essay questions based on articles

Intro

The job of IO psychologists working in OD is to figure out things that don’t make sense.

-To do this, we must understand that there is no “one size fits all” approach for issues in OD. In most cases, “it depends” is the right general answer. (However, in real life we don’t write that on our assignments. We explain what the correct answer should be thoroughly!)

-This is because in OD multiple things can be true at the same time.

What is an organization?

An organization is composed of social structure / social entity (or group of people). Therefore, OD is interdisciplinary because anything that describes social structures apply to OD (thus, psychology is involved among other things).

Definition: An organization is a group of people coming together to achieve something that they cannot achieve alone.

-For everything we consume, social entities need to manufacture & sell them - which makes organizations about people.

-An example of this is the bread industry. Making bread takes time, resources, effort, and money. Although it is cheaper to produce, sell, and buy in today’s world, it is still something that was not created frivolously by groups of people striving to feed many people across our country.

What is your vision of a good organization?

The things that organizations value are centered around people.

-Teamwork or collaboration / coordination / culture are about people.

-Silos (workplaces where we do things alone or in our small dept.) don’t advance because they don’t know the needs of other departments or how they could collaborate (which makes communication KEY).

PEOPLE are the number 1 resource for an organization.

-This means employee health & well-being is important and poor well-being for employees does not allow for good collaboration.

-In order for an organization to properly care about the wellbeing of their employees, they need to demonstrate sincere empathy. (The dilemma with this is: how do we encourage organizations to do show sincere empathy while maintaining a professional atmosphere? - Biggest question of IO psychology!)

-For example, throwing a saturday picnic to boost low morale after bad organizational policies may do more harm than good because it is clearly insincere (doesn’t begin to solve problem).

The aim of IO psychology is to match people (their #1 resource) with their best corresponding organization while meeting organizational goals.

-Thus, OD is a branch of positive psychology, but rather we’re looking at applying it to people with larger goals.

-In the workplace, we want interventions that achieve something bigger: higher performance, positive experiences, positive relationships, a positive environment.

Definitions of org development

1. Enduring changes an organization plans and implements to better achieve its goals

a. About people

a. “Enduring” refers to not superficial changes, but rather things that are institutional, long-lasting (goal of organizational development)

a. Need to be shared goals between the organization and employees

1. Emerging behavioral science discipline that provides a set of methodologies for systematically bringing about high performance organizations

b. Different from first in that it is science based

i. Strongest foundation in applied psych

1. Keeps us from making common assumptions, and helps us answer things systematically

1. Keeps organizations legally defensible

What is the role of psychology in OD?

Why should organizations hire IO psychologists instead of an MBA?

-We have a more in-depth focus on human behavior using systematic methods.

Why should we want to be in organizations along with MBAs?

-We have to make sure organizations practice efficiency ethically.

-To do this, we must sometimes change the approach of organizational leaders (if they are bad). This, of course, has to be tactfully done. We need to show them that their values can be achieved through better practices through “education” and not by “scolding” them.

-Framing is important, but can be superficial if it doesn’t have an in-depth message.

-bad framing: to increase teamwork, one puts up an inspirational picture

History of Management and the Importance of OD

Traditional Model

An organization can’t run w/o a high level of efficiency, which is why management theories are important. The early 1900s is when management theories were born because organizations wanted to know how to maximize the routine work of their employees to boost efficiency.

-Their message was clear: get the product out as fast as possible. They were not interested in what people brought to job because they believed that people thought that work was distasteful and that people only work for a paycheck.

Human Relations Model

A few decades later, the Hawthorne studies were done in which it was discovered that employees behave differently when being watched. These were primarily environmental studies that aimed to discover the best environment for people to work. Because Hawthorne didn’t understand his original results, he turned them over to Elton Mayo who figured out that caring about employees affects their performance & that social groups also affects people’s work.

Human Resource Model

In this era, people are considered resources, so organizations aim to treat their resources well. So, instead of just giving pats on the back & employee of the month awards, organizations now invest in people as a way to make innovations in their resources (training & professional development, etc… = all uses psychology to make sure it’s done well) and to become competitive.

*When we come back, need an example (words, pictures, etc) that shows what we think the business environment looks like.

Reading Notes:

-None today because no readings for week 1

Intro

The job of IO psychologists working in OD is to figure out things that don’t make sense.

-To do this, we must understand that there is no “one size fits all” approach for issues in OD. In most cases, “it depends” is the right general answer. (However, in real life we don’t write that on our assignments. We explain what the correct answer should be thoroughly!)

-This is because in OD multiple things can be true at the same time.

What is an organization?

An organization is composed of social structure / social entity (or group of people). Therefore, OD is interdisciplinary because anything that describes social structures apply to OD (thus, psychology is involved among other things).

Definition: An organization is a group of people coming together to achieve something that they cannot achieve alone.

-For everything we consume, social entities need to manufacture & sell them - which makes organizations about people.

-An example of this is the bread industry. Making bread takes time, resources, effort, and money. Although it is cheaper to produce, sell, and buy in today’s world, it is still something that was not created frivolously by groups of people striving to feed many people across our country.

What is your vision of a good organization?

The things that organizations value are centered around people.

-Teamwork or collaboration / coordination / culture are about people.

-Silos (workplaces where we do things alone or in our small dept.) don’t advance because they don’t know the needs of other departments or how they could collaborate (which makes communication KEY).

PEOPLE are the number 1 resource for an organization.

-This means employee health & well-being is important and poor well-being for employees does not allow for good collaboration.

-In order for an organization to properly care about the wellbeing of their employees, they need to demonstrate sincere empathy. (The dilemma with this is: how do we encourage organizations to do show sincere empathy while maintaining a professional atmosphere? - Biggest question of IO psychology!)

-For example, throwing a saturday picnic to boost low morale after bad organizational policies may do more harm than good because it is clearly insincere (doesn’t begin to solve problem).

The aim of IO psychology is to match people (their #1 resource) with their best corresponding organization while meeting organizational goals.

-Thus, OD is a branch of positive psychology, but rather we’re looking at applying it to people with larger goals.

-In the workplace, we want interventions that achieve something bigger: higher performance, positive experiences, positive relationships, a positive environment.

Definitions of org development

1. Enduring changes an organization plans and implements to better achieve its goals

a. About people

a. “Enduring” refers to not superficial changes, but rather things that are institutional, long-lasting (goal of organizational development)

a. Need to be shared goals between the organization and employees

1. Emerging behavioral science discipline that provides a set of methodologies for systematically bringing about high performance organizations

b. Different from first in that it is science based

i. Strongest foundation in applied psych

1. Keeps us from making common assumptions, and helps us answer things systematically

1. Keeps organizations legally defensible

What is the role of psychology in OD?

Why should organizations hire IO psychologists instead of an MBA?

-We have a more in-depth focus on human behavior using systematic methods.

Why should we want to be in organizations along with MBAs?

-We have to make sure organizations practice efficiency ethically.

-To do this, we must sometimes change the approach of organizational leaders (if they are bad). This, of course, has to be tactfully done. We need to show them that their values can be achieved through better practices through “education” and not by “scolding” them.

-Framing is important, but can be superficial if it doesn’t have an in-depth message.

-bad framing: to increase teamwork, one puts up an inspirational picture

History of Management and the Importance of OD

Traditional Model

An organization can’t run w/o a high level of efficiency, which is why management theories are important. The early 1900s is when management theories were born because organizations wanted to know how to maximize the routine work of their employees to boost efficiency.

-Their message was clear: get the product out as fast as possible. They were not interested in what people brought to job because they believed that people thought that work was distasteful and that people only work for a paycheck.

Human Relations Model

A few decades later, the Hawthorne studies were done in which it was discovered that employees behave differently when being watched. These were primarily environmental studies that aimed to discover the best environment for people to work. Because Hawthorne didn’t understand his original results, he turned them over to Elton Mayo who figured out that caring about employees affects their performance & that social groups also affects people’s work.

