Workplace Psychology and Cultures: A Case Study

Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologists- Study how people’s work environments affect them. Can help workers improve efficiency

We work, strive, succeed, and sometimes we fail. What drives us to succeed, or in some cases keeps us from success? Perhaps a better understanding of our motives, and the motives of our colleagues would help us make the personality changes we need to succeed. The way we interact with others in the workplace and our personal life may be improved. The Freudian theories opened our minds to many of our odd behaviors but did little to provide methods of self-examination. Very few of us have the time and the funds available for in-depth

Workplace culture is often hard to describe, because it means something different in every organisation and many times employees feel it’s ‘just the way things are’. But so often it can define a company and when it’s not working well, everyone knows about it.

The purpose of psychologists in the workplace is to promote well being among employees and study how the workplace affects human behavior. This doctoral degree program conducts research and practices foundational psychology techniques and theory as they relate to the behavior of groups and individuals within organizations. The program is 124 credit hours if completing the Master's (34 credits) and Doctorate (90) portions consecutively. Graduates with this degree find employment in various job sectors, including industry, government, education, business, consultative agencies and research institutes. They often hold consulting positions within businesses and agencies to provide expert opinions on workforce behavior.

Different sorts of separation exist inside of the working environment of today. These demonstrations of predisposition, whether conferred purposely or unknowingly, add to unfair employing and special practices.

The area of psychology that applies the closest to my profession is counseling psychology. Working as a Disability Leave Counselor, I am in contact with people every day. Employee’s call to request a disability leave and based on the type of questions we must ask; our job is to counsel them on the process and what is expected. You have some people who have never been sick or missed a day of work for anything, call and you can hear the concern or terror in their voice. Our job is to explain the process, and what the employee should expect while they are out on a leave of absence. We also have employee’s that may go out on disability due to a mental condition, and those are the ones that we really must pay close attention too. We must ask

Many employee included within the article have many different cultures and even personality and ideals. However some cultural issues will occur.

As the demographic changes throughout the country shape the infinite amount of social environments. Now more than ever will there be an emergence of new contexts for cross cultural problems. This contexts are brought about by passages of legislation like the Civil Rights Act, changes in economic uncertainties and a plethora of other issues. Although some of these issues are older than others they all require a revisiting in order to prevent and resolve employee problems. This is due to the fact that these new issues and recurrences will always find their way into the workplace as individuals interact with each other, and share ideas or opinions.

Humiliation stained my face and ego as I styled a black cotton T-shirt and matching black slacks. My coworkers and I were dressed in the same attire, hinting we were all “one” and a “team.” As an employee, work hours were assigned based on one’s availability, work performance, and the turnout profit of the parlor. Thus, work hours were never guaranteed nor specified. There were also two staff meetings a month where discussions of improvement were presented. There is clearly a centralization of power since there are higher agents assigning duties and payroll. By having an established authority (Kunda, 2006), there are fewer attempts of employee objections or disobedience. It also means employee emotions and actions are regulated. Thus, to be a steadily paid employee, the employee must “work embrace” their member role and think accordingly to the company (Lecture 5/2/16). These conditions are a form of normative control since policing of poor job performance would jeopardize one’s wages. Staff meetings served as spaces where management presented an agenda—reflecting of the company’s goals to maintaining order, commitment, and work relationships (Kunda, 2006). The implementation of role embracement and company ideologies is again

Business Ethnics taught me that any type of decision that is made within a company, can impact it company’s public image and self-concept. When working at the Code Factory, I paid attention to how ethnical the company is, and how important it is to have good ethnics. When you have good ethnics it provides a great atmosphere. At the code factory, each company understands that the employees, and customer’s have personal lives. When an emergency comes up, the Code Factory is extremely understanding, and wants everyone to make family a priority. Although the Code Factory is very understanding of their stakeholders, they do have an Employee Handbook that shows their code of conduct. The book discusses how the company is ran, the

With each passing year a new cohort enters the workplace, bringing with it an ever-changing dynamic of talent, goals, and expectations. This dynamic must constantly be considered in all aspects of an industrial or organizational psychologists job. How does the workplace need to be adjusted to serve

An organization’s culture governs day to day behavior. This type of power may be seen as a control mechanism, which businesses use to manipulate internal and external perception. Every organization has a set of assumed understandings that must be adopted and implemented by new employees in order for them to be accepted. Conformity to the culture becomes the primary basis for reward by the organization. “The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace, as organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures, introduced teams, reduced

The most recent studies in cross-cultural management reveal that the culture is a very expansive subject for organizations to study, especially for organizations, which hire the most diverse workforce. One definition of a diverse workforce could be as the one, which comes from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds (Plessis, 2011). For studying culture of the diverse workforce, there are two parts to study, the implicit and the explicit culture. The explicit culture includes behavior while the implicit part involves norms and values of individuals (Guang & Trotter, 2012). The explicit culture is already known when workers stay and work in a firm for a length of time, but the most difficult is to understand the implicit culture which is obscured in form of norms and values of the workers. Due to the differences of cultures, workers hold a great potential of variance, variety in terms of their explicit and implicit parts of the culture. The

The shared characteristics and, in some cases, perception of employees create what is known as organizational culture. A strong culture constructs a unified employee atmosphere, whereas a weak culture lacks a shared sense of distinction between employees. An employee’s heritage or individual culture, although different than, affects the overall organizational culture of companies. Like society, sub-cultures exist within organizations. Formed by departmental function, geographical location, and/or the personalities of employees, sub-cultures include employees who continue to adhere to the organizations’ overall culture, but have additional independent characteristics. Employees’ individual heritage, along with the culture and

In an organization where there is a culture that has been developed through years, a culture of uncommitted individuals and selfish authorities, the harmony that is needed in accomplishing the organizational goals between the management and the rank-and-file employees cannot be attained. At this point, any person who wants to implement changes in the system for the better of the company can experience great stress and difficulty due to the resistance and developed attitudes of the members of the organization.