The Psychology of Business—More than a Catchy Tagline
When most people think of psychologists, two prominent images come to mind: the white-coated research psychologist in a laboratory studying rats in a maze or attaching electrodes to someone’s head and the analytical psychologist providing clinical insights to a patient on a couch or interpreting subconscious behavior.
Applied psychologists are different. We’re basically scientists trained to apply psychological methods and frameworks to real world issues and problems.
The founder of applied psychology is not Sigmund Freud but Hugo Münsterberg, a German who immigrated to the United States and taught at Harvard in the beginning of the twentieth century. Münsterberg applied psychology to fields as diverse as legal testimony and confessions, engineering, teaching and business.
The International Association of Applied Psychologists (IAAP), of which David is a member, is the oldest international professional psychological society.
This fall Koliso will be launching a survey that asks leaders within area organizations about:
Leadership Development
Employee Engagement
Change Management
Corporate Culture
Transition Effectiveness
The goal of this pulse-taking research is to examine how external factors such as the economy cycles, changing workforce demographics and competitive pressures impact views of these areas. Koliso's hypothesis is that excellence in these areas mean excellence across the organization in classically measured items such as revenue-per-employee, profitability and organizational market share. Look for more about this work in the coming weeks.
Many years ago Wayne Cascio visited Australia and David was lucky enough to meet him as part of a seminar he presented for the Australian Human Resources Institute. This book is engaging and detailed. It's ideal as a reference for the application of psychology to the business of managing people. If you aren't familiar with the book, make sure you hire someone who is.
Get your copy today.
Weekly Perspective From Koliso
Each week Koliso brings you articles that represent our perspective. We feature innovative insight and ideas about leadership, employee engagement, organizational culture and effective transition—from our own experience and from that of other experts. Have you signed up to ensure you don’t miss a thing?
What's Developing
Last month we asked you which corporate development areas are most important to you and your organization in the next 18 months? Here are your responses:
