Psychology in Organizations Haslam

Chapter 1
Word count: 1588

Most of our social behavior is regulated, coordinated and managed. A great deal of our day-to-
day interactions are with members of organizations, and our own behavior is also determined by
our place within an organization and are therefore highly structured.
Research on the psychological underpinnings of individuals behavior in organizations is
subdivided into two sub disciplines:
(i) Organizational psychology
(ii) Social psychology
Both fields examine and attempt to understand the mental states and processes associated with
behavior in structured social groups and systems.

1.1 What is an Organization?

Katz and Kahn proposed social device(s) for efficiently accomplishing through group means
some stated purpose (p.16, 1996) as a definition for organizations. However, an organization
may have more than one function it fulfills. So, as an alternative they defined organizations as
social systems that coordinate peoples behavior by means of roles, norms and values. The roles
relate to the particular place and functions of an individual, and can be thought of as group-based
categories of position and activity. Norms are attitudinal and behavioral prescriptions associated
with these roles or categories: they create expectations about the behavior, feelings and thoughts
of a group of people. Values are higher-level principles that are intended to guide behavior and
the organizations activity as a whole.

Roles, norms, and values serve to create a distinct organizational culture. A persons ability to
work effectively in an organization is highly dependent on their understanding of this culture.
Furthermore, they exist for a purpose and serve to direct and structure individuals activities in
relation to this purpose. Based on this information, an organization could be defined as a social
group in which the members are differentiated as to their responsibilities for the task of achieving
a common goal.

Individuals within an organization can have different roles, but also belong to different groups
within an organization. There is an internal system of social relations between these groups.

According to Statt (1994), there are three core features to every organization:
(1) A group with a social identity; it has a psychological meaning to all of its members
(2) Characterized by coordination so that the behavior of individuals is arranged and structured
rather than idiosyncratic.
(3) Goal directed; the structure is oriented towards a particular outcome.
1.2 Studying Organizations
The area of research dedicated to the psychology of organizations is of special interest to:
(i) Social psychologist who study the interplay between social interaction and
individuals thoughts, feelings and behavior
(ii) Clinical psychologists who examine the basis and consequences of individuals
dysfunctional processes and states
(iii) Cognitive psychologists who look at how people process information in their
environment in order to think, perceive, learn and remember.

1.3 Paradigms for Studying Organizations and their Psychology

1.3.1 The Economic Paradigm
Taylor laid the groundwork for a theory of scientific management (Taylorism) that revolutionized
the industrial workplace. The core of this theory contains a rejection of the idea that workers
should learn through experience, informal training or their own insight. He suggested that the
management of workers and their work was an exact science and as a manager it was your job to
perfect and implement that science. The four principal duties of managers are as follows:
(1) They develop a science for each element of a mans work, which replaces the old rule-of-
thumb method.
(2) They scientifically select and then train, teach and develop the workman, whereas in the past
he trained himself as best he could.
(3) They heartily cooperate with the men so as to ensure all of the work is being done in
accordance with the science that has been developed
(4) There is almost an equal division of work and the responsibility between the management and
the workmen. The management takes over all the work for which they are better fitted than the
workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the greater part of the responsibility were
thrown upon the men.

1.3.1.1 Scientific Management

Taylor believed that the practice of loafing led to collective under-achievement, suggesting three
roots and remedies to the problem:
(1) Poor selection of workers; a failure to achieve maximum potential was inevitable.
- Solution: systematical selection through exhaustive testing.
(2) System of initiative and incentive discouraged workers as targets were continually
raised once they had been achieved.
- Solution: Introduction of a piecework incentive system: rewarding each worker for
higher productivity.
(3) A loss of ambition and initiative because workmen are not being treated as separate
individuals, but being herded into gangs.
- Solution: individualizing each workman. Managers need to appeal directly and
consistently to the economic aspirations of individual workers, as personal ambition
 always has been and will remain a more powerful incentive to exertion than a desire for
the general welfare.

1.3.2 The Individual Differences Paradigm

Mnsterberg is often identified as the founder of industrial psychology as he applied the study of
individual differences to the analysis of organizational behavior. He thought that psychologists
might contribute to improving personnel selection by two things:
(1) Develop precise analyses of the requirements of any job and identify the key
psychological components associated with effective performance of it.
(2) Devise tests that can reliably measure a persons aptitude in important areas.
In order to get the best work possible for the appropriately selected workers the challenge for
psychologists is to identify motivational principles that facilitate workers participation in the
process of scientific management. Munsterberg emphasized the need to conduct experimental
research in order to ascertain the impact of specific personality and environmental variables on
job performance. He identified a number of complex factors that shaped peoples reaction to
their work:
(i) The highly subjective nature of workers reactions to their employment
(ii) The role of group memberships in determining an individuals satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for, their work. Taylor mentioned that groups were an impediment to
performance and their influence needed to be minimized, while Munsterberg noted
that groups enhance the consciousness of solidarity amongst the laborers and their
feelings of security, thereby making a positive psychological contribution to the
workplace.

1.3.3 The Human Relations Paradigm

Both Taylor and Munsterberg held the view that identifying the right person for a job and
fashioning the organizational environment to suit that individuals circumstances and potential is
a key part of organizational success.
Applied research shows that changing the state of relations between management and workers
will improve working circumstances. The factors that were identified as contributors to
improvements included:
(i) The introduction of a less formal and impersonal supervisory style
(ii) An increased sense of control on the part of the workers
(iii) An increased feeling that the management was actually interested in, and shared some
concern for, their welfare
(iv) An emerging belief that management and workers were part of a team that was
pulling together.
The workers felt like what they did mattered and, as a result, were actively self-involved in their
work. Mayo argued that mechanisms that created group solidarity and appropriate group norms
were critical to bringing about sustained production. He concluded that prevailing economic and
organizational theory had contrived to completely mispresent the nature of natural society.
According to Mayo, the dominant view was built on three key assumptions:
(i) Society is comprised of a horde of disorganized individuals
(ii) Individuals act purely to further their own personal interests
(iii) Individuals act logically to serve those interests.
Mayo termed this the rabble hypothesis and argued that organized behavior shaped by group
membership and group interests was the rule, and that individuals acted in terms of their personal
self-interest only when social association failed them.

