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Concept
Personnel psychology
Summary
Personnel psychology is a subfield of industrial and organizational psychology. Personnel psychology is the area of industrial/organizational psychology that primarily deals with the recruitment, selection and evaluation of personnel, and with other job aspects such as morale, job satisfaction, and relationships between managers and workers in the workplace. It is the field of study that concentrates on the selection and evaluation of employees; this area of psychology deals with job analysis and defines and measures job performance, performance appraisal, employment testing, employment interviews, personnel selection and employee training, and human factors and ergonomics.
By the end of the nineteenth century, industrial, or personnel psychology, was developed as a way to understand work behavior. One influential figure in the beginning of this new area was Hugo Munsterberg, a German psychologist who was trained by Wilhelm Wundt and who also worked with William James. Munsterberg studied selection and fit in the workplace, and he proposed experimental methods as solutions to business problems in his text, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913). He also served on the faculty at Harvard, and in his writings, talked about such topics as fit in a career, from both an employer's and employee's perspective. Walter Dill Scott, also trained by Wundt and a professor at Northwestern University, is credited with the foundation of I/O psychology, as he used such psychology in advertising and in founding the first personnel consulting firm.
The time around WW I brought about significant contributions to the field of industrial psychology. Robert Yerkes, along with Walter Van Dyke Bingham and Scott, headed the selection and placement of army personnel with their Army Alpha and Army Beta tests. These test helped to bring attention to testing as a form of selection and their uses in practical applications. This was the beginning of industrial psychology in the real world as opposed to the world of academia.
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Ontological neighbourhood
Related concepts (9)
Personnel selection
Personnel selection is the methodical process used to hire (or, less commonly, promote) individuals. Although the term can apply to all aspects of the process (recruitment, selection, hiring, onboarding, acculturation, etc.) the most common meaning focuses on the selection of workers. In this respect, selected prospects are separated from rejected applicants with the intention of choosing the person who will be the most successful and make the most valuable contributions to the organization.
Job performance
Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.
Human resource management
Human resource management (HRM or HR) is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems.