perception
Social Psychology Group Dynamics, attitudes, leadership
Sociology The organisation as a social system,
socialisation of organisational members,
structures, cultures, communication
Social anthropology Culture and its effects on behaviour
Politics Power, decision making, conflict, the
behaviour of interest groups, coalitions,
control
Economics Labour markets, product markets and
their influence as part of organisational
environment

Let us now examine the contribution of other disciplines to the field of I/O Psychology.

3.2.1 I/O Psychology and Psychology

Psychology as you know is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes
change the behaviour of humans and other animals. Psychologists are primarily
concerned with studying and attempting to understand individual behaviour. As long
as I/O psychologists are interested in studying behaviour of people at the workplace,
the influence of psychology can be seen clearly. Psychology contributes most to
individual-level processes. It explains how, for e.g. individual employees perceive
their jobs, respond to others, learn the skills to perform their jobs, opt for job
security over money, and so on. How they work and relate to others also depends
on their beliefs about themselves, what their needs are, how satisfied they are, etc.

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I/O psychology borrows heavily from a number of fields within psychology itself, Industrial and
Organisational Psychology
utilising the facts, theories, and methods of experimental, social, cognitive, counseling, as Related to Other
and clinical psychology. Early I/O psychologists concerned themselves with the Disciplines
problems of fatigue, boredom and other factors relevant to working conditions that
could interfere with effective work performance. The experimental method of
psychology teaches us to define the problem concretely, frame hypotheses, vary
certain aspects in the conditions while holding others constant collect, and analyse
data and verify/reject our hypotheses. This lends scientific rigour to the field of I/O
psychology. The influence of clinical and counseling psychology can be seen in
attempts of I/O psychologists to study issues of mental health and more recently
stress at the workplace. The field of I/O psychology has expanded to include learning,
perception, thinking, problem solving, and information processing, clearly depicting
the influence of cognitive psychology. The fundamental concepts of psychology, such
as personality, intelligence, aptitude, individual differences, emotions, needs and
motivational forces, etc. have also been borrowed to the study of individuals at the
work place.

3.2.2 I/O Psychology and Social Psychology

Social psychology is a subfield of psychology that studies the behaviour of the
individual in a social context that includes other people as individuals, other people
as organised systems such as groups, and the broader culture. It is in its second
sense that brings it closest to I/O psychology. In the 1940s, the field of I/O psychology
(then largely industrial psychology) added concern for the social factors at the
workplace. This may be attributed in part to the interests shown by social psychologists
(for e.g. Arygyris, Lewin, Sherif) in developing some scientific understanding of the
nature of modern organisations.
The most notable contribution of social psychology to I/O psychology lies in the
‘open systems approach’ to conceptualise organisations, given by two prominent
social psychologists, Katz and Kahn (1966). Open system refers to a continuous
inflow and outflow of energy through permeable boundaries. In I/O psychology
terms, the boundaries of an organisation are permeable to the external environment
(social, economic, legal, technical, and political). The simplest open system can be
depicted as:

Transformation
Input

Output
Fig. 3.1: Open Systems Approach
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Introduction and Overview The open systems approach to organisation thus assumes that organisations operate
in a self-sustaining manner, transforming inputs into outputs in a continuous manner.
Specific examples of inputs into a business organisation include monetary, material,
information, and human resources. The processes (e.g., training or manufacturing),
transform the input into the output. Output is represented by the product, result,
outcome, or knowledge of the system. This output gets transformed back to input
and the cycle continues.
Let us consider an example to illustrate this. As a productive system, a firm depends
upon its environment to provide inputs, say labour and material. This then transforms
by say, the process of manufacturing, to produce outputs, goods and services. This
in turn depends on the environment (e.g. satisfaction of customers/investors) to accept.
The inputs from and outputs to the environment come from and go to different
subsystems in the environment: The biggest contribution of the open systems approach
to I/O psychology was the realisation that no social structure is self sufficient or self
contained. An organisation is certainly open to its larger external environment making
its nature very dynamic.
Another important area that has received considerable attention from social
psychologists is change and change management. Further, social psychologists have
made significant contributions in the areas of measuring, understanding and changing
attitudes, communication patterns, leadership, building trust, group behaviour, and the
like.