1.3.4 The Cognitive Paradigm

After the second world war, Mayo and other social psychologists started to look for the basis of
social behavior in universal group dynamics rather than processes unique to the individual. The
broad goal of psychologists is to identify mental processes that might account for particular
patterns of organizational behavior, e.g. how a persons perceptions of their working
environment determine their reaction to it. A central focus of this work has been the attempt to
transpose general principles of cognition (memory, judgement, attention, information processing,
and perception) to the organizational domain. This is based on the view that peoples social
behavior is not simply determined by environmental factors but is mediated by their cognitive
response to their environment.

Since the Second World War, the study of cognition by social psychologists has been heavily
influenced by three basic models. These models characterize the social thinker as:
(1) A consistency seeker
(2) A nave scientist concerns the way people explain social events in their environment. A
key issue here is whether or not people explain their own and others behavior in terms of
internal or external factors.
(3) A cognitive miser based on the finding that peoples attributions were not as rational or
objective as one might expect. For example, people often make internal attributions to
explain other peoples behavior (fundamental attribution error), but explain their own
behavior in terms of external factors (the actor-observer effect). We see other peoples
behavior as a reflection of their true nature and personality, but see our own as a product
of the situation in which we find ourselves. These errors are thought to be made due to
preservation of our limited information-processing capacity. This view is slowly making
way for the idea that perceivers are strategic information processors rather than resource
conservers. This idea argues that peoples actions are guided by the personal costs and
benefits perceived to be associated with the various behavioral choices they face.

The Organizational Behavior Reader Osland

Chapter 1
 Word count: 1812

Every organization operates, either passively or proactively, in a global economy. Osland defined
the major bones of contention surrounding globalization and the pros and cons identified by
research:

One of the major challenges in global business is finding the time to educate oneself about the
cultural behavior and background of work colleagues from numerous countries. How much we
learn about another culture is determined by the number and type of cultural differences that we
have on our radar screen. The radar screen is the mental map we hold about culture.

1.1 The Pros and Cons of Globalization

Proponents view globalization as an opportunity for economic growth and prosperity. Opponents
of globalization perceive it as a threat to prosperity, political sovereignty, cultural integrity and
the environment. In developed countries, the primary concerns are the potential job loss for
workers and the risk to contracting industries. Developing countries are worried about political
sovereignty and losing control of their economies.

The International Monetary Fund describes globalization as the growing economic

interdependence of countries worldwide through the increasing volume and variety of cross-
border transactions in goods and services and of international capital flows, and also through the
more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology. However, this definition portrays the
outcomes of globalization too narrowly, while it does convey a sense of dynamic change and
boundarylessness. Brown and Renesch defined globalization as the interconnections between the
overlapping interests of business and society, a definition that acknowledges the broader context
in which globalization takes place. Globalization is a process leading to greater economic
interdependence and networks and the economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental
results of that process.

1.1.1 The Impact of Globalization on Equality

Globalization has resulted in increased access to more goods for consumers in many countries,
reduced prices due to competition with local monopolies, and increased food supply due to
industrial agriculture in some countries. According to research, globalization increased economic
growth and improved the incomes of both rich and poor people. Without globalization, the
number of poor people living in the world would be even greater.
Globalization has resulted in more jobs in developing countries, with the exception of some
countries that have suffered losses in local industries that could not compete with foreign
multinationals once formerly protected markets were opened. Some believe that the structure of
the global economy favor developed countries over lesser developed countries. Among
contradictory economic findings, one piece of evidence stands out: there is more inequality
among and within countries today than in the past. The gap between the richest and poorest 20%
of the world population has widened significantly, and the gap in per capita income between rich
and developing countries has grown fivefold. In East Asian economies, trade liberalization
contributed to reduced wage inequality accompanied by rapid economic growth. However, in
Latin America wage inequality increased following liberalization, meaning that skilled workers
benefited disproportionately. In the United States, some parts have prospered from globalization,
whereas others struggle to keep up.

Researchers agree that the gap between the rich and poor has widened, but they disagree on
whether globalization has caused the gap by influencing wages. Economists claim that the
disappointing rise in wages is not due to globalization because international trade and investment
have had little impact. Other economists attribute labor inequalities to technological changes,
rather than to globalization. More recent research indicated a causal relationship between
globalization and the increased demand for skilled rather than unskilled workers in developed
countries. Other research found that foreign direct investments adversely affect union wages and
employment; there is some effect of trade on the labor market in both the US and Europe.

To summarize, the positive effect of globalization on equality are:

(i) Increased global income for both rich and poor, decreasing poverty
(ii) Increased wages for the well educated
(iii) Increased wages for technologically skilled
(iv) Improved economic conditions in countries and regions that successfully compete in
the global economy
(v) Rich have become richer
(vi) Increased access to more goods
(vii) Reduced prices due to competition with local monopolies
(viii) Increased food supply in some countries

The negative effect of globalization on equality are:

(i) Greater chasm between haves and have-nots on individual and country levels
(ii) Some downward pressure on wages for the poorly educated
(iii) Some downward pressure on wages for the technologically unskilled
(iv) Worsened economic conditions in countries marginalized from the global economy
and in certain regions of developed countries
(v) Poor have become poorer

1.1.2 The Impact of Globalization on Labor Conditions

The threat of job displacement is one of the most tangible concerns that critics have regarding
globalization. However, increased competition has resulted in upgrading educational systems to
produce a more highly qualified workforce. Daly noted that some people have less choice about
how they make their living as a result of globalization (1996). Increasing imports from low-wage
countries are perceived as a threat to manufacturing jobs in industrialized countries, particularly
in labor-intensive sectors. Race to the bottom is a concept that assumes that competition will
drive labor standards (and environmental standards) to the lowest common denominator.

