Organizational Psychology and Development: A Reader for Students and Practitioners

Citation

Morrell, K. (2005), "Organizational Psychology and Development: A Reader for Students and Practitioners", Personnel Review, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 504-507. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480510599806

1 Overview

This book contains ten chapters covering various topics relating to the development of people at work. As the back cover indicates, this is done at three levels: individuals in organizations (chapters 1 through 4); groups and teams (chapters 5 and 6) and organization level issues (chapters 7 through 10). Accordingly the contents should be of interest both to human resource development (HRD) practitioners, as well as to students and the research community. This review will look at each chapter in turn, and then offer a brief summary of the overall contribution of this volume.

The book opens with David Chan's chapter, “Conceptual and empirical gaps in research on individual adaptation at work”, perhaps more prosaically thought of as the problem with individuals’ “fitting” into their environment. Adaptation may be prompted in four ways (p. 2), wherever: changes and uncertainty arise in one's situation at work; problems caused where work places increased demands on people; established behaviours become less useful; adaptive behaviours become different from established routines. Chan offers a review of four relevant research literatures on individual adaptation (individual differences, training, teams and newcomer socialization) and concludes with a salutary warning that the field is in danger of being swamped by imprecise labelling of constructs – the danger of which would be that these “purportedly refer to scientific constructs or valid measurements concerning individual adaptation but in reality have no explanatory value” (p. 24).

Chapter 2, “The psychology of careers in organizations”, is by John Arnold, a colleague of mine at Loughborough University. It offers a useful eightfold summary of attempts to define career, prior to outlining the historical context for careers research. The chapter is organised in terms of three overarching themes: change and transition, career interventions in organizations, and career management (which incorporates an extended discussion of John Holland's typology of vocational personality). The most interesting section for me was the discussion of career counselling, using Katz's distinction between the counsellor's role to “help people to make decisions wisely, not wise (as judged by the counsellor) decisions”. This is important as the world of work changes and people find it hard to cope with the pace of change.

Chapter 3, on “Managerial career advancement”, by Phyllis Tharenou is very well structured, with a figure summarising the main variables assessed in the literature from both the organizational (opportunity structures, social structure, interpersonal context, promotion processes) and individual (traits, human capital, managerial skills, family) domains (p. 63). Tharenou goes on to discuss how organizational size, internal labour markets, organization growth and a range of other factors are connected to career advancement. She finds that representation by minority groups (including women) at the top of the hierarchy is more likely when subordinates are also from minority groups, “minorities in the managerial hierarchy increase minority representation in management” (p. 69).

Organ and Paine in chapter 4 assess, “A new kind of performance for industrial and organizational psychology: recent contributions to the study of organizational citizenship behaviour”. They trace the historical development of measures of organizational citizenship behaviour (beginning with Chester Barnard and with the Hawthorne studies), and deal well with the subject of interpersonal communication. One impressive feature of this chapter was the discussion of how one could make sense of the construct OCB in other national contexts, for example China and Nigeria. They make a compelling case for OCB to be studied as a discrete phenomenon in organizational behaviour, though perhaps their concluding suggestion of OCB as “contextual performance” (p. 144) is conceptually more clear, given differences in the way OCB may be understood across national boundaries.

Chapter 5 deals with “Team effectiveness in organizations”, in which West, Borrill and Unsworth assess the impact of small work groups in enhancing organizational effectiveness. They use a cybernetic model of work (input>transformation process>output) to see how teams can influence the achievement of organizational objectives. It was interesting for me to read this chapter as it offers a summary of attempts to replicate theories of administrative groups’ effectiveness (p. 158). As an aside, one interesting finding they report relates to the impact of latecomers on team meetings. Latecomers in the USA were perceived negatively, but in Brazil were perceived positively (p. 165). This shows how cultural and national differences can have an immediate impact on the logistics of planning small group meetings.