3.2.3 I/O Psychology and Sociology

While psychology focuses on the individual, sociology studies people in relation to
their social environment or culture. Sociologists are interested in the individual and
group, but generally within the context of larger social structures and processes, such
as social roles, class, gender, and socialisation. Sociologists have contributed to the
field of I/O psychology through their study of group behaviour in organisations,
particularly formal and complex organisations. From a sociological perspective,
organisations are conceptualised as the totality of inter-connected positions, each
having a set of roles that are defined by the rights and duties vested in the positions.
Employees often play their respective roles by negotiating their idiosyncratic needs,
preferences, attitudes and expectations. The conceptualisation of organisation as a
social system can be traced back to sociology (perhaps even before social
psychology).
Sociologists use a combination of quantitative methods and qualitative research designs
which have also been often used by I/O psychologists. Most importantly, sociology
has contributed to the research on organisational culture, socialisation of organisational
members, structures, formal organisation theory, organisational technology, and
communication analysis. In fact, a separate sub field of sociology termed industrial
sociology, or the sociology of work, has emerged recently. This field examines the
direction and implications of trends in change, technological, global, and organisational;
and the extent to which these trends are intimately related to changing patterns of
inequality in modern societies.

3.2.4 I/O Psychology and Anthropology

Very broadly, anthropology is the study of humankind. More narrowly, it is the study
of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. Anthropology’s basic
concerns are “What defines modern Homo sapiens?”, “How do humans behave?”,
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“Why are there variations and differences among different groups of humans?”, Organisational and
Industrial Psychology as
“How has the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens influenced its social organisation Related to Other
and culture?” and so on. Disciplines

Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us understand

differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behaviour among people in different
countries and even within different organisations. Anthropology enriches I/O psychology
by contextualising it in a cultural frame. Just like a societal culture, organisations too
have a culture that is a socially constructed, unseen, and unobservable force behind
organisational activities.
Much of our current understanding of organisational culture, organisational
environments, and differences between national cultures is a result of the work of
anthropologists or those using methods borrowed from anthropology. One such
research method used in I/O Psychology is ethnography. Ethnographers study groups
and/or cultures over an extended period of time through observer immersion into the
culture or group. I/O research on organisational culture research has employed
ethnographic techniques and participant observation to collect data.
Given the pervasive influence of culture on human behaviour, it is no surprise that
culture would also influence behaviour at the workplace. I/O psychologists have
turned their attention towards examining how cultural factors influence work behaviour.
This new branch is referred to as cross-cultural I/O Psychology. The goal of cross-
cultural I/O psychologists (for e.g., Erez, Triandis, etc.) is to look at both universal
behaviours and unique behaviours to identify the ways in which culture impacts
behaviour at the workplace. Factors such as cultural diversity of the workforce, the
competitive global market, mergers and acquisitions, and emergence of high technology
and telecommunication systems (most notably email) have accelerated the need for
awareness of cultural differences in proposing solutions to problems of work behaviour.
Values and customs prevalent in our society do not necessarily generalise to other
cultures, and vice-versa. The very nature and meaning of work is not universal: what
constitutes satisfying work differs across cultures. The roots of this relatively new
specialty of I/O Psychology can be seen clearly in anthropology.
The subfield of anthropology, social anthropology, that studies how contemporary
living human beings behave in social groups has also contributed to the field of I/O
Psychology. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term,
intensive field studies, the social organisation of a particular person (Note that the
focus of psychology would’ve been the person himself).

