Summary Lectures Organizational
Psychology
Lecture 1: Introduction
Psychology: The study of human mind and behaviour
Organizational psychology: The study of human mind and behaviour in an organisational context
(why do people feel/think/do the way they feel/think/do in organisations)
- Organisation: a group of people regularly working together to achieve some common goal.
(e.g. Tilburg University/McDonalds/Football team
- Important because: we spend a majority of our days devoted to our work but there’s a trend in
which we’re working less than we used to.
Three levels of study
At each level different topics can be situated and different questions can be answered
1) Individual: e.g. doctor (personality/values/beliefs, attitudes, emotions, decision making)
2) Groups: (vague boundaries) e.g. surgical team (teamwork, cooperation & competition, leadership)
3) Organisations: e.g. hospital (organisational structure & culture, hybrid work, change management,
communication)
Difference with Organizational Behaviour (OB)?
Organisational behaviour: Investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on
behaviour within organisations. what people think/feel/do, how people in organisations relate to
each other and to the organisation, how organisations interact with their external environment)
- Goal: improve performance (and do so ethically) of organizations in terms of effectiveness
(achieving goals) and efficiency (watching costs)
Work centrality: The degree of importance work plays in one’s life (work is to earn money but a
survey shows that 70% doesn’t want to stop working when they have enough money to live
comfortably) work defines who we are and work is a defining characteristic of how people assess
their value to society, their family, and themselves
Common sense: Based on the belief that human mind and behaviour are not random – they have
predictable patterns. BUT: predicting human mind and behaviour/intuition often turns out to be wrong
- Predicting: Does A causes B?
- Explaining: Why (and when) events occur the way they do?
- Managing: Directing people’s mind and behaviour in order to achieve define goals.
As levels of wealth increase, levels of compassion and empathy decrease and levels of entitlement,
self-interest and servingness rise (wealthy people more often engage in unethical behaviour)
Evidence based management
Decisions should be based on a combination of critical thinking and the best available evidence.
Using data to drive decisions. Stories are persuasive but more often inaccurate. Data is boring but
often accurate so combine them.
Lecture 2: Attitudes at work
Satisfied and committed workers will be more productive and loyal and are good for the profit of the
company. Focussing on attitudes instead of the numbers can automatically result in better productivity.
What are attitudes?:
Attitudes: Evaluative statements about objects, people, or events. Favorable or unfavorable. (attitudes
reflect how we feel e.g. “I like my job”. Can be positive or negative).
,The 3 components of an attitude
1. Cognitive: description of our belief (e.g. believing that promotion to someone else is unfair ad
therefor your supervisor s is unfair)
2. Affective: emotional aspect/feeling (you dislike you supervisor because he is promoting
someone else)
3. Behavioural: behavioural intention instead of the behaviour itself (intention to leave the
organisation)
Leads to a negative attitude e.g. towards the supervisor. But the components are interrelated and
influence each other so also the other way around.
The relationship between attitudes and behaviour:
Before 1930s: interested in the impact of the physical working conditions and pay in improving
employee productivity, but little interest in attitudes and psychological experiences of the workers and
how they evaluated their job.
Hawthorne studies:
Actually studied illumination but found that productivity increased regardless of whether physical
conditions improved or worsened. Increased attention to workers in all study conditions led to
increased job satisfaction, which increased their productivity.
This changed the view dramatically. They acknowledged that social needs at work were important to
increase workers performance (not only economical).
- Hawthorne effect: Employees will perform better when they feel singled out for special
attention or feel that management is concerned about employee welfare.
Major attitudes in Organisational Psychology research
1. Job satisfaction: positive feeling about the job resulting from the positive evaluation of that
job
2. Work engagement: employees enthusiasm for the work they are doing (loving your job)
3. Job involvement: reflect how much people identify with their job and consider their job
important to their self-worth (will strive to perform at their best level/feeling connected)
4. Organizational commitment: workers identification with the organisation and wish to stay a
member in the future
5. Perceived organizational support: The degree to which they believe that the organisation
values them and cares about their well-being
Highly related and may overlap e.g. work engagement and job involvement
1) Job satisfaction:
An appraisal or evaluation of one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics mostly seen
as a ‘Cognitive’ attitude, can be evaluated favorable or unfavorable
Overall satisfaction: Single overall evaluative rating of the job (one global rating for workers)
“Overall, how satisfied are you with your current job?” circle a number from 1 to 5 from highly
satisfied to highly dissatisfied better if you’re interested in only job satisfaction
- Faces-Scale (Kunin, 1955): scale with 5 faces happy to sad
Advantage: fast way for example in long survey, for participant to not drop out.