The positive effects of globalization on labor conditions are:

(i) Increased job opportunities in some countries
(ii) Upgraded educational system and more training in some countries
(iii) Increased labor standard or no change due to globalization (contradictory findings)
(iv) Increased labor productivity
(v) CNN effect pressures firms to correct labor abuses
(vi) Some firms taking proactive steps to avoid labor abuses

The negative effects of globalization on labor conditions are:

(i) Certain industries and companies were forced out of business
(ii) Job displacement affected some individuals
(iii) Decreased labor standards (contradictory findings)
(iv) Caused downward pressure on benefits and pensions
(v) Decreased power of unions
(vi) Child labor, unhealthy work conditions, and forced overtime in export processing
zones (EPZs)
(vii) Diminished social contract between employer and employee

1.1.3 The Impact of Globalization on Governments

Globalization is thought to threaten national sovereignty. Critics argue that governments become
less important in the global economy. Global development has caused governments to privatize
many of the social management functions they took care of before. The growing power of
globalized financial markets limits the scope of national policy. Information technology is
creating a woven world that makes national borders increasingly porous, limiting the degree of
freedom in decision making of states. However, for some governments, globalization has
resulted in expanded infrastructure, more jobs, and economic development for their citizenry. In
1996, Lee stated that, although there is a worldwide trend toward smaller government, national
policies still determine employment and labour standards. Globalization makes it more difficult
for governments to exercise their regulatory powers and maintain their autonomy and
independent decision making. There is the consensus between researchers that governments are
not designed or structured to deal with the problems of global business.

The positive effects of globalization on governments include:

(i) Increased economic development benefits some governments
(ii) Increased job and expanded infrastructure benefit some countries
(iii) Transfer of modern management techniques into the business sector
(iv) Greater independence among trading and investment partners may deter war
(v) Proliferation of non-governmental organization (NGOs) to counterbalance decreased
governmental power
The negative effects of globalization on governments include:
(i) Power of multinational enterprises (MNEs) increased at the expense of government
power, sovereignty, and ability to regulate business
(ii) MNEs externalize some of their costs to countries
(iii) Competition for factories and foreign direct investment (FD) result in too many
concessions to MNEs by some governments
(iv) Some MNEs influence local government policy and threaten to leave if their demands
are not met
(v) MNEs pay fewer taxes to governments and incorporate where the tax rate is lowest,
depriving their own country of revenue
(vi) Governments are pressured to reduce tax rates and decrease social benefits that may
affect stability

1.1.4 The Impact of Globalization on Culture and Community

A world of complex connectivity may be a positive force for greater cross-cultural understanding
via more cross-cultural exposure and closer cross-border ties. Critics claim that globalization is
creating a monoculture as the weakened cultural traditions combined with the importation of
foreign media, stores, and goods encourage cultural homogenization. It is believed that the flow
of information is dominated by multinational entities based in the most powerful nations. There
is the fear that, as transnational corporations grow and become more powerful, the culture of
capitalism will develop into a world monoculture, enforced by the Western or U.S. culture.
Cultures influence each other, for example, by commoditization, which is the process by which
market capitalism transforms things that were previously not viewed as economic goods into
something with a price.

The positive effects of globalization on culture and community are:

(i) Increased cultural exposure, understanding, and cross-border ties
(ii) Encouraged proliferation of indigenous organizations and movements to preserve
ethnic identity

Negative effects include:

(i) More mobility and disruption of rural life away from traditional safety nets
(ii) Increased exposure to cultural homogenization
(iii) Disintegration of some local communities

1.1.5 The Impact of Globalization on Environmental Sustainability

Sustainability can be defined as meeting the needs of present generations without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The most important environmental
issues include reduction of biodiversity, deforestation, ozone depletion and global warming.

The positive effects of globalization on environmental sustainability include:

 (i) Countries make a narrower range of products more efficiently
(ii) Relative efficiency of energy use is improving
(iii) More systematic dematerialization through manufacturing changes
(iv) Substitution of harmful materials by resources with reduced environmental impact
(v) Some firms do environmental impact studies of products entire lifecycle
(vi) Transfer of efficient technologies to assist developing countries to increase production
(vii) Creation and transfer of more efficient technologies to some countries
(viii) Use of alternative energy sources decreases carbon combustion
(ix) Increased income may lead to concern for environmental protection
(x) Modern trawl fishing maximizes the catch for maximum immediate revenue

The negative effects of globalization on environmental sustainability are:

(i) Causes surplus and scarcity
(ii) Development and increased affluence lead to larger demands for materials and energy
as well as increased waste and energy-related pollution
(iii) Export of damaging extraction technologies continues despite existence of alternative
technologies
(iv) Spread of factories requires increased infrastructure that uses more extracted
materials
(v) Increased travel of workers and multinational enterprise employees uses fossil fuel
and contributes to global warming
(vi) Some developing nations are exposed to toxic or dangerous products and
technologies
(vii) Increased consumption uses more natural resources
(viii) Increased advertising creates artificial needs
(ix) Increasing fossil fuel combustion emits gases and particles into the atmosphere
(x) Increased transportation of raw materials uses non-renewable resources
(xi) Increased environmental degradation from factories in countries without enforced
environmental protection laws
(xii) Degradation due to agribusiness, logging, commercial fishing, and industrial waste
(xiii) Deforestation threatens species survival

Psychology in Organizations Haslam

Chapter 4 Motivation and Commitment
Word count: 1512

A common limitation of motivational theories is their tendency to neglect or oversimplify the

role of a persons social self-definition. An account that acknowledges the role of social self-
definition is, that you behave in a certain way because you have internalized a particular self-
categorization. In this case social motivation arises from commitment to norms associated with a
salient social category. A large component of work motivation is derived from their collective
sense of who they are and what they feel compelled to do in order to maintain and promote that
identity.
4.1 The Economic Approach
The economic approach states that an organization should select only the very best workers,
ensure that they are treated and work as individuals and pay them only for what they produce.
This approach was very influential in the first half of the twentieth century because of its
simplicity. Nonetheless, there are some key problems inherent in the economic approach. It is,
for example, improbable that someone would work a great deal harder if they were paid 10
million instead of 2: there is no straightforward relationship between pay and effort. Research
indicates that people generally perceive financial reward to be a much less important aspect of
employment than things like security and enjoyment.