3.2.5 I/O Psychology and Economics

The Wikipedia defines economics as the “the social science that studies the production,
distribution, and consumption of goods and services”. Economics touches on behaviour
as it deals with the making and distribution of goods, market analyses, and predictions
of what people may do next in buying stocks and bonds. The organisational
phenomenon of interest that have come from economics are labour markets, product
markets and their influence as part of organisational environment (you may recall
economic environment as part of the larger organisational environment in conceptualising
an organisation as an open system).
The influence of economics on the field of I/O Psychology can be most strongly seen
in the area of decision making. The origins of the rational choice models of decision
making (which prescribe what decision makers should do if they behave in a rational
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Introduction and Overview way) lie in the economic theory of expected utility. Not surprisingly, an alternative
descriptive model of decision making (which identifies processes actually used by
decision makers) – the bounded rationality model – has been proposed by Simon,
an economist. Simon was even awarded a Nobel Prize for his research on decision
making- in economics!
In the 1960s with the advent of cognitive psychology, psychologists (such as Edwards,
Tversky and Kahneman) began to compare their cognitive models of decision-
making under risk and uncertainty to economic models of rational behaviour. They
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1973) suggested that people often make decisions based on
approximate rules of thumb, termed heuristics, not strict logic.
Another notable application of a concept originally from economics that found its
way in psychology is the game theory. Game theory studies strategic situations where
players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns, given the
strategies the other players choose. First developed as a tool for understanding
economic behaviour by John von Neumann, game theory has also been used as a
psychological model to explain much of human real-life behaviour.
Activity
One interesting game is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which the dilemma is between
cooperating versus competing. Try your hand and see if you can beat the computer:
play Prisoner’s Dilemma by going to http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/
pd.html

3.2.6 I/O Psychology and Political Science

Political science is concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description
and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. Political scientists study
matters concerning the allocation and transfer of power in decision making, the roles
and systems of governance, political behaviour, and public policy. Political science is
closely related to industry through its studies of institutionalised governments. But, it
is the domain of political behaviour in organisations that brings political science most
close to I/O Psychology.
Political science conceptualises organisations as political systems where individuals
and groups are engaged in a continuous struggle to gain greater access to valued
resources and positions of power to serve their individual (and sometimes group
interests). According to this perspective, all individual, group and organisational-level
processes are essentially political and involve power play. Since political activity is
pervasive, psychologists have also turned their attention towards understanding
organisational politics and political tactics. Thus, power, organisational politics and
conflict are areas clearly influenced by political science. Organisational politics deals
with the study of what people do in organisations to acquire and maintain power and
other resources to obtain one’s preferred outcome.
More recently an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the relationship between psychology
(not I/O psychology) and political science- political psychology- has emerged. This
focuses on the role of human thought, emotion, and behaviour in politics, i.e. ‘the
psychology of politics’. Some of this work enhances understanding of political
phenomena by applying basic theories of cognitive processes and social relations that
were originally developed outside of the domain of politics, clearly stressing the
dynamic interface between psychology and political science.
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3.2.7 Other Disciplines also Use I/O Psychology Concepts Organisational and
Industrial Psychology as
On the other side, increasingly other disciplines are employing concepts from I/O Related to Other
Disciplines
psychology. Somewhat surprisingly, the use of soft concepts of I/O psychology is not
restricted to disciplines like marketing and business administration, but also economics.
Of the business disciplines, perhaps it is marketing that has the closest overlap with
I/O psychology. One of the primary areas of marketing is consumer research, and
trying to predict consumer behaviour is not that different from trying to predict
employee behaviour. Consumer behaviour involves the psychological processes that
consumers go through in recognising needs, finding ways to solve these needs,
making purchase decisions, and actually purchasing a product. In fact, consumer
behaviour is nothing but ‘the psychology of marketing’. Consumer research is often
required to ensure that companies produce what customers really want and not what
they think customers want.
The influence of psychology on economics has been responsible for a view of human
behaviour that calls into question the assumption of complete rationality, the acceptance
of experiments as a valid method of economic research, and the idea that utility or
well-being can be measured (Frey & Stutzer, 2007). This new subfield- behavioural
economics- uses social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding the economic
decisions of individuals and institutions performing economic functions, including
consumers, borrowers and investors; and their effects on market prices, returns and
the resource allocation. Behavioural finance and economics rests as much on social
psychology within large groups as on individual psychology. Cognitive biases may
have strong effects particularly if there is social contagion of ideas and emotions
(causing collective euphoria or fear) leading to phenomena such as groupthink. You
can pause for a moment here and think of how collective euphoria after a ‘good
budget’ leads to a bull run in the stock market.
As a matter of fact, the subfields of I/O psychology are not just related to each other
but also have found their way in management studies. For instance, organisational
behaviour (OB) is more frequently taught to students of business and management
than to anyone else, with the presupposition that those who want to make their
careers in organisations should understand the complexities of human behaviour.
Figure 3.2 shows the relationships between some disciplines within I/O psychology
(Luthans, 2005, p. 20).
MACRO MICRO
OT OB
THEORETICAL (Organisation Theory) (Organisational Behaviour)
APPLIED OD HRM
(Organisation (Human Resource
Development) Management)