Facet satisfaction: Information related to specific elements of job satisfaction, (most important
aspects of a job) better if you need info on various aspects
- Job descriptive index: measures workers satisfaction of multiple aspects of the job e.g.
pay/supervision/co-workers etc. e.g. “work on present job is fascinating” yes/no/cannot
decide
Advantage: Gives managers more detailed information about the sources of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction and gives concrete guidelines to improve satisfaction.
,Disadvantage: no better validity than the single/overall item test because it’s quite long which can
influence the score at the end
How satisfied are people in their jobs?:
In 1935 only 12% of workers were classified as dissatisfied. Later on surveys still show a very low
percentage of dissatisfied workers and the very satisfied workers increased. In the Netherlands there
were similar results.
Pay and job satisfaction
Most studies find a small effect of pay on job satisfaction, and in some cases, even a negative
association is found.
- Importance of pay also depends on the level of pay: Stronger positive association at lower pay
levels (pay is more important in lower functions than in higher functions as it can make a lot
of difference in paying for rent/food/car etc. in higher functions it will not make a lot of
difference anymore)
Pay is only a small factor of job satisfaction and there are a lot more variables that affect job
satisfaction
Why is job satisfaction important for organizations?
- The correlation between job satisfaction and job performance is moderate. Satisfied workers
are more motivated to perform well and put more effort in their job.
o Also a reverse/reciprocal relationship: better performers might be more satisfied
because they perform better.
Longitudinal studies: Measuring the same variables at multiple time points so
you can test either direction at different times. 2 studies pointed at job
performance resulting in job satisfaction and not the other way around and 2
studies pointed at a bidirectional relationship.
- Job satisfaction also leads to more OCB (organizational citizenship behaviour): going above
and beyond what is in your contract). This will increase the profit of the organisation.
Job satisfaction and organizational performance
Favourable job attitudes ‘make’ the organisation more profitable.
- ~ Harter et al (2010) Large survey shows that job satisfaction predict units’ performance 6
months later (e.g., better financial performance, lower turnover, higher customer loyalty)
- In companies with more satisfied workers, the stock prices grew more
Potential reasons: Employee performance/Less turnover/Higher customer satisfaction/loyalty
Satisfied workers may perform better so also less costs for the organization and less loss of
knowledge and may help clients better so higher customer satisfaction etc.
Managers’ misperception
Employers/managers overestimate their employees’ satisfaction: survey shows that 86% employers
think that employees are treated well vs. 55% of employees
Managers are often not in direct contact with employees (social distance)
Employees cannot always answer honestly and may not feel comfortable sharing their
discomforts or may act in a socially desirable way
Illusion of superiority by the managers, they want to feel good about themselves (I treat them
well so they should be satisfied) they want to believe that they are good managers.
Regular employee surveys can help to reduce the gap. Can highlight problems so interventions can
take place (they give employees a voice and have a say in decision making in the organization)
Hawthorne effect: When employees have the feeling that they’re heard, they’re more satisfied with the
job
2) Work engagement:
, “a positive, full-filling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication,
and absorption” (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010) Reminds of concept intrinsic motivation of
motivational research (doing the job because you like the job and think it’s important).
Relatively new construct and still receives a lot of research attention. More ‘affective’ than job
satisfaction (which is more ‘cognitive’), but closely related
Utrecht Work Engagement Scale: rate from 1 to 6 going from never to always/daily. One of the most
used measures
a) “At my job I feel strong and vigorous.” (vigor)
b) “Time flies when I am working.” (absorption)
c) “I am proud of the work that I do.” (dedication)
Vigor: they have energy to do it and mental resilience
Dedication: it is meaningful to them. Strongly involved in their work and experiencing enthusiasm
and challenge
Absorption: they are fully concentrated on it and absorbed in their work and have the feeling that time
passed by very quickly and have difficulty detaching themselves form work.