4.2 Needs and Interest Approaches

Pay is a contribution to motivation, but it is far from uniform and can be seen as an indirect
consequence of its capacity to satisfy other needs, like a need for respect and self-esteem.
McGregor found the Taylorist wisdom to be a profoundly pessimistic theory of motivation,
which he named Theory X. Theory X had the following core assumptions:
(i) The average person dislikes work and wants, if possible, to avoid it
(ii) Most people must be coerced or bullied into working hard
(iii) Most workers are looking for little more out of employment than an easy life devoid
of interest, challenge or responsibility.
McGregor thought that motivation was better understood in terms of exactly the opposite set of
assumptions (Theory Y):
(i) Expenditure of effort is as natural as play or rest
(ii) People will generally tend to exercise self-direction and self-control to reach
objectives to which they are committed
(iii) Commitment to goals is a function of self-relevant rewards associated with their
achievement
(iv) Humans learn to seek and accept responsibility
(v) Most people are capable of ingenuity, imagination and creativity, but that
(vi) Under the standard conditions of modern organizational life, the intellectual potential
of humans is generally underexplored and underdeveloped.

In many sectors of industry managers were disposed to base their treatment of employees on an
implicit view of human motivation that was more akin to Theory X than Theory Y, thereby
thwarting the higher-order needs of workers, such as self-actualization and self-esteem. This is
based on Maslows proposal that humans have a hierarchy of needs that range from the low-level
and basic (sleeping, eating) to the high-level and complex. He suggested that the most important
motivator of peoples behavior in any given context is their lowest level of unsatisfied need.
Applying this to organizational behavior, McGregor argued that a Theory X put too much
emphasis on the role of lower-order needs as motivators of workers beliefs, as in contemporary
Western society the physiological and safety needs of most workers are satisfied and therefore
their behavior is motivated by higher-order needs.
McGregor differentiated between two kinds of egoistic needs:
(1) Type I those needs that relate to ones self-esteem needs for self-confidence, for
independence, achievement, competence and knowledge.
(2) Type II those needs that relate to ones reputation needs for status, for recognition, for
appreciation, and the deserved respect of ones fellows.
He argued that much of the malaise in industrial organizations arose from the fact that typically,
there is no avenue offered for the realization of these egoistic needs.

Similar ideas to these are also central to Herzbergs motivation-hygiene theory where they
identified two sets of needs:
(i) Animal needs associated with hygiene factors and relate to context in which work
is performed, e.g. work relationships, working conditions, status and security
(dissatisfiers).
(ii) Human needs associated with motivator factors and are related to things involved
in actually doing the job, e.g. achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility,
advancement and growth (satisfiers).
Each set of needs is rendered salient in different organizational contexts. Specifically, when
workers are dissatisfied, one refers to an absence of hygiene factors (poor pay, company
inefficiency, bad relationships with supervisors etc.). However, when these are satisfied, one
tends to link this to the presence of motivator factors (sense of personal satisfaction and
achievement, the opportunity to do creative work). According to Herzberg, in order to motivate
workers, the employers should attend to motivator factors; called job enrichment. Research has
shown that these types of interventions have proven to be effective.

4.3 Individual Difference Approaches

This approach suggests that work ethic is mainly dependent on the personality of an individual.
McClelland argued that every single person possesses lower-level physical and security needs,
whereas motivation to work is a higher-order need for achievement (nAch). Other lower-order
needs in McClellands writing are the need for affiliation (nAff), and the need for power (nPow).
All these needs are established early in childhood, shaped by the culture and upbringing
(parenting style) of the individual. McClelland also suggests that, in order to develop a high need
for achievement, individuals have to have performed competitive tasks, learn the appropriate
emotional responses to their performance with reference to standards of excellence. That is,
learning that success is positive and failure is negative. On the basis of laboratory and field
studies, McClelland suggested that the main motivator for people with low nAch is the prospect
of avoiding work. Furthermore, consistent with McClellands definition of nAch, he found that
83 percent of entrepreneurs had high nAch compared to 21 per cent of non-entrepreneurs.

4.4 Cognitive Approaches

Cognitive approaches of organizational motivation is dominated by two main approaches:
(i) Social exchange theories includes expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, and equity
theory.
Exchange theory argues that people act with a view to maximizing their
personal outcomes; people are motivated by the prospect of achieving the
largest possible payoff for any work they perform. Behavior is guided by the
likelihood of a particular outcome occurring and the amount of personal
satisfaction associated with that outcome. The overall force of a
persons motivation is the product of valence (V), instrumentality (I) and
expectancy (E): the VIE model.
Goal-setting theory similar to expectancy theory, only that this theory argues
that people are more likely to be motivated by concrete, specific, and
challenging goals rather than abstract, vague and undemanding ones. The more
concrete and challenging it is, the greater its capacity to focus a persons
attention, demand effort, encourage persistence and to allow for goal-directed
strategic planning. Empirical evidence is consistent with this approach.
Equity theory also similar to expectancy theory, but differs in emphasizing the
role that perceived costs play in motivational processes, rather than
rewards. This theory is based on the assumption that people are likely to be
motivated to perform particular behaviors to the extent that they are
perceived to be just. That is, when an individuals inputs match their
outcomes and those of individuals who the individual compares him- or herself
with. Distributive and procedural justice are particularly important.
Distributive justice refers to the fairness of a given outcome, whereas procedural
justice refers to the fairness of the processes that lead to that particular
outcome.
(ii) Intrinsic motivation an activity that is intrinsically motivated is one that is done for
the sake of enjoyment or because its interesting, not because of extrinsic motivation
(rewards). Theories based on intrinsic motivation argue that intrinsically motivating
tasks are motivating because of the gratification of the higher-order need for personal
development and achievement. Activities that are motivated by extrinsic rewards are
thought to satisfy lower-order needs. This extrinsic-intrinsic distinction corresponds
closely to Herzbergs hygiene and motivator factors.

