COURSE TITLE - INDUSTRIAL AND

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

COURSE CODE - PSY 216

NAME - MOYINOLUWA ROSELINE ADESIYAN

QUESTION
Do a write-up on the historical antecedents of Industrial Organisational Psychology.
Considering contributions from the following;
➔ World War 1
➔ World war 2

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➔ In-between wars

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➔ Hawthorn Experiment

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➔ Henri Fayol

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➔ Fredrick Taylor

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➔ Frank and Lillian Gilbreth

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HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL-ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Industrial and organisational Psychology (I-O) Psychology is a dynamic area of study
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within the field of psychology that studies how human behaviolur and psychology
affect work and how they are affected by work.
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Industrial-organizational psychology(term usage started in 1970s) was initially called

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industrial psychology, It has its origins in the early 1900s in United States of America. A
good number of influential early psychologists studied issues that today would be categorized
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as industrial psychology. Some of these early psychologists includes; Hugo Munsterberg,

Walter Dill Scott, Frederick Taylor, and James Cattell, Frank and Lillian Gilberth etc. Hugo
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Munsterberg and Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth are the father and mother of Industrial-
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organisational Psychology.
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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM WORLD WAR I (1917 - 1918 U.S)

The war provide opportunities for a wide range of academic and applied psychologists
to work together. The relationships enriched the overall knowledge base of Industrial
Organizational psychology. In April 1917, the U.S.A involvement catalyzed the participation
in the military efforts of psychologist working in that field. Robert Yerkes, the president of

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APA (America psychological Association) at the time along with Walter Bingham, was
charged with developing tests that could quickly assess the intellectual capacity of incoming
army recruits. He developed Army Alpha and Army Beta for screening and selecting enlisted
men. The Army Alpha test measure mental abilities and the Army Beta test was a non-verbal
form of the test that was administered to illiterate recruits and non-English speaking draftees.
Example is found in a series of research articles in the Journal of Personnel Research in the
late 1920s (Vinchur & Koppes, 2014).

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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM WORLD WAR II (1941-1945)

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Industrial psychologists were much better prepared for the second war. This time the
Army came knocking on the psychologists' doors. Walter Dill Scott Bingham was again a
key person chairing an advisory committee during the war. The Army General Classification
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Test (AGCT), a group test, separated new recruits into categories for military duties based on
test scores. Psychologists were also responsible for the development of cockpit simulators to
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train pilots. The Office of Strategic Services was formed (OSS) to train military intelligence
personnel. Examined how officers performed under stress, constantly scrutinized by a team
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of psychologists. This approach eventually led to the development of Assessment Centers at

AT&T, a personnel predictor we'll talk about later on.
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The aim was to assess their ability to deal with stressful and frustrating circumstances, which
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is very important for soldiers involved in military espionage.

Personnel psychology was also evident in the civilian sector where women had to be
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tested, selected, and trained to take over all the jobs in the factories. It was Industrial
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Psychologists who quickly realized that women were more than capable of competing with
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men in the workplace (although socially the world wasn't ready for it yet).
It was during this time that business and industry began to realize that many of the
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testing, selection, training, and other techniques being used by the military could also be
applied to everyday companies.

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 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM IN_BETWEEN WARS (1919 - 1940)
Walter Dill Scott Bingham organized the Bureau of Salesmanship Research at
the Carnegie Institute of Technology which focused on the selection, classification, and
development of sales personnel, clerical workers, and executives.
The last of the "founding fathers" in 1921 was James McKeen Cattell. He established

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the Psychological Corporation (still a major business in psychology today) for the purposes

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of performing reference checks on psychologists that companies were considering to hire as

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consultants. Today, Psych. Corp. is a major psychological test publisher. Cattell was also
very influential in the early statistics.

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The first Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology was also awarded to Bruce V. Moore at
Carnegie-Mellon in 1921. Penn State Univ. and many other campuses have a building
dedicated to Moore.
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Some notable publications included Morris Viteles "Industrial Psychology" book in
1932 and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) that described and classified hundreds
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of jobs and the abilities necessary to perform them. Viteles book fully outlined the Ind.
Psych. profession and led to the development of academic depts. across the U.S.
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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM HAWTHORN EXPERIMENT (1929 -

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1932)
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A series of studies at a plant near Chicago, Western Electric’s Hawthorne Work was
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carried out by Elton Mayo and his colleagues which marked the origin of Organisational
Psychology. The research was into the
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effects of the physical work environment

(e.g., level of lighting in a factory).
What the original researchers found was
that any change in a variable, such as
lighting levels, led to an improvement in
productivity; this was true even when the

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change was negative, such as a return to poor lighting.
This was what later led to what we called Hawthorne effect, which describes the increase in
performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and paid attention to by researchers or
supervisors.

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM HENRI FAYOL

Henry Fayol’s gave 14 principles of management to address an organization from a

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top-down approach to help managers get the best from employees and ensure smooth

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operations of the organisation or industry business easily. The principles are;

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1. Division of work

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2. Authority
3. Discipline
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4. Unity of Command
5. Unity of Direction
6. Collective interest over individual interest
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7. Remuneration
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8. Centralization
9. Scalar Chain
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10. Order
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11. Equity
12. Stability of Tenure of Personnel
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13. Initiative
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14. Esprit de Corps (a shared spirit of

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enthusiasm, team spirit. Devotion to a cause

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among members of a team)

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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM A. FREDRICK TAYLOR

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Taylor was an industrial engineer, who along with other noted engineers like Lillian

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and Frank Gilbreth, redesigned jobs, developed training

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programs, and use selection methods to increase the

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efficiency of workers. He published the book
'Principles of Scientific Management' (1911) .
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He discovered that work periods increased
productivity as did increased pay via the time and
motion studies which doubled, tripled and quadrupled
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workers output. He also worked in establishing

standards for tools and new approaches for tool shop
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machinists. His motto "one best way" epitomized his

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belief that through observation and research you could

identify the best way to do a job.
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As such, Taylor conducted "time and motion" studies to

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learn how to minimize human movement/exertion and

maximize production.
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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM FRANK AND LILLIAN EVELYN

MOLLER GILBRETH

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 Lillian Gilbreth is the mother of Industrial and
Organisational Psychology. She studied efficiency
improvements that were applicable in the workplace, home,
and other areas. She used time and motion studies to check
workers productivity. Lillian and her husband frank, worked
to make workers more efficient by reducing the number of
motions required to perform a task. She investigated

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employee fatigue and time management stress and found
many employees were motivated by money and job

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satisfaction. In 1914.

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For example, scientific management principles and procedures such as time-and-motion

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studies greatly improved the efficiency of a wide variety of typical types of jobs, including
cabinetmaking, clerical filing, lumber sawing, and the making of reinforced concrete slabs
(increased from 80 to 425 slabs per day!) (Lowry, Maynard, & Stegemerten, 1940).
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Unfortunately, Taylor’s philosophy was quite narrow and limite
She is credited with the idea of putting shelves on the inside of refrigerator doors and (c)
foot-pedal-operated garbage cans. (credit b: modification of work by “Goedeker’s”/Flickr;
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credit c: modification of work by Kerry Ceszyk)

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