Human Resource Model

In this era, people are considered resources, so organizations aim to treat their resources well. So, instead of just giving pats on the back & employee of the month awards, organizations now invest in people as a way to make innovations in their resources (training & professional development, etc… = all uses psychology to make sure it’s done well) and to become competitive.

*When we come back, need an example (words, pictures, etc) that shows what we think the business environment looks like.

Reading Notes:

-None today because no readings for week 1

Test Notes

· We have 4-5 essays to finish in 1 week

· We need to answer a little bit of each

· Has page limits to make sure we answer questions (conciseness)

· We are encouraged to pull material from our conversations and the readings

· No research involved, nothing will be outside the class

· No sharing exams, needs to be done alone

· Can’t answer questions about exam after it’s handed out

· Voicethread will be sent tomorrow (PLAN)

· Will come to class monday for zoom conference

· Won’t last past 10 am

· Will have break from 10 - 12 pm

· Will still have QWs during exam week

· For grading on test, we will get feedback on what we might have missed and why

· Don’t need to have reference page, can just reference in article

· Won’t get points for using outside sources, so don’t bother if you don’t need to

Lecture

· Go over (find article(s) about different structures of organization)

· Organizational Structure

· Cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioral norms, beliefs of tolerance and risk taking

· Environmental

· The way things are done around here

· Defines organization

· Kind of a personality (don’t use this analogy, because it falls apart)

· Governs the behaviors people do there

· We all share cognitive framework of the organization

· Drives performance

· Highly pervasive: the way we are is the way we are

8. In our projects, we can’t change anything unless we know the culture of an organization

1. Culture is a very slow moving entity in terms of change

9. That’s why books that try to change your personality in simple steps are dumb because we are who we are and we don’t change overnight

9. Changing culture is not just hard for employees, administration needs to change their whole system that encourages the right behaviors/values (PA, connections, procedures, etc…)

1. Risk taking may be trying some new innovation (where you reward very specific episodes of failure)

1. Language to describe can be vague, but always needs to be followed up on

1. People are more than one dimension, therefore, organizations are multidimensional

12. The culture will attract certain types of people to org

12. There are tests that diagnose org culture (but they only capture so much and often fall short)

2. Its hard to really capture all the valid personality traits of a person, so it’s even harder to capture all the traits of an org

· Lewin (big social psychologist, loved groups)

· B=f(P,E)

· Behavior = function (Person, Environment)

. Behavior is a function of the person and the environment

. Every individual brings in their own personality and how they want to behave

. This lets us predict the behavior of people in organization

. Lewin describes climate and not culture

· Symbols of culture (Schein - major author in this area)

· We can understand culture by looking at its symbols

· Use of iceberg analogy

· Surface

. Things we can see about the org on the surface

1. If we walk in, we can understand some symbols by how people are dressed

1. If they’re wearing suits, do they all match? Are they all very modern? Are they marketing their look to their population that they are serving?

1. In their physical office location, do they separate management offices from employees?

2. Can’t look too far into it, because sometimes orgs just inherit layouts from others (e.g., local boss didn’t choose their space)

1. Parking can speak to how much orgs value their employees / how much they make

3. Important parking spaces close to entrance reserved may set hierarchical tone

1. If we see new buildings, we know they value new spaces

1. Posters hanging up

5. Do they have those teamwork pictures?

1. Does that mean they value teamwork? Or that they only invested in it with posters?

1. Top floor reserved for administrative?

6. Hierarchical? Or just need space for entertaining different audiences

1. Do you see the advertisement for the company picnic? Is it an annual picnic or annual golf game?

7. Picnics are more accessible and golf games are very exclusive to people who have the skills and means

1. Do people talk to each other on a first name basis, or are they using last names?

1. Personalized desks? Standardized desks?

1. gender/ethnic makeup

10. Can also be influenced by applicant pool/area they hire from

10. But can concern their hiring practices

· Values

. Stuff people feel within an organization (internal)