Fig. 3.2: Relationships between Organisational Behaviour to Other

Disciplines
As you can see from Figure 3.2, OT tends to be more macro-oriented than OB and
is concerned primarily with organisational structures and design. OD, on the other
hand, tend to be more macro and applied than OB. HRM tend to have a more
applied focus than OB. The human resource management function is a part of
practicing organisations just as marketing, administration, or finance. Closely related
to personnel psychology, HRM is the strategic and coherent approach to the
management of ‘human resources’, i.e. people working in the organisation. 37
Introduction and Overview It is important to note that as any field becomes multidisciplinary, the lines between
various disciplines increasingly become blurred as researchers draw from common
disciplines to explain behaviour.

3.3 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we have discussed the field of Industrial and Organisational Psychology
as related to other disciplines. While other disciplines have contributed to I/O
psychology, it is equally true that the concepts of I/O psychology are also used by
other disciplines. I/O psychology is built on contributions from a number of behavioural
disciplines, such as psychology, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics,
and political science. The contributions of psychology have been mainly at the individual
or micro level of analysis, while the other disciplines have contributed to our
understanding of macro concepts such as group or organisational processes.
Increasingly other disciplines are employing concepts from I/O psychology, such as
consumer research (marketing), behavioural economics (economics), and organisational
behaviour (management).
By understanding how businesses are organised, how they are managed, the wider
economic environment, complexities of politics and power struggles at the workplace,
we get a wider view of how I/O psychology is related to other disciplines.

3.4 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1) How can you relate the I/O Psychology to Social Psychology?
2) Write two contributions of I/O Psychology in Anthropology.
3) How can you see the influence of economics in the field of I/O Psychology?

3.5 GLOSSARY
Change Management : A systematic and proactive approach to
adapting to change, controlling change, and
effecting change, both from the perspective of
an organisation and on the individual level.
Consumer Research : Marketing research that yields information about
the motives and needs of different types of
consumers. It also helps buyers get information
that will help them make decisions and plans
for future purchases.
Culture : Many characteristics of a group of people,
including attitudes, behaviours, customs and
values that are transmitted from one generation
to the next (Matsumoto, 2000).
Groupthink : “A mode of thinking that people engage in when
they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group,
when the members’ strivings for unanimity
override their motivation to realistically appraise
alternative courses of action” (Janis, 1972,
p. 9)
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Industrial Sociology
Open system
Organisational Culture
: The study of social relationships and structures Organisational and
Industrial Psychology as
in industrial organisations. Related to Other
Disciplines
: A continuous inflow and outflow of energy
through permeable boundaries.
: The commonly held and relatively stable beliefs,
attitudes and values that exist within the
organisation. (Williams et al., 1993)

3.6 SUGGESTED READINGS AND REFERENCES

Luthans, F. (2007). Organisational Behaviour, 11th Ed. New York: McGraw Hill.
Robbins, S.P., Judge, T.A., & Sanghi, S. (2009). Organisational Behaviour, 13th
Ed. New Delhi: Pearson-Prentice Hall.
References
Frey, B.S. & Stutzer, A. (2007) (Eds.). Economics and Psychology: A Promising
New Cross-disciplinary Field. Cambridge; London: MIT Press.
Williams, A., Dodson, P., & Walters, M. (1993). Changing Culture, New
Organisational Approaches (2nd Ed.). London: Institute of Personnel Management.
Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company.

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