Observational Techniques in Work and Organizational Settings

Introduction

The assessment of observable human behaviour is one of the core problems of Work and Organizational Psychology. Beginning in its early history the discipline applied measurement and observational techniques of experimental psychology by simulating concrete work settings and tasks and assessing reaction times, for example, of tram drivers or aircraft pilots. Even before the growth of radical Behaviourism, it was influenced by the time and motion studies of Frederic W. Taylor's Scientific Management. Blum and Naylor (1968: 174) in their classical textbook emphasized the importance of the development of observable criteria: ‘The criterion is basic to all measurement in industrial psychology. To overstate its importance would be literally impossible. Without adequate criteria, industrial psychology is ineffective and ceases to be a science. In other words, the magnitude of the contribution of industrial psychology is completely determined by the adequacy of the criterion measures evolved.’

Fields and Levels

Observational techniques for the assessment of human behaviour can be found in all fields of modern Work and Organizational Psychology, for example in:

• 1
  Human-Computer Interaction
• 2
  Task and job analysis
• 3
  Performance appraisal
• 4
  Leadership behaviour and work activity of managers
• 5
  Performance in Assessment Centres
• 6
  Customer service behaviour
• 7
  Team performance
• 8
  Productivity measurement of organizational behaviour

Most observational techniques have been developed at the individual level. Micro-processes, movements of keystrokes and reaction times by milliseconds are studied in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Observational techniques applied to job analyses, or Assessment Centres (AC), also focus on the [Page 644]behaviour of the individuals; however, they embrace longer series of actions or a broader set of criteria. The observer tries to assess all possible criteria, which are assumed important for the job.

The next level is the assessment of interactions between two and more people. However, observation techniques in the field often neglect that human behaviour results from an interaction process. For example, it is typical for leaderless group discussion observations in ACs to rate the performance of all individual group members by trained observers. The same applies to observational techniques of co-operative leadership behaviour and work activity lists of managers, or ratings of the friendliness of service persons interacting with ‘mystery customers’. The influence of the behaviour of the interacting persons can be ignored only if they show a highly standardized behaviour as perhaps in the case of trained mystery customers. Standardizing interaction behaviour is difficult. People with different cultural backgrounds interpret the same standard behaviour differently. In studies of intercultural interactions, it is necessary to analyse the social situation, interaction history, and intercultural meaning of the social and behavioural context and to develop special instruments for the assessment of the interactions in different cultures or intercultural teams (Smith & Bond, 1998).

Interrelated groups are units of social systems called organizations. The organization therefore forms the last level of assessment in work and organizational settings. Typical criteria are absence rate, productivity of the organization, or market share and return on investments.

It is important to decide which level of observation or unit to use and which will result in the most useful information. It is possible to assess criteria of the individual, group, and criteria of overall organizational level behaviour as well. Von Cranach (1996) and McGrath and Tschan (2001) developed a group action and multilevel organization or complex systems theory and favour multilevel analysis. They assume that human actions are always organized on many levels (individual and several social systems levels) that are interrelated. Each level mirrors specific behaviour attributes and influences, but more research is necessary to explore the differences and relations.

...