PSYCHOLOGY 272
(Fall, 2007)

Industrial/Organizational
Psychology

Instructor: Frank T. McAndrew

Psychology Department Web Page

Textbook:
Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach (5th Ed., 2007) by M.G. Aamodt
In addition to the text, there are a number of readings on reserve in the SMC library. These readings are listed at the end of the syllabus.

Grading:
The format for the classes in this course will be primarily lecture and discussion, with a number of in-class activities. Your final grade will be the percentage of possible points that you accumulate out of the total possible points on three examinations and five class projects. No make up tests will be given without prior permission and a very good excuse. The tests will be based on the textbook, the outside readings, and class lectures. The third test will be given during final examination week, but it is not a comprehensive final exam. As a rough guide for grading, use the following percentages:

(A = 93-100%)
(A- = 90-92%)
(B+ = 88-89%)
(B = 83-87%)
(B-=80-82%)
(C+=78-79%)
(C = 73-77%)
(D+=68-69%)
(D = 63-67%)
(D-=60-62%)
(F = anything < 60%)

The Sinking Ship Exercise(Project #1) (Outside Reading #1)

Employee Recruiting & Selection (Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6) (Outside Reading #2)

Patterned Interview Videotape (Project #2)

Career Choice and Career Development (Outside Reading #3)

TEST #1

Job Analysis & Performance Evaluation (Chapters 2 & 7; Outside Reading #4)

Performance Evaluation Criteria (Project #3)

Conducting a Job Analysis (Project #4) 

Designing and Evaluating Training Programs (Chapter 8)

Organizational Structure, Culture, & Communication (Chapters 11 & 14) (Outside Readings#5, 6, 7, 8)

The Work Environment: Health, Safety, & Job Stress (Chapter 15) (Outside Readings#9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

TEST #2

Leadership and Management Style (Chapter 12) (Outside Reading#16)

Downsizing the Company (Project #5)

Group Dynamics and Organizational Behavior (Chapter 13)

Employee Motivation and Job Satisfaction (Chapters 9 & 10) (Outside Readings #17, 18, 19)

TEST #3

This term, you will engage in a wide variety of in-class activities designed to make you more familiar with the concepts you are studying in the text. Among other things, you will be filling out personality scales and engaging in group problem-solving and decision-making tasks. These tasks will not be graded, and you will find that they are a lot more fun than listening to me lecture. There will be five projects this term which will count toward your final grade. Three of these assignments will result in a brief written assignment(a few pages), one will result in a brief written assignment & an oral presentation, and one will be a group project in which you will be producing a 5 to 10 minute videotape. The details of these assignments will be presented to you in class, but a general description of each is listed below.

Project #1 - The Sinking Ship Exercise(10 Points)
In work organizations, it is necessary for groups to divide labor and assign tasks to people in a way that takes advantage of what each person has to offer the organization. Being a successful employee in such an organization requires that you find a niche in which the contributions that you make work to everyoneÕs advantage. Sometimes, merely working hard will not be enough if your efforts are invisible or if the value of the work that you are doing is not immediately apparent. As you rise in the organizationÕs hierarchy, your persuasive skills will become increasingly important as you may now be called upon to contribute to the plans that the organization is making for its own future. Thus, being able to thrive in an organizational setting in the long run requires that you become a good persuader. You will need to be able to persuade others about the value of your own contributions as well as persuading them about courses of action that the group as a whole should pursue. Unfortunately, it is an unavoidable feature of organizational life that sometimes some employees must be sacrificed for the good of the whole group. One of the most difficult decisions faced by managers is deciding which employees must be let go when lay-offs due to "downsizing" become necessary. Our first exercise this term is designed to help you examine the values that you would bring to bear in situations such as this, as well putting you in a "life and death" situation in which your "survival" depends upon your persuasive skills. The goals of the "sinking ship" exercise are as follows:

1. To serve as an icebreaker at the beginning of this new class and to get you to interact with other members of the class in an interesting situation.

2. To help you clarify for yourself the values that you consider to be most important when evaluating the contribution and worth of others to the life of your group.