. Won’t necessarily see what org values in the physical space

. If you ask why people do something, if they say why - that is a value that is somehow being reinforced by the organization

3. They have to be able to share this

· Basic underlying assumptions (but why are we doing it)

. Different from values and surface

. Hard to talk about, because they’re so basic that they shouldn’t have to be talked about

2. In a college, should you have to say “we value education?”

2. Usually something that isn’t necessary to say

. Drive everything we do

. Sometimes there are basic underlying values that are not communicated to employees

· Climate vs Culture

· Hard to make distinct from each other

· No such thing as measure that captures whole organizational culture, because the things captured in standardized tool needs to be important to org

· History differentiates the two

. Culture comes from sociological, philosophical beginning

1. Literature more abstract and holistic

. Climate comes from measurement literature

2. Lewin uses formula to visualize climate, but can’t actually plug numbers into it

2. Literature Far more empirical overall so it could be measured

· Could be things about culture of org that defines them as a whole, but certain temporal issues (climate) could affect them as well

. Climate is certainly a shared social experience, but a localized/temporal thing

. For example, csusb has a certain culture but is experience an angry climate right now

. Climate is like the changing weather

. Seems that climate and culture looks at the same dimensions, but looks at them differently

4. This is what makes them hard to separate when making measurements for them

. Valuable to have conversation on difference between climate and culture, but it’s hard to have because it’s hard to distinguish

. Climate and culture can shape each other maybe?

· Culture development

· Founders

. Culture can come from goals of founders

1. Example: Disney had a dream and realized it. Then, when the org wanted to change that, they had to get rid of old execs because it was too pervasive.

· Experience with external environment

. May want internal attributes to reflect external audience/customer base

. For example, this barbie girl owns an extreme sports companies and all her employees were super hard looking because customers were too and it set them apart from other extreme sports companies

· Interactions between subsystems

. After growing, a company has a shipping department and marketing and sales and stuff

1. They need to communicate and orgs have different ways of choosing to do this

1. If they choose one person then they become a company that uses formalized patterns

1. If not, then they may become a more organic, hybrid company

. Systems may change either because stuff was toxic or because things don’t benefit them anymore with their environment (market) and stuff

Voicethread notes

Will cover effectiveness and efficiciency

NEED TO WATCH VOICETHREAD

· 2 voicethreads

· Communication

· Communication is the very essence of the organization KNOW FROM VOICETHREAD

· Literature on this area if fairly vague

2. Need to identify more dimensions

2. So since we are lacking in clearly identified dimensions, we need to be careful about what we measure when trying to capture communication

2. Additionally, communication can be measured by 1 org in one setting to have generalizability

1. Therefore, studies that claim to do this are naive

. Telephone game not so funny in the workplace

. The more links there are in the org, the more opportunities for error in communication

4. We need to figure out how to create those links to enhance error

. Who we are, how we interpret things, what our backgrounds are will shape how we interpret messages in the workplace

. Organizational Structure

6. There are things that naturally happen when travelling up the apex (not necessarily an error, just things that need to get changed in the memo -- sometimes the change is functional)

1. As a result, once something gets to the strategic apex it loses additional messages

6. Once something reaches the strategic apex, the message needs to be interpreted for what it means at each level of the org

. Psychological safety in the workplace

7. Need an environment that is safe for employees to communicate freely

7. Exploring this has no negative ramifications

· Productivity

. Pritchard article for the win

. Heterogeneity of domain

2. Creating good measures play a role in this discussion

2. You have many indicators of how an organization is doing

2. Used to be 2 different magazines that talked about GM at the same time

3. 1 discussed its success (looking at leadership dimension & interviewed strategic apex) and the other discussed its failure (workers were going on strike and stuff)

. Major message: we have to figure out what the different components of an organization are best to look out to measure success

