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Organizational Psychology Paper

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Submitted By FisherFam2010
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Organizational Psychology
Fred Sanford
PSY428
July 13, 2011
Dr. Love Less

Organizational Psychology
Modern businesses must stay on the cutting edge in order to ensure success in the ever changing and highly competitive corporate environment. Paramount to this success is the application of organizational psychology which focuses on the human factor of business. Close examination of the root definition, roles of research and statistics, and utilization of organizational psychology within organizations will provide insight into just how the human factor contributes to the failure or success of an organization. The finely tuned sports team, that just achieved greatness, or the corporation that collapsed due to corruption contained one thing, people who had either a positive or negative impact on an organization.
“Organizational psychology is field that utilizes scientific methodology to better understand the behavior of individuals working in organizational settings” (Jex & Britt, 2008, p.1). The simple explanation is to understand what makes people tick in an organizational environment such as a business. Once understood, the challenge to organizational psychology is to capitalize on dynamics of individual behaviors and build upon the success of the organization. The role of research and statistics in organizational psychology is crucial to understanding how an organization functions. Research is accomplished in numerous ways; archival data studies, survey studies, and observational studies gather information for researchers about employees in a business setting (Gantly, 2010). Information gathered through this type of research is utilized to determine data applicable to the study of organizational psychology. “Statistics reflect important parts of organizational research; they also help researchers determine variables to base their data

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