Chapter 6 on “Conflict and performance in groups and organizations” was a welcome addition to this series, since the theme of conflict is infrequently articulated in texts on organizational behaviour, perhaps because it is seen as the province of industrial relations. Dreu, Harinck and Van Vianen offer a thorough analysis of this topic and a helpful model of the conflict process (p. 205). They are in effect forging a new avenue of research for industrial and organizational psychology, since as they mention the last five “Annual review of psychology” texts do not deal with this theme at all. To this end it would have been helpful if the chapter had contained a slightly longer, expanded conclusion offering a clearer agenda for future research. Notwithstanding this minor point, it was excellent to see this theme covered in this series.

“Progress in organizational justice: tunnelling through the maze” is the topic of chapter 7. In this, Cropanzano and Greenberg offer an analysis of organizational justice, which they define as pertinent wherever questions “arise whenever decisions are made about the allocation of resources” (p. 244). They discuss procedural and distributive justice in turn – procedural justice refers to how decisions are taken, distributive justice refers to the outcomes of those decisions – prior to analysing the relationship between the two. Following this Cropanzano and Greenberg review practical applications of these themes looking at the topics of strategic planning, organizational staffing (recruitment), drug screening, organization image management, informal conflict resolution, layoffs organizational citizenship behaviours and employee theft. The conclusion is somewhat brief, but discussion of these topics should mean the chapter has something to offer practitioners in applying the principles of justice to a workplace setting.

Chapter 8, “Consequences of alternative work schedules”, should be of interest to practitioners and researchers studying occupational groups who operate a shift system, or work unconventional hours. I found this of interest since I have studied nurses as an occupational group, and had I read this chapter before carrying out my survey may well have incorporated some of the findings into the design of my study – for example they report that nurses on rotating shifts “have higher absenteeism and tardiness, and report higher rates of turnover intention” (p. 307). The consequences of shiftwork include “physiological, psychological, and performance related phenomena” (p. 299), and Daus Sanders and Campbell offer a range of suggestions to improve organizational and individual consequences of shiftwork. Their conclusion also offers scope for researchers to conduct innovative action research designed around a number of potential interventions (pp. 328‐9).

Chapter 9, “Impacts of telework on individuals organizations and families – a critical review”, offers a rounded analysis of the impacts of telework, and is unusual insofar as Konradt, Schmook and Mälecke also explore the consequences to families, something that is not often considered in industrial/organizational psychology texts. This chapter was a delight to read because it was so well structured and incorporates a systematic review of the relevant literature. This is made easily accessible in a series of comprehensive and clear tables and figures (see, for example, pp. 350‐3). The chapter concludes with a detailed and focused research agenda that should enable other researchers to contribute to the literature in this field. Konradt et al. also offer plenty for the practitioner to think about in the design of telework systems.

The final chapter, written by Gerard Hodgkinson, is titled “Psychology of strategic management: diversity and cognition revisited”. At times quite technical, this chapter builds on an earlier review of the literature on strategic management carried out by Sparrow in 1994. Part of the focus is on the cognitive processes of top management teams (or upper‐echelon executives) and how they interact to produce organizationally beneficial outcomes. Though of interest to a wide part of the research community (in part because of the exemplary rigour with which Hodgkinson carries out this review), this chapter is less immediately relevant for the mainstream of personnel practitioners, who may not have the influence to shape how top teams in their organization are assembled.

In common with other books in this series, this text offers a ready source of reference for students, practitioners and researchers with an interest in industrial and organizational psychology. Perhaps more so than other texts from the editorial pairing of Cooper and Robertson, this text also offers something to interest sociologists and those interested in industrial relations. This is because whilst losing none of the rigour of the earlier books in this series, this text also explores the themes of conflict at work, and how families are affected. This makes it a simple choice to recommend this text to a wide audience, notwithstanding that some readers will struggle with some of the technical detail in many of the chapters. Each chapter offers a conclusion and research agenda that make for a boon for researchers, whilst also offering a degree of detail on how such themes should be applied in the workplace.