3. There is no 1 dimensional/measure to collect data for from an org that measures its overall success

3. One of the things problematic right now in public education

2. 1 criteria used from state legislature are # of people that are graduated…. This could be good or indicative of a graduate mill that just gives you a diploma for money or lowers your unit requirements so you can graduate. Need more investigation of multiple domains

. Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

4. Also see pritchard

4. To see success in a company, can’t just look at financial success as an indicator of success - there are other domains to look at

2. Also need to see the standard you are comparing the success against

1. For example, satisfaction and some other factor may not be able to be compared if scales are different

1. Therefore, validity can’t always be a great way to go if constructs are different

2. Reliability can be hard to understand if…

2. Personalities are stable but test is picking up on people’s reactions to external influences

2. Employees don’t have trust and expect the org to be looking for something so they lie on the assessment

2. Therefore, one form of measurement is not going to capture the whole picture of what is happening in an organization

. Government has databases that show reliability of measurements across different fields

3. But none will capture whole story in every situation

3. Pritchard wants us to look w/in your organization to see what is right for you

3. Outcome measures aren’t always about profit margins, need to look at group processes as well because if its bad then we are losing (Jiang)

. Culture, structure & goals and who you are serving (their goals) define how well a company is doing

4. For example, to get good SOTEE ratings don’t get hw. But then you’re not eaching? That isn’t a good measure of success then?

1. So in the real world, you need to know your goals and those of who you are serving

· Climate has a temporal part to it, or has a short term effect

. So assessing the climate of CSUSB staff right now when it is at an unusual low, may not be a reliable measure

. Its more accurate to measure normal culture

2. Hard to give an easy answer to cause so many things change. Hard to know if measuring during this climate shows us success of new implemented changes or false results

· Internal v. External consulting - assessments of success

. Internal - have time to fully understand problem but may be influenced from internal forces

. External - have less time to fully understand problem but less biased by internal forces in understanding the problem

2. Can see a problem by stepping outside of the box

. There are instances where both can work together, but usually don’t because their goals get in the way of each other maybe by overlapping

· Organizational Change

· Readings on this bring us from sociology to psychology

· Still discussing multiple individuals

. Focusing on impact of organizational change on individuals

· What is the #1 reaction to change?

. Resistance from all, even if change is positive or negative (remember the company that wanted to move their employees from a building where the bricks were falling apart & people were sad about it because of their memories there)

1. Change is weird and can bring discomfort

. We need to prepare people for change

· Why people resist change

. *watch episode of the office when they merged with the other paper company*

. Distrust of org outcomes of change

2. economic/job security

2. Loss of social connections

2. Loss of comfortable habits

. Skepticism of org change turning out well

. Survivor syndrome - people who didn’t get laid off lose org commitment

4. Guilt for keeping their job

1. Even though you have job security, still feel bad about how things were done

1. Important to address how org decides who needs to leave

1. Should include feedback from operating core

· There is data that shows that companies lose 75% productivity after downsizing and 20% tend to leave after if no trust/communication is instilled

· Decrease hunger games all for one effect by emphasizing how jobs are related to one another

· One tactic of avoiding downsizing is using operating core to help come up with solutions to cutting corners in times of need... employees to help identify where people could be moved and jobs could be combined and stuff. Created more vacations. Shortened work weeks. Etc…

· Psychological contract

· Stated/unstated expectations (natural, cognitive process of what people pick up on) of what is guaranteed in the relationship between employee and employer

. Psychological components - guarantees of promotions, training, work/family life balance, etc…

· Usually expectations are picked up on when first joining an org. Then things are fulfilled or violated over time if they are not confirmed

· Orgs need to be aware of the symbols they are putting out there for potential and current employees

. Need to remember this when an org is considering change

. Big focus on education - need to make sure employees understand why things are happening and make experience positive v. negative

· Different ways to change in organizations

· Large scale (affects everone)

· Restructuring - changing reporting relationships of organization / changes communication flow

