Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-15T17:32:36.640Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Diversity and (Organisational) Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2021

Get access

Summary

A Brief Description of the Discipline of Psychology

Work and organisational psychology is a branch of psychology focusing on the functioning of individuals and groups in organisations. In this field, psychologists analyse working individuals’ and workgroups’ behaviours, attitudes and performance. Additionally, they develop hiring practices, training programmes and feedback systems to improve people's performance. Work and organisational psychology can be divided into two broad areas of study, as evident in its name. Work psychology focuses on jobs and individuals’ prerequisites to perform well in their jobs. Therefore, job analysis is a major topic, as well as personnel selection, performance appraisal (how to evaluate individual effectiveness in jobs), and training and development (how to train workers to perform their jobs competently). Organisational psychology is comprised of topics related to individuals within organisational contexts. It focuses on leadership (e.g., how leaders influence workers) and interactions among group or team members. Here, the study of diversity has become pivotal in the recent past. Additionally, topics such as teamwork, worker motivation and job satisfaction are core aspects of organisational psychology.

The Meaning and Categorisation of Diversity in Psychology

Diversity in work and organisational psychology refers to “the distribution of differences among the members of a unit with respect to a common attribute, X, such as tenure, ethnicity, conscientiousness, task attitude, or pay” (Harrison & Klein 2007: 1200). Thus, diversity is a compositional construct that does not denote an individual's attributes but rather the dispersion of individuals’ attributes within a certain group. Given that diversity may relate to any characteristic, every work group is diverse, as all group members differ with regard to some aspects. According to the above-mentioned definition, it is not necessary that group members are aware of these differences. A more narrow definition of diversity includes this aspect, stating that from the group members’ point of view, a group is diverse if it is composed of individuals who differ on any characteristic on which they base their own social identity (O’Reilly, Williams & Barsade 1998: 186). Social identity refers to the part of an individual's identity deriving from their membership of certain groups (e.g., being a woman, a Muslim, an artist) as opposed to those parts of their identity resulting from their unique, individual characteristics (e.g., being conscientious).

Type
Chapter
Information
Diversity Research and Policy
A Multidisciplinary Exploration
, pp. 181 - 190
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×