Work engagement around the world ~ Towers Perrin (2006)
86,000 employees in mid-size and large companies in 16 countries
Globally: 14% highly engaged, 24% disengaged (rather similar across countries with some exceptions:
in India and Japan high percentage of disengaged workers) compared to job satisfaction, this is a
high number.
Work engagement is harder to reach than job satisfaction maybe because it depends on the content of
the work e.g. the degree of repetitiveness/level of routine/creativity in your job etc.
Work engagement & performance
Work engagement predicts performance about equally as strong as job satisfaction does
Lecture 3: Emotions at work
- Until recently: little attention for emotion is organizational psychology research myth of
rationality: belief that emotions at work are disruptive and bad for workers performance and
that workers should act as rational individuals.
- Now: emotions are part of workers life and can bad or good consequences so important to deal
with them rather than ignore them
Emotions vs. moods
3 terms that are closely related but should be differentiated:
1) Affect: general umbrella term - wide range of feelings including emotions and moods.
2) Emotions: triggered by a specific event, brief in duration (seconds/minutes), specific in nature
(e.g. anger/fear/happiness etc.), can be linked to distinct facial expressions and action oriented
(give rise to some behavioral intentions)
3) Moods: More general and not linked to 1 specific event (e.g. you can just wake up in a
negative mood and unclear why you feel this way), last longer (hours/days), More general, 2
dimensions (positive or negative) consists of multiple emotions but less intensive, Cannot be
linked to distinct facial expressions and more cognitive in nature, impact the way you think
Emotions and moods are related but can also stimulate each other (interdependent) an emotion can
translate into a negative mood and the other way around.
Basic (fundamental) emotions
6 basic emotions ~ Ekman (1972): Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust
Universal because other cultures easily recognised these emotions. BUT the error rate
increased when respondent didn’t get a fixed list of emotions they could choose form
Psychology
Lecture 1: Introduction
Psychology: The study of human mind and behaviour
Organizational psychology: The study of human mind and behaviour in an organisational context
(why do people feel/think/do the way they feel/think/do in organisations)
- Organisation: a group of people regularly working together to achieve some common goal.
(e.g. Tilburg University/McDonalds/Football team
- Important because: we spend a majority of our days devoted to our work but there’s a trend in
which we’re working less than we used to.
Three levels of study
At each level different topics can be situated and different questions can be answered
1) Individual: e.g. doctor (personality/values/beliefs, attitudes, emotions, decision making)
2) Groups: (vague boundaries) e.g. surgical team (teamwork, cooperation & competition, leadership)
3) Organisations: e.g. hospital (organisational structure & culture, hybrid work, change management,
communication)
Difference with Organizational Behaviour (OB)?
Organisational behaviour: Investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on
behaviour within organisations. what people think/feel/do, how people in organisations relate to
each other and to the organisation, how organisations interact with their external environment)
- Goal: improve performance (and do so ethically) of organizations in terms of effectiveness
(achieving goals) and efficiency (watching costs)
Work centrality: The degree of importance work plays in one’s life (work is to earn money but a
survey shows that 70% doesn’t want to stop working when they have enough money to live
comfortably) work defines who we are and work is a defining characteristic of how people assess
their value to society, their family, and themselves
Common sense: Based on the belief that human mind and behaviour are not random – they have
predictable patterns. BUT: predicting human mind and behaviour/intuition often turns out to be wrong
- Predicting: Does A causes B?
- Explaining: Why (and when) events occur the way they do?
- Managing: Directing people’s mind and behaviour in order to achieve define goals.
As levels of wealth increase, levels of compassion and empathy decrease and levels of entitlement,
self-interest and servingness rise (wealthy people more often engage in unethical behaviour)
Evidence based management
Decisions should be based on a combination of critical thinking and the best available evidence.
Using data to drive decisions. Stories are persuasive but more often inaccurate. Data is boring but
often accurate so combine them.