· Mergers & acquisitions

. Changes happening and bringing together 2 different cultures

1. Things clash: underlying assumptions, values, cultures, formalization, communication methods, population base, etc…

. Can create many negative feelings

2. Whose leadershp will live? Whose culture will survive? Who will keep their job (via blending or something else)?

· Downsizing - to decrease pressure on payroll

. More opportunity to do it poorly than to do it well

. Considered a very negative term

. There are situations where companies do this because they need to

3. Whereas there are other situations where companies do this to pump up their stock portfolio

. There are ways to downsize that are respectful of org

4. And ways to do that lead to mistrust of management

1. For example: faking PAs - maybe the company is in the public eye? Maybe the heads don’t plan to be there long?

· Outsourcing

. Changes org dynamics

. If personnel is outsourced, no every employee needs to communicate outside the organziation with another org that has a different culture than theirs whenever they need something from personnel

· Business Process

. Changing the way we do the job

1. Probably changes the employees who do the job (selecting new people, giving new training)

1. Creates new positions sometimes

· Quality Movements

. Creates layers across the org to look for ways to improve quality across the org (& performance)

1. Built on a lot of communication, and new connection

· Case study of retail workers (1 or 2 wks ago?)

· Great example of unintended consequences of change

· If you don’t think through the ramifications of what your’e doing then you leave a lot of room for error

· Used bad productivity measures and implicit leading to illegal actions

· They focused too heavily on a few things and not the whole picture

· Didn’t make sure to evaluate outcomes they wanted

· EXAM REVIEW (comes live 10/23 at noon)

· 5 questions

· Each have multiple font

· Apa format

· Will answer structure questions

· Won't answer content questions

· Introduction - understanding what an organization is

· What it means to be a SOCIAL organizational structure

· Helped us understand how psychology plays a role

. We are really abot the people in the org

· If we have this collection of people happening, how do we shape/coordinate them into different parts of the org

· Hall reading - dimesnions of org. More modern approach

· Mintzberg - helped give us terms for our orgs

· Can use hall or mintzberg for ouor paper

· Schminke - support in that area - - - trust

· Kahtz & Kahn - open systems theory

· About the interface of the organization & what’s in the environment

· Can’t understand what’s happening in an org if you don’t consider what’s happening in the environment outside of the org

· Redefined boundaries of the org

· When we diagnose then, we include analysisi of external environment

· Summaries of katz & kahn

. SUPER important

. 10 characteristics

· Winterton article

· Management theory

· To round out our understanding of the earlier studies that really highlighted the balance of the socio-emotional components with technology

. Neet to shape use of tech advancements with socio-emotional components as well

· Climate culture

· We really understand orgs only by understanding how orgs are unique

· Culture - what drives the behavior in an org

· Schnieder

· Katzenbach - how its used in practice

· Support material

· Jiang - not just using bottom line to see how an org is doing (plays into open systems theory)

· Simons case study - using wrong criteria can lead us down the wrong pathway

· We don’t define productivity by individuals when talking about org (simons)

· Communication

· Very essense of an organization

· Not a lot of work in literature about it

· Vry little from IO field about it (partially because it is a multi displinary field

· Communication becomes a big deal because we use it more as it evolves

· Communication richness, etc…

· Media richness article is great

· Older stuff very sociological

· Resistance to change

· More psychology as focusing on individual responses to effects

· Cynicism article

. Great reminder of how individual changes might be seen

1. Based on current people and beahvior to change in the past

· Org change

· 2 articles for history (will review next week - not on exam - burke & wee)

· *on exam, can use examples from class but most definitely use examples from articles!!!!

· Not always 1 article to fit all, if we can make connections between stuff then we’re good

· When referring to articles, don’t need citations (just author names)

· Due 759 am next monday

*for paper, can start outlining what we want to write about (focus on culture in bulleted form )

Will have info to fill out later

Cant fully assume problems of org initially ususally, for now we want to kind of work backwards (give solutions and tie back to problems)

· *No right or wrong answers. Everything depends on how we use the materials