Industrial psychology has a very wide and expansive scope. Its emergence was most felt after World War I, a time in world history when the study of psychology was beginning to emerge and develop great interest around the world. Seeming to build off of the Modernist movement and its belief that individuals are composed of multiple forms of motivation, industrial/ organizational psychology (I/O) was concerned with the psyche of the worker, successful motivating elements within them, and how businesses can modify approaches in order to tap into this reservoir of productivity. The first form of applying I/O approach to workers in industrialized settings was in the form of the Hawthorn studies, which analyzed the effects of slight changes in the work environment and modifications in approaches between management and their employees. From this, the development and use of aptitude tests, inventory surveys, and expanding into consultation became a component of the operating procedure of businesses. This also spawned into the presence and variation of performance reviews of workers, analysis of social groupings in the work place, different models to assess progress and improvement of workers, as well as addressing issues of representation in the form of affirmative action. The driving force behind I/O analysis is how management can better understand itself in relation to its workers, allowing both business and individual to grow and maximize productivity.
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