Applied Fields: Work and Industry

Introduction

Very broadly, one might say that wherever people are busy there is a chance and a need for psychological assessment. However, it is impossible to name all fields in work and industry which are open for psychological assessment. The psychological assessor just has to look at the world of work and industry around him in order to find out what he might contribute. This may be done in terms of theories and constructs which allow evaluations of work and industriousness, by instruments which operationalize constructs and measures that are reliable and valid or in terms of methods, designs, and results to present to a customer or a team of experts.

One approach to systematize assessment in applied fields in general, and of work and organization in particular, is to take an Individual, Group, or Organizational perspective.

Individual Perspective

Starting with assessing the individual within a company or an organization one might question ‘what, when, what for’: of course, psychological assessment is of interest in order to learn more about the individual's strengths and weaknesses, about his attitudes and beliefs, and about his competencies and potentials. Here, methods used in mental tests, reaction time studies, occupational personality scales (Ones & Viswesvaran, 2001), motivation scales, and opinion questionnaires are called for. The aim is to describe a person as fully as is needed to evaluate on how she or he will do (well) [Page 89]on a prospective job. Thus data at job entry are used to forecast the ‘zone of proximal development’ of an applicant. One has to recognize (see Furnham, 2001) that an individual:

• chooses a job based on pay, location, job security, and training based on his personality traits, attitudes, and values
• adapts to a job out of necessity, insight, motivation
• changes a job by altering the physical and social environments
• evolves with new technology, markets and global requirements according to what he understands are necessary requirements in the future.

All this is open for assessment. But assessment of an individual does not stop at job entry. Any job confronts incumbents with a variety of minor and major challenges. One of these is to learn to function well at a certain position. Thus learning gains or developing several competencies are of interest to assessors. Assessment results lead to improvement of the interaction with the individual and the work place by considering human factors for improved functioning, by motivating the individual, by designing up to date remuneration schedules, by considering aptitude treatment interactions in designing effective training programmes, by monitoring communication and coordination with others, by communication and coordination programmes, to name but a few.

A new aspect for assessment emphasizes licensing professionals as an aspect of overall quality assurance in production and service. Companies may want coworkers who have knowledge, skills, and competencies to deal with their products within the company itself but, even more important, they want this at all customer sites. The service person for a database product of a regional bank may create quite a loss if a new programme release is not handled with care. This is part of the liability movement in modern societies which assures that products and services do not do any harm to others. Here, with each new product and each new service, there has to be a model of proper use and a contingent assessment of its components. So assessment takes place in regard to accreditation and licensing.

...