3. To test your ability to analyze a situation and identify the needs of other members of the group.

4. To give you an opportunity to discover how quickly and effectively you can communicate to others how you can help them satisfy their needs.

5. To put you "on the spot" and create a persuasion strategy under duress; that is, when something real is on the line, time is limited, and your adrenalin is pumping.

6. To free you of the limitations that come from acting in familiar situations by placing you in an entirely new dilemma. .

Project #2 - Developing &Videotaping a Patterned(Structured) Interview (10 points)
Patterned interviews are highly structured with a predetermined sequence of questions to be asked of all applicants. This allows for a systematic comparison of all applicants for a job, with written ratings of each question providing a quantifiable and permanent record of the interview. Each of you will be assigned to a small group that will be responsible for developing a structured interview that might be useful in selecting an individual for a job on the Knox College campus. After the interview is developed, the group will videotape a 5-10 minute role-played example of the interview with one group member playing the role of the interviewer and another playing the role of the job applicant. Produce the videotape with the assumption that it will be used as a training film for trainees in our human resources department. Each group will also turn in a copy of the sequence of questions to be used along with explanations of how each question will be scored(if it is not obvious from the questionnaire alone). All members of each group will receive exactly the same grade on this assignment.

Project #3 - The Problem of Criteria in Performance Evaluation (10 Points)
It is more difficult than it might first appear to develop valid criteria for evaluating the performance of employees. Your assignment in this project is to develop criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of sales representatives for a major toy company. The sales reps are responsible for establishing and servicing accounts with retailers who will carry the company's toys on its shelves. The job entails getting the retailers to purchase toys from the company for sale to the public. The sales reps are responsible for finding new clients as well as for keeping the old ones satisfied. The sales reps are assigned to territories by the company, with the more senior employees getting the choice of the most desirable territories. Territories can differ greatly in terms of such things as geographic area covered, population base, and average number and size of retail stores in the territory. Your assignment will be evaluated according to how well you get around the criteria problems we have discussed, such as contamination and the problem of using "hard" vs. "soft" criteria. In your proposal, be very specific about exactly what measurements would be used, when they will be taken, how often they will be taken, and so on. Be sure to defend your decision. The length of your memo should be no more than 2 or 3 pages.

Project #4 - Job Analysis(15 points)
A job analysis identifies the important aspects of a job that distinguish it from other jobs. The job analyst must describe in specific terms the nature of the tasks performed by workers on the job and the degree to which an employee is involved with data, people, and things. Job analysis is a necessary first step in creating effective selection, training, and performance appraisal programs. After reading the chapter on job analysis in the textbook, you will plan and conduct a job analysis of a job found on or near the Knox campus.(Possible examples: Librarian, Coach, Professor, Food Service Worker, Pizza Delivery Person, Head Resident, Security Guard) You must choose an approach to job analysis from among the many that you have learned about in this course. You will describe the procedures you used to collect data and explain why these were the most appropriate ones to use for your analysis. Be sure to select a job that you can obtain information about through observation and interviews with job holders or others familiar with the job. Once you have determined what the job involves, make suggestions for fairly evaluating a person performing that job. Also, be sure to write a complete and accurate job description for the job that you have analyzed.  The results of your job analysis will begin with a brief explanation of what job analysis is and why it is necessary for our company. Go to the internet and find the Dictionary of Occupational Titles(DOT, see chapter 2 in your textbook) at http://www.occupationalinfo.org. Be sure to include the DOT code for the job that you have chosen.

Project #5 - Downsizing the Company(10 points)
One of the most difficult decisions faced by managers is deciding which employees must be let go when lay-offs due to "downsizing" become necessary. To help you examine the values that you would bring to bear in this situation, you will be provided with brief biographical sketches of 9 employees; three of these people must be fired. You will write a report to the CEO of the company with your recommendations for termination and a careful explanation of the criteria you used in reaching this decision. You will make an oral presentation of your recommendations to the executive council(i.e., the rest of the class) and defend your recommendations against sharp questioning.

I have put copies of the overheads that I used in class on the web. The formatting is not as nice as it was on the original overheads, but all of the information is there. To see copies of the overheads that were used in the lectures for this course, click on the picture of the overhead projector.

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