4.5 Social Identity, Motivation and Commitment

The social identity theory is based on the assumption that intergroup behavior is partly motivated
by the esteem-related need to achieve or maintain a positive social identity. Self-categorization
theory also incorporates self-esteem related needs within a process model of self. Self-
categorization can be expressed at varying levels of abstraction. Each of these different levels of
abstraction is associated with a distinct set of needs. When personal identity is salient, this level
is associated with needs to self-actualize and enhance personal self-esteem by means of personal
growth and enhancement. When social identity is salient, this is associated with the need to
enhance social self-esteem by gaining a sense of peer recognition, relatedness and the
achievement of group goals. When human or animal identities are more salient, needs are more
basic, meaning they are more security, safety and existence related. The main difference between
this theory and other theories is that self-category salience is the key process in determining
which category of needs guides an individuals behavior. This means that people are motivated to
live up to norms and attain goals that are relevant to our self-definition.

Empty Labour Paulsen

Chapter 2 Power at Work
Word count: 1519

Labour process theory has tended to emphasize the ruthless rationality of the labour process that,
in the process of deskilling, reduces workers to a cog in the machinery. This notion is
recognized in Marx work, but also in that of Adam Smiths theory of the division of labour.
Plenty of theoretical notions have nurtured the view of labour an institution of obedience rather
than struggle, such as the early Frankfurt school, the notion of false consciousness, and the
young school of critical management studies.

2.1 The Denial of the Subject

Both the Frankfurt school and Althusser were marked by their heavy emphasis upon the weight
of ideological modes of domination. This leaves no space for initiative and creativity in the
workplace. This ideological predisposition was most likely nurtured by a history of Fascism,
mass indoctrination by the media, and Stalinism.

Both the Frankfurt school and Althusser had the tendency to neglect both individual and
collective resistance. One of the most vigorous critics in Touraine, who attributes this tendency
to radical, or Socialist, theory, and to the history of social sciences. Social sciences, and mainly
natural sciences, eliminate the concept of the subject. The dominating social sociological
portrayal of a man in 1971 was, according to Skjervheim, a man without transcendence, a man
subordinated to social facticity. Touraine separates himself with his framework centred on an
opposite notion: man with transcendence; a social being which is not only social, but also
capable of resisting the social.

Touraine proposes a sociological concept of the subject derived from the existentialist axiom of
human agency. From this perspective, workplace resistance, misbehaviour, recalcitrance and
dissent become less anomalistic than in other philosophical anthropologies; they are signs of life
that are more likely to occur in the hierarchic organization characteristic of wage labour.

Gorz stated that we are born to ourselves as subjects; subjects irreducible to what other people
and society ask us to be allow us to be. What else we choose to be is an existential question for
the individual. Touraine said: Notwithstanding those schools of thought that reduce social action
to rational choice of an economic nature, or to the manifestation of cultural patterns or social
institutions considered to be determinants of individual and collective action, we constantly face
the question: how does the distancing from established norms lead to creative freedom, rejection
of old rules or non-socially regulated emotions and finally to the creation of new norms?
(2000). He also noted that the subject should not be confused with the ego; nothing should be
more unethical to the subject than the consciousness of the ego, introspection or that most
extreme form of the obsession with identity: narcissism. The human subject is rather a resistor of
the established order; it is the negation of both the world of economic rationality and the world
of community by which individuals and groups engage in self-creation struggles and alternative
value settings.

Subjectivity was incorporated in the notion of deity, which is based on the idea that a god who
created the universe as an act of will. Modernity can be described as an age of anthropocentrism
followed by the scientific undermining of this anthropocentrism yielding to the growing belief in
natural and social laws. Anthropocentrism is the belief that human beings are the most significant
entity in the universe, or interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and
experiences. Darwin and Freud stablished that impersonal processes taking place behind our
backs rule the world. The notions of rationalization and the structure were integrated in critical
theory, which was a dominant influence in continental sociology (mid-century European
sociology).
The concept of the elimination of the subject was first announced by Touraine in the 1980s. The
authority of science points at evidence against agency; that we are governed by external powers.
When internalized, this notion tends to become self-fulfilling withdrawal, cynism, and political
apathy are due to the elimination of the concept but also indicative of how the subject as such is
withering. In reaction, Touraine reformulates sociology as the science of social action, which
aims at raising awareness of how actions constitute the basic elements of society. More recently,
his writings were occupied by the challenges of globalization. He said that in a globalized
economy, the fact that we are helpless and cannot do anything against powerful financial and
economic transnational corporations, is the main obstacle of a subject-centred approach. The
three most relevant notions to critical management studies and labour process theory are:
(1) The idea that the worker has been transformed into an appendage of the machine.
(2) The idea that we are being manipulated and induced with false consciousness.
(3) The idea that the subject is in fact an object.