Lecture 2: Attitudes at work
Satisfied and committed workers will be more productive and loyal and are good for the profit of the
company. Focussing on attitudes instead of the numbers can automatically result in better productivity.
What are attitudes?:
Attitudes: Evaluative statements about objects, people, or events. Favorable or unfavorable. (attitudes
reflect how we feel e.g. “I like my job”. Can be positive or negative).
,The 3 components of an attitude
1. Cognitive: description of our belief (e.g. believing that promotion to someone else is unfair ad
therefor your supervisor s is unfair)
2. Affective: emotional aspect/feeling (you dislike you supervisor because he is promoting
someone else)
3. Behavioural: behavioural intention instead of the behaviour itself (intention to leave the
organisation)
Leads to a negative attitude e.g. towards the supervisor. But the components are interrelated and
influence each other so also the other way around.
The relationship between attitudes and behaviour:
Before 1930s: interested in the impact of the physical working conditions and pay in improving
employee productivity, but little interest in attitudes and psychological experiences of the workers and
how they evaluated their job.
Hawthorne studies:
Actually studied illumination but found that productivity increased regardless of whether physical
conditions improved or worsened. Increased attention to workers in all study conditions led to
increased job satisfaction, which increased their productivity.
This changed the view dramatically. They acknowledged that social needs at work were important to
increase workers performance (not only economical).
- Hawthorne effect: Employees will perform better when they feel singled out for special
attention or feel that management is concerned about employee welfare.
Major attitudes in Organisational Psychology research
1. Job satisfaction: positive feeling about the job resulting from the positive evaluation of that
job
2. Work engagement: employees enthusiasm for the work they are doing (loving your job)
3. Job involvement: reflect how much people identify with their job and consider their job
important to their self-worth (will strive to perform at their best level/feeling connected)
4. Organizational commitment: workers identification with the organisation and wish to stay a
member in the future
5. Perceived organizational support: The degree to which they believe that the organisation
values them and cares about their well-being
Highly related and may overlap e.g. work engagement and job involvement
1) Job satisfaction:
An appraisal or evaluation of one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics mostly seen
as a ‘Cognitive’ attitude, can be evaluated favorable or unfavorable
Overall satisfaction: Single overall evaluative rating of the job (one global rating for workers)
“Overall, how satisfied are you with your current job?” circle a number from 1 to 5 from highly
satisfied to highly dissatisfied better if you’re interested in only job satisfaction
- Faces-Scale (Kunin, 1955): scale with 5 faces happy to sad
Advantage: fast way for example in long survey, for participant to not drop out.
Facet satisfaction: Information related to specific elements of job satisfaction, (most important
aspects of a job) better if you need info on various aspects
- Job descriptive index: measures workers satisfaction of multiple aspects of the job e.g.
pay/supervision/co-workers etc. e.g. “work on present job is fascinating” yes/no/cannot
decide
Advantage: Gives managers more detailed information about the sources of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction and gives concrete guidelines to improve satisfaction.
,Disadvantage: no better validity than the single/overall item test because it’s quite long which can
influence the score at the end
How satisfied are people in their jobs?:
In 1935 only 12% of workers were classified as dissatisfied. Later on surveys still show a very low
percentage of dissatisfied workers and the very satisfied workers increased. In the Netherlands there
were similar results.
Pay and job satisfaction
Most studies find a small effect of pay on job satisfaction, and in some cases, even a negative
association is found.
- Importance of pay also depends on the level of pay: Stronger positive association at lower pay
levels (pay is more important in lower functions than in higher functions as it can make a lot
of difference in paying for rent/food/car etc. in higher functions it will not make a lot of
difference anymore)
Pay is only a small factor of job satisfaction and there are a lot more variables that affect job
satisfaction
Why is job satisfaction important for organizations?
- The correlation between job satisfaction and job performance is moderate. Satisfied workers
are more motivated to perform well and put more effort in their job.
o Also a reverse/reciprocal relationship: better performers might be more satisfied
because they perform better.
Longitudinal studies: Measuring the same variables at multiple time points so
you can test either direction at different times. 2 studies pointed at job
performance resulting in job satisfaction and not the other way around and 2
studies pointed at a bidirectional relationship.
