STEP 1: IDENTIFY PROBLEMS IN ORGANIZATIONS

When choosing an organizational problem, you will have to keep in mind that we are interested in how any of these affect people psychologically.

For some topics it will be easier to focus on the psychological effects because they are already psychological constructs. (fairness, motivation, satisfaction).

However, turnover is not a psychological construct, but it has an effect on those people who stay; that is what we will be interested in. We as psychologists have to ask, how does a construct affect the psychology of people?

  • Leadership, lack of vision, lack of decision making, staff/management trust issues, no or problems with feedback delivery to employees or employers, direction, micromanagement, resistance to change (upper management), unreachable supervisor
  • (mis) communication, bad communication between departments
  • Motivation/satisfaction/commitment, not everyone pulls their weight, punctuality
  • Collaboration and team work/ working with other people
  • Harassment
  • Politics, favoritism
  • Fairness, unfair treatment of employees, unequal workload for same titles
  • Occupational health, work-life balance
  • Managing diversity, diversity and inclusion, inclusive work place, lack of knowledge dealing with diversity
  • Turnover, retention, consistency
  • Training (lack of), poor customer service, incompetence, lack of training for management/newbies, bad training
  • Organizational structure, lack of role definition, lack of accountability, outdated processes, lack of organizational structure, hiring policies
  • Reward systems and organizational advancement, poor rewards/compensation, promotions, lack of growth, professional development

STEP 2: CHOOSE A CONSTRUCT

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTS

Alienation
Altruism
Analytic vs. holistic thinking
Antisocial behaviors
Attitudes
Attribution (-al style, causal)
Authoritarianism
Bias (gender, racial)
Boredom
Burnout
Cognitive decline
Cognitive demand
Commitment
Competition
Conformity
Cooperation
Counterfactual thinking
Counterproductive work behaviors
Creativity
Dementia
Depression
Discrimination
Disgust
Diversity
Dogmatism
Egoism
Emotion(s)
Emotional intelligence
Empathy
Employee morale
Empowerment
Equity
Ethnocentrism
Fairness
Fixed vs. growth mindset
Group cohesiveness
Honesty (dishonesty)
Individualism vs collectivism
Influence (tactics)
Intelligence
Interdependence / Interpersonal perception
Job ambiguity
Job satisfaction
Job uncertainty
Leadership
Learned helplessness
Learning
Learning agility
Life satisfaction
Locus of control
Loneliness
Long-term vs short-term orientation
Masculinity-femininity
Mental illness
Mindfulness
Monotony
Morality
Mortality salience
Motivation
Motives
Narcissism
Obedience
Organizational citizenship
Organizational ethics
Organizational justice (perceived)
Organizational politics(Perceptions of)
Organizational support(perceived)
Perceived control
Personality
Person-organization fit
Perspective-taking
Persuasion
Power and influence
Powerlessness
Prejudice
Prosocial behavior
Psychopathy / Regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention orientation)
Resilience
Resistance to change
Responsibility
Role ambiguity (perceived)
Role conflict
Self-actualization
Self-categorization
Self-concept
Self-confidence
Self-determination
Self-efficacy
Self-esteem
Self-handicapping
Self-regulation
Sociability
Social adaptation
Social anxiety (shyness, social avoidance)
Social contagion
Social desirability
Social facilitation
Social identity
Social influence
Social loafing
Stereotype threat
Stereotypes
Stress
Subjective well-being
Taking charge
Transactive memory
Trust
Uncertainty avoidance
Underuse vs. overload (cognitive, job)
Values
Well-being
Work adjustment
Work values
Work-family conflict (perceived)

STEP 3: BUILD YOUR ACADEMIC GUIDE MAPS

Mapping can be understood as an activity applicable to many areas. We can map out our day, we can create a map of a building or a town, and we can also map out the most important questions that need to be answered when systematically studying a new psychological topic. Here is your guide to which questions to answer to get started on a research project or on learning about a new area of inquiry.

Construct Map

  • What is the name of the construct?
  • What is a good definition of the construct?
  • Why is the construct important for organizations?
  • Are there any related constructs? (Similar constructs that could be confused but they have different definitions)
  • What theories have been developed to explain this construct?
  • What research has been conducted on this construct?
  • References used for preparing the mapping

Theory Map

  • What is the name of the theory that explains above construct?
  • Who contributed to this theory?
  • What is a good description or summary of the theory?
  • What evidence is there for and against the theory?
  • Why is the theory important?
  • Are there any similar or analogous theories?
  • Are there any competing theories? These could be theories that claim that a different reason is responsible for the explanation of the construct (e.g. trait vs. state theories)
  • References

Research Article Map

  • What was the purpose of the research?
  • What methodology was used?
  • What did the researchers find?
  • What are the implications of the study?
  • Are there alternative explanations?
  • References

Research Proposal Map

  • What is the purpose of the research?
  • What methodology will be used?
  • What do researchers expect to find?
  • What will be the implications of the study if results support the hypotheses?
  • Are there alternative explanations? What if the results don’t support the hypotheses?
  • References

The previous page provides all the questions that you are supposed to focus on while reading your journal articles and while working on the homework assignment. Print this, put it next to you while reading the articles, and try to answer each question while reading. Highlight in the article what you think the answers are to the questions.

For the first two maps, you need a review article (or literature review) or a meta-analysis, or both. For the third map, you will need a research article that presents a specific, original study. By 'original', we don't mean that the study should be particularly creative but that the authors report on their own research, and that it is not a report on someone else's study as you would find in a review article or a meta-analysis. An original study can include anything from one to 10 (rare) studies that the same authors conducted themselves and they are reporting on the results. If there are more than one study in your research article, then there will be a specific discussion for each of the studies and a general discussion giving you the idea of what the entire thing was about.

How to get started:

When you start out, you would always first look for the definition of the main construct. If you cannot find a definition of the main construct on the first page, you are probably not using a good article. Generally, definitions are found in the first or second paragraph, in some exceptions later. Look for another article if you cannot identify the definition quickly.

A good review article will also discuss the theory that explains the construct. Some articles, in some business journals but also sometimes in psychology journals, are weak on theory. This is another reason to look for a better article that explains the theory or at least a model. You can recognize a model by searching for a graph that usually has boxes and arrows and input and output of some kind with your construct of interest in the middle.

Once you get to the Research Article Map, you should be able to easily identify the definitions, theory, hypotheses, methods, and results. Your focus in this map is definitely the methods aspect of the study and the results section.

For the last map, which is your own creation of an empirical study, you can use the designs in the research articles you have read as inspiration. From here, you will come up with a new research question (as original as possible) designed to solve a particular problem. You may find it helpful to think about your own experience working in an organization to inform this research question.