2.2 The Appendage of the Machine

Braverman found that craftwork and the agency of the worker were crushed with the
development of machinery. But long before this, Marx, Durkheim and Weber were all concerned
with the division of labour and the social pathologies it entailed among workers and bureaucrats.
Marx stated that the workers had become the appendix of the machine, as the task of a worker
had been reduced to the simplest, monotonous, and most easily acquired forms. Smith was
fundamentally positive about the division of labour; he believed that education could solve some
of its mind-numbing effects. Thus, Smith assumes that labour dulls the intellect, while Taylor
takes for granted that the workers is stupid from the beginning. But Taylor deemed the
destruction of craft work as a necessary step toward efficiency because it made the optimization
of each operation possible, and entailed taking power from the worker collective and giving it to
management (or science, as Taylor would say).
Braverman does not consider the Taylorist degradation of work an unavoidable element of
technological development. Technology does not have to constrain the worker in the labour
process and the problem is the manner in which the worker is controlled through technology. The
application of power to various hand tools such as drills or saws did not change the relation
between worker and machine. These tools are in the hands of the workers and might even lead to
an increase in skill, whereas the machine fixed the notion path of the operation. This is because
the machine fixes motion path of the operation, in the case of multiple function machines
predetermining the sequence of operations. Later control of the worker decreased even more
when numerical control integrated in the machine, and machines that automatically record and
correct the performance of the worker. This, according to Braverman, is how the worker becomes
subject to discipline.

2.3 The Imprint of False Consciousness

Scott makes a distinction between thin and thick theories of false consciousness in his writing.
The thin theory is the idea that the dominant ideology achieves compliance by control
mechanisms and the practice of power so that subordinate groups are convinced that the existing
social order is natural or inevitable. The thick theory of false consciousness claims that a
dominant ideology works its magic by persuading subordinate groups to believe actively in the
values that explain and justify their own subordination.

After the coming of Theory Y notions emphasizing how individuals will be more productive if
less controlled, and promoting traditionally humanist discourses of self-actualization and esteem,
the labour process theory experienced a cultural turn that resulted in the formation of critical
management studies as a school of its own. This school was called soft human resource
management, or corporate culturism, of which the guiding aim was to win the hearts and minds
of employees; to define their purpose by managing what they feel and think, only not how they
behave.

The power that proponents of thick theories of false consciousness make reference to operates on
three different levels:
- The first dimension is that it can be the brute force of coercing someone to do something
against that persons will.
- The second dimension refers to the suppression of potential issues by nondecision-
making of people in authority.
- The third dimension is the ideological power over peoples wishes and thoughts that
prevent them for realizing their real interests.
2.4 The Subject as Object
In his early work, Thompson addressed the question of the missing subject in labour process
theory. He noticed that little was written about subjectivity conditions and is conditioned by the
labour process, and that there was no theoretical foundation for doing so: this remained a
weakness of orthodox labour process theory. The Foucaldian framework offers valuable tools for
approached this issue while avoiding essentialist reasoning and classic dualisms such as power-
freedom, nature-culture, heteronomy-autonomy, and control-resistance. The Foucaldian answer
to the question of the missing subject is ambiguous, since the attempt to dissolve the individual-
structure dualism rather seems to consume the subject. Foucaults emphasis upon the freedom of
subject is also the questioning of the humanist concept of autonomy ascribed to subjects. The
free subject cannot be conceptualized as a thinking, choosing, or reflecting one. Agency is not
dependent on a newfound internal will, but a recovery of the demand on the outside, of
otherness.

Psychology in Organizations - Haslam

Chapter 2 The Social Identity Approach
Word count: 1548

In order to understand how an individual work, we need to look at how different types of social
interactions are tied to an individuals social identity, which is the definition of oneself in terms
of group memberships. The Social Identity Theory emphasizes the psychology of an individual is
a product of group life and its distinct psychological and social realities, implying that the
behavior of people in organizations is shaped by group forces.
Taylor followed up on the idea of the social perceiver as a cognitive miser, in which individuals
are thought to cope with group life by relying on cognitive shortcuts that save resources. His
writings suggested that group undermine accurate cognitive and useful action within an
organization, as the behavior of people is often shaped by group forces, but the individual should
be the focus.
The social identity theory was developed during the investigation of the psychological basis of
intergroup discrimination. Tjafel and colleagues sought to identify the minimal conditions that
would lead members of one group to discriminate in favor of the ingroup which they belonged
and against the outgroup. The study entailed that schoolboys were randomly assigned to one of
two groups, but they were led to believe that this assignment was made on the basis of fairly
trivial criteria. Factors that normally play an essential role in intergroup discrimination, such as
history of conflict, personal animosity or interdependence, were excluded. Individual self-
interest and personal economic gain were also ruled out because the task that the boys had to
perform involved assigning points to others members of the ingroup and the other outgroup but
never to themselves. Even these conditions already showed to be enough to encourage ingroup-
favoring responses. To examine this process more closely, a second study was done incorporating
a range of different matrices in which the boys chose a pair of rewards from a number of
alternatives. The researchers set out the different decision strategies that the participants might
use: fairness, maximum joint profit (giving the greatest total reward to the two recipients),
maximum ingroup profit (giving the greatest total reward to the ingroup member), and maximum
difference in favor of an ingroup member (choosing the strategy that led the ingroup member to
beat the outgroup member by the largest margin). Also this experiment demonstrated
deportation from a strategy of fairness. Patterns of point allocation were mainly influenced by
presence or absence of social categorization, rather than the presence or absence of similarity.
Later research found that relevance of the minimal group studies was broader applicable on the
topics of social perception and cognition. Doise and his colleagues found that participants
assigned to minimal groups assigned their ingroup members more favorably than the outgroup
members, even without knowing anything about the group. It is remarkable that group
membership evoked unfair behavior in normal people without having obvious reasons.

Tjafel argued that in these minimal group studies social categorization required the establishment
of a distinct and positively valued social identify. Social identity could be defined, according to
Tjafel, as the individuals knowledge that he or she belongs to certain social groups together with
some emotional and value significance to him or her of this group membership. The individuals
internalize the group membership and therefore it becomes part of their social identity. Personal
identity, on the other hand, refers to the self-knowledge that derives from the individuals unique
attributes (IQ, physical appearance etc.)

The social identity theory of intergroup behavior is an integration of the cognitive and
motivational basis of intergroup differentiation. People search for positive distinctiveness in
terms of we instead of I. Another study was done on over 1000 employees in two hospitals,
one of high status, and one of low status. Employees of the high status hospital showed ingroup
favoritism on status-relevant dimensions, but outgroup favoritism on non-status related
dimensions. Employees of the low-status hospital acknowledged inferiority of the ingroup on
status-relevant dimensions, but accentuated their superiority on the status-irrelevant ones. The
motivation of the low-status employee group to restore its positive distinctiveness led them to
assert their superiority more strongly on status-irrelevant dimensions.

2.1 The impact of perceived social structure

Patterns of discrimination is not the only idea that can offer insights into group behavior. Two
other sets of ideas examine how peoples cognitions and behavior are affect by movement along
the interpersonal-intergroup continuum and by perceived social structure. Tjafel suggested that
general human behavior can be represented in terms of a bipolar continuum. At one end of the
continuum, interaction is determined by an individuals personal character and motivation. At the
other end of the continuum, behavior is motivated by the persons group membership (intergroup
behavior). According to Asch, Mayo and Tjafel it is not possible to be at either ends of the
continuum, as behavior is always influenced by both to some extent.

Social conflict leads people to think in terms of their social identity, but social conflict is also
dependent on this. Tjafel formulated two hypotheses based on this observation: As behavior
becomes more defined in intergroup terms, ingroup members are more likely to react uniformly
to members of the outgroup and treat the outgroup as an undifferentiated category. So, during
conflict ingroup members see the outgroup members more as a whole; all of the same. These
hypotheses have been backed up by plenty of empirical evidence. It is also consistent with
evidence that the heightened salience of group memberships is associated with increases in the
perceived homogeneity of outgroups and in consensus among ingroup.
Tjafel holds the perspective that how we perceive ourselves depends on events happening in the
world around us, and also how we perceive these events. Key elements in this are the belief
structures of an individual. The belief structures of an individual could also be viewed as a
continuum, with an ideology of social mobility on the one end, and social change on the other
hand. Mobility beliefs are characterized by the view that people are free to move between groups
in order to improve or maintain their social standing. They believe that a given social system is
flexible and permeable. For organizational behavior, for instance, this might mean that it is
possible for anyone to rise to the top of an organization if they have enough personal gumption.
On the other hand, social change beliefs are underpinned by the assumption that escape from
ones group for the pursuit of self-advancement is impossible. So, the only prospect for
improving conditions for oneself would then be to act as a group member. A number of situations
were identified that could lead to this belief:
(i) An objectively rigid system of social stratification that is perceived to be in some
sense illegitimate and unstable
(ii) A desire to create or intensify the impact of group membership
(iii) A motivation to clarify otherwise vague or non-existent group boundaries
(iv) A division or conflict between two groups that makes movement between groups
possible
The social identity theory integrates elements of analysis of discrimination in the minimal group
studies, and movement along the interpersonal-intergroup continuum. It examines how peoples
shared understanding of status relations leads to different strategies for self-enhancement. It
looks at the relationship between status, perceived basis of the status, and how an individual
looks at oneself. The social identity theory answers this question by noting the extent to which
people perceive group boundaries to be permeable and their groups relative position on a
dimension of social comparison to be secure in the sense of being both stable and legitimate. All
these perceptions have proven to be influential and impact the strategies that members of high-
and low-status groups choose to pursue in their attempts to achieve or maintain social identity.
This is also relevant for organizational behavior. Research shows that patterns of social
identification were important predictors of behavior that is of significance to long-term
organizational structure. Low-status individuals are more readily accepting of change within the
organization, while high-status individuals prefer to maintain the status quo, as they want to keep
their social identity the way it is. Low-status individuals might think change in organizational
structure or other organizational related changes offer them better opportunities to improve social
identity, and thus high-status individuals are more resistant to change. This also means that high-
status groups have a stronger sense of ingroup favoritism. This is deemed as a reflection of their
perceived superiority and distinctiveness. Other research shows other patterns of behavior in
response to organizational change.

Tjafel and Turner identified three basic strategies of self-enhacement:

(i) Individual mobility associated with a general belief in the possibility of social
mobility
(ii) Social creativity aspect of social change belief system
(iii) Social competition aspect of social change belief system
They argued that individual mobility is most likely to be pursued when the group has a relatively
low status and group boundaries are viewed as permeable. This allows the individual to step
away from the ingroup to pursue personal growth and goals, for instance, by mobilizing to a
group of higher status. Social creativity and social competition are intended to improve the
negative or maintain positive conditions of ones group. These are probable to arise when the
group boundaries are believed to be impermeable, meaning that individuals are unable to better
themselves by moving between groups.

The New Psychology of Leadership - Haslam

Chapter 1 The Old Psychology of Leadership
Word count: 1506

At the core of human progress lies effective leadership; the influencing of others so that they are
motivated to contribute to the achievement of group goals. Literature has mainly
focused on an individualistic approach to creating an understanding of leadership: it focuses on
the distinctive psychology of leaders which sets them apart from others. On the opposite end
there is the thought that effective leadership has its foundation in the capacity to embody and
promote a psychology that is shared with others, which we will refer to as the new psychology of
leadership.
Leadership is a group process in which leaders and followers are joined together, and also have
the perception of being joined together. Therefore, in order to build a complete understanding of
leadership, the followers, with whom the psychological connection is forged, have to be
considered as well in analysis. Followership is an essential part of leadership, as leadership is
best defined as the capacity to convince others to contribute to processes that turn ideas and
visions into reality, thereby helping bring about change.

1.0 Leadership in history: The great man and his charisma

The model of the great man is one of the cornerstones of traditional academic and popular
understandings of leadership. Monumental figures such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,
and Abraham Lincoln have set the mark with their success, influence and tremendous personal
wealth. Historic analyses of leaders by for instance Socrates place an emphasis on the
importance of different traits, which, distilled into contemporary psychological thinking, these
ideas are typically related to mental qualities such decisiveness, insight, imagination, intelligence
and charisma. Charisma is thought to capture the essence of something special that surrounds
great leaders; the special gift that sets leaders apart from others. The original Greek word
charism has multiple meanings: the power to perform miracles, the ability to make prophecies,
and the capacity to influence others.

