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Psy 435 Week 1
Industrial/ Organizational Psychology Paper
By: Keanan Aho
03/26/2012
PSY 435
Christopher Reid

Industrial/ Organizational Psychology Paper Industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology has been around for a long time. It has been studied since the beginning of the study of psychology. When I/O psychology was first studied the industrial side of it is what was focused on. The industrial side consisted of the management and human resources side, and the organization side, which consisted of making working conditions better, was not looked at too closely. As time has gone on the more both industry and organization has been looked at the same. The basic definition of I/O psychology is to try to apply the scientific principles of psychology of the workplace. It is said that the aim of I/O psychology is improve the environment for the employees while also improving the efficentness of the employees. There are many things that need to be understood to be able to understand the role of I/O psychology. Some of the major ideas to be understood in I/O psychology would have to be what the role of statistics and research play in the field. Once these are understood a person’s foundation in I/O psychology will be strong. The study of I/O psychology starts back around the late 1800’s to the early years of the 1900’s. Psychologists were trying to take the theories of psychology and apply them to the business organization. There were two men who were thought to contribute to the founding work of the study of I/O psychology. The men’s names were Walter Dill Scott and Huge Musterberg. These men with both professors in universities that had taken an interested in how employees were selected. After Scott and Musterberg a man by the name of Frederick Winslow Taylor came up with the theory of “Scientific Management”. What this theory entailed was about how the scientific procedure would be put to good use when trying to manage workers that worked in the

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