- Job satisfaction also leads to more OCB (organizational citizenship behaviour): going above
and beyond what is in your contract). This will increase the profit of the organisation.
Job satisfaction and organizational performance
Favourable job attitudes ‘make’ the organisation more profitable.
- ~ Harter et al (2010) Large survey shows that job satisfaction predict units’ performance 6
months later (e.g., better financial performance, lower turnover, higher customer loyalty)
- In companies with more satisfied workers, the stock prices grew more
Potential reasons: Employee performance/Less turnover/Higher customer satisfaction/loyalty
Satisfied workers may perform better so also less costs for the organization and less loss of
knowledge and may help clients better so higher customer satisfaction etc.
Managers’ misperception
Employers/managers overestimate their employees’ satisfaction: survey shows that 86% employers
think that employees are treated well vs. 55% of employees
Managers are often not in direct contact with employees (social distance)
Employees cannot always answer honestly and may not feel comfortable sharing their
discomforts or may act in a socially desirable way
Illusion of superiority by the managers, they want to feel good about themselves (I treat them
well so they should be satisfied) they want to believe that they are good managers.
Regular employee surveys can help to reduce the gap. Can highlight problems so interventions can
take place (they give employees a voice and have a say in decision making in the organization)
Hawthorne effect: When employees have the feeling that they’re heard, they’re more satisfied with the
job
2) Work engagement:
, “a positive, full-filling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication,
and absorption” (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010) Reminds of concept intrinsic motivation of
motivational research (doing the job because you like the job and think it’s important).
Relatively new construct and still receives a lot of research attention. More ‘affective’ than job
satisfaction (which is more ‘cognitive’), but closely related
Utrecht Work Engagement Scale: rate from 1 to 6 going from never to always/daily. One of the most
used measures
a) “At my job I feel strong and vigorous.” (vigor)
b) “Time flies when I am working.” (absorption)
c) “I am proud of the work that I do.” (dedication)
Vigor: they have energy to do it and mental resilience
Dedication: it is meaningful to them. Strongly involved in their work and experiencing enthusiasm
and challenge
Absorption: they are fully concentrated on it and absorbed in their work and have the feeling that time
passed by very quickly and have difficulty detaching themselves form work.
Work engagement around the world ~ Towers Perrin (2006)
86,000 employees in mid-size and large companies in 16 countries
Globally: 14% highly engaged, 24% disengaged (rather similar across countries with some exceptions:
in India and Japan high percentage of disengaged workers) compared to job satisfaction, this is a
high number.
Work engagement is harder to reach than job satisfaction maybe because it depends on the content of
the work e.g. the degree of repetitiveness/level of routine/creativity in your job etc.
Work engagement & performance
Work engagement predicts performance about equally as strong as job satisfaction does
Lecture 3: Emotions at work
- Until recently: little attention for emotion is organizational psychology research myth of
rationality: belief that emotions at work are disruptive and bad for workers performance and
that workers should act as rational individuals.
- Now: emotions are part of workers life and can bad or good consequences so important to deal
with them rather than ignore them
Emotions vs. moods
3 terms that are closely related but should be differentiated:
1) Affect: general umbrella term - wide range of feelings including emotions and moods.
2) Emotions: triggered by a specific event, brief in duration (seconds/minutes), specific in nature
(e.g. anger/fear/happiness etc.), can be linked to distinct facial expressions and action oriented
(give rise to some behavioral intentions)
3) Moods: More general and not linked to 1 specific event (e.g. you can just wake up in a
negative mood and unclear why you feel this way), last longer (hours/days), More general, 2
dimensions (positive or negative) consists of multiple emotions but less intensive, Cannot be
linked to distinct facial expressions and more cognitive in nature, impact the way you think
Emotions and moods are related but can also stimulate each other (interdependent) an emotion can
translate into a negative mood and the other way around.
Basic (fundamental) emotions
6 basic emotions ~ Ekman (1972): Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust
Universal because other cultures easily recognised these emotions. BUT the error rate
increased when respondent didn’t get a fixed list of emotions they could choose form
