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Industrial Organizational Psychology : How Or If They Are Correctly Based On Past And Current Research

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Industrial Organizational psychology (I/O psychology) is the study of human behavior in the workplace or organizational settings. The study of Industrial Organizational psychology is used to conduct research in order to develop and apply solutions to conflicts in an organizational setting (Spector, 2011, p. 5). This paper will highlight topics of Industrial Organizational psychology in the film ANTZ and analyze how or if they are correctly based on past and current research used in the field. The film ANTZ is an animated, fictitious comedy depicting the life of the roles within an ant colony. The main character, worker ant, Z combats against the hierarchy of the colony while also encouraging other ants to become non-conforming in order to …show more content…

However, the social processes approach takes each individual and evaluates how he or she may fit into the organization, not based on predetermined testing. (Bolander & Sandberg, 2013)
Industrial Organizational psychology uses KSAO’s. KSAO is the acronym that stands for Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other. The category “Other” includes behaviors that do not fall into the previous categories but may be useful or relative to the jobs duties, these can include outside hobbies and specific interests (Spector, 2011, p. 122). If one looks at the organization of an ant colony outside the fictional situation of the film, the social processes may not be the best to apply to the employee selection seeing as there are thousands of ants. However the psychometric approach can be applied; when the attributes of a worker ant are determined, the head of the colony can then make better selections in ant placement within the colony. To determine the KSAOs of each Ant an effective assessment that can be given is a group test due to the vast amount of bodies in the colony. If a few of these steps were taken ants like “Z” wouldn’t feel out of place and want to rebel against the position he was given as a worker ant.
As the film progresses, worker Ant Z manages to switch jobs and become a solider ant. This drastic change is all in effort to try and gain the attention of the princess Ant. From the time Z is coercing his friend Weaver (solider ant) to switch roles we see the

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