Weber saw leaders as required for saving the mass from themselves. According to him, leaders
need agency because masses lack it. As Weber saw it, only charismatic prophets could save
society from a form of soul-destroying bureaucratic leadership. The leaders saw masses as
material to be used in the service of the leader. An example of this is Hitler, who described
himself as an artist who created history through his domination and subjugation of the masses.
But in fact, his most accomplished artistic work was the myth that he and Goebbels created
around his own leadership. Roberts said that Hitler acquired charisma through his own unceasing
efforts to create a cult of his own personality. For this reason, in the decades following World
War II, research on leadership was dominated by attempts to identify personality traits that might
help organizations help search for the leaders of the future.
One of the main developments in the field of psychology was the science of personality testing.
This became a sign of psychologys scientific maturity and a tool by which means its scientific
aspirations could be advanced. Also, personality psychology is an example of the
democratization of the discipline, as opposed to its preoccupation with great men. Whereas
previous attempts to divine the character of individuals had required detailed biographical
researching, now it could be ascertained through the administration of standardized tests.
Analysts were now also able to survey the broad multitude, as opposed to the select few.
Organizational psychology was a field of psychology that was particularly interested in this form
of testing. They saw possibilities in the ability to identify and select a qualified and suited few
from a large sample of people. This would be an invaluable aid to the organizations as it could
inform processes of recruitment and selection, but might be also able to guide decisions about
training and promotion.

On the basis of an analysis of the predictive value of 27 attributes five factors appeared to play a
role in the emergence of leadership:
(1) Capacity
(2) Achievement
(3) Responsibility
(4) Participation
(5) Status
However, their capacity to predict leadership varied across different studies and the statistical
significance was generally low.

1.1 The theoretical deficiency of individualistic models

A lot of problems emerge when trying to explain leadership with reference to the character and
personality of individual leaders. They derive from a core conceptual problem concerning the
nature of human personhood. The great man approach is too static and cannot explain
variations in leadership across time and place. The idea that people are static, isolated, immutable
entities is an analytical fiction that ignores the context-specificity of behaviour. A single
decontextualized assessment of a persons character can never have universal validity for this
reason. Personality is both a product and a determinant of a persons social world, as is
leadership.
1.2 The political deficiency of individualistic models
Researchers have argued that the focus on the individualistic characteristics of leaders is not just
theoretically weak; it is also politically problematic. This is because this preoccupation bolsters
two disempowering falsehoods:
(i) Members of the general population will never be leaders as they do not possess
relevant leadership qualities
(ii) It is only individuals who possess these qualities that have the ability to bring about
social progress.
The very definition can be viewed as an alienating social myth that encourages the acquiescence
and passivity of followers who, if they accept the view that social change is brought about only
by the actions of distinguished individuals, become resigned to their lowly role and are deterred
from seeking to bring about change themselves. The desire to encourage others from challenging
the legitimacy of their authority may explain why those who occupy leadership positions often
enthusiastically endorse highly individualistic models of leadership. Meindl and his colleagues
argued that leadership and charisma are simply romantic attributions that people make in order to
explain group success. However, this does not have a strong grounding in reality.
Nielsen remarked that when we think in terms of leadership, we create a dichotomy:
(1) Leaders are an elite group; a select and privileged few
(2) Followers are the vast majority; the normal public.
This dichotomy promotes the implicit idea that leaders are superior to followers.

1.3 The faulty definition of leadership

As mentioned before, people tend to have a heroic definition of leadership. Researchers still tend
to advocate hybrid models of leadership in which a leaders fixed decontextualized personality is
a key ingredient. This approach is theoretically weak, but nevertheless it remains interesting to
reflect on the reasons of its persistence. Peoples orientation to these issues is informed by a
faulty definition of leadership: a heroic definition. Mintzberg has identified seven beliefs that go
along with maintaining a heroic definition of leadership:
(1) Leaders are important people that set apart from those engaged in core business
(2) The more senior a leader is, the greater his or her importance
(3) Leaders pass strategy down to those with responsibility for implementing it
(4) Followers are inclined to resist leaders ideas and authority
 (5) Leaders have responsibility for establishing facts and allocating resources on that basis
(6) Leaders alone deserve reward for success (which they alone are qualified to assess)
(7) Leadership is about the subjugation of others to ones will
There are two particular problems with the definition that lead to this view
(1) It regards leadership as a noun rather than a verb; leadership is something that leaders
possess rather than a process in which they are participants
(2) Leader-centricity overlooks the role that followers play in this process. Their labour
provides evidence of leadership; without this labour there is no leadership.

1.4 Five criteria for a useful psychology of leadership

A new psychology of leadership has to satisfy five criteria:
(1) Non-individualistic It needs to take into account the role of followers in the leadership
process. It has to provide an explanation on how the psychologies of leaders and
followers are shaped and transformed by their engagement in shared group activity.
(2) Context-sensitive We need to understand how the capacity of any leader to exert
influence over others is determined by the context in which their collective relationship is
defined. Also, it is important to understand and consider how the influence process at the
core of leadership is itself structured by social context.
(3) Perspective-sensitive A persons capacity to influence others always depends on who
those others are. The followers perception of a leaders attributes and their responses to
his or her leadership are both contingent on their relationship with the leader. If that
relationship changes, it will influence the leaders capacity to lead.
(4) Explains the inspirational and transformative character of leadership at the heart of
effective leadership there is a set of very special human experiences. These experiences
have an emotional, affective and intellectual force that allows people to feel they are part
of making history, instead of just watching it.
(5)Stronger empirical validity the aim of building up an empirical case for the unfolding
theoretical analysis that is presented. Because the nature of leadership is so complex, a
variety of supporting evidence has to be presented.