APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

I/O Psychology is both a science/practice and an applied/basic research discipline. Appropriately, the APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology offers an in-depth examination of the types of behavioral and structural issues that I/O psychologists study every day, from both a theoretical and applied perspective.

It explores a natural progression, from how problems are diagnosed to how research is conducted to generate answers to those problems to how interventions are implemented and, finally, to how they are evaluated.  It examines what is currently known—including basic historical reviews—and identifies the most pertinent sources of information in both the core and emerging literatures. It pinpoints practical issues, probes unresolved and controversial topics, and looks at future theoretical, research, and practice trends.

 

One of the givens in the field is that, when an organization or employer attempts to affect one aspect of behavior—for example, job satisfaction—the organization or employer is likely to affect several other areas, such as compensation, supervision, performance review, and the like. Accordingly, through extensive cross-referencing to other chapters, individual chapters attempt to acknowledge the links with other topics in order to present an integrated approach to the field, both within and across volumes. The reader will thus achieve a clearer understanding of the complexities of each topic, and, more globally, a clearer understanding of the complexities of organizations and of the people within them.

 

The volume titles indicate a particular sequence that informs content: issues concerned with designing, building, and developing the structure of the organization (Volume 1) flow naturally into issues related to selecting the organization's members (Volume 2). Once the organization is established and has members with roles, issues that pertain to maintaining and ensuring the viability of the organization are taken up—including those concerned with growing, expanding, and, even, contracting the organization.

 

The goal of the entire set is to provide the reader with a well-rounded understanding of the complexities and intricacies of trying to study and affect behavior within and between organizations.