Psychology at Work
- Author:
Peter B. Warr
Penguin Education, 75p
Human behaviour fascinates most people, even if it may on occasion confuse, confound or merely irritate. The behaviour of people at work (or on strike), can be any or all of this, but it is also, by almost any yardstick, of considerable importance to society. This new paperback with twenty distinguished contributors provides an up-to-date and welldocumented review of current knowledge and opinions in the rapidly expanding field of occupational psychology.
As the editor admits in the introduction, the book has been written primarily for undergraduate or postgraduate students of psychology. It will, however, enjoy a wider audience since there is much in it that will interest line or personnel managers, trades unionists and others such as those involved in occupational health, safety or welfare.
But it is almost inevitable that in a book of this kind some chapters are a great deal easier to read and understand than others. The first chapter by Donald Broadbent, Director of the Medical Research Council’s Applied Psychology Unit, is an extremely clear discussion of the role of the applied sciences in stimulating developments in theoretical psychology. The same can be said for Professor Tom Singleton’s chapter on the development of ergonomics from its beginnings with time and motion studies to the recent concepts of systems and errors ergonomics.
There are fifteen other more specialised chapters which provide valuable information on the views of occupational psychologists on subjects such as accidents, shift work, the employment of older workers, selection, training, motivation, decision-making and the social structures of organisation.
There is no doubt that this is a useful book, covering the field in a most competent fashion. It has a good index and at the end of each chapter there are suggestions for further reading. The student will also find about 750 references to original papers.
For the interested amateur, it will not be a book to be read in a hurry since only a few of the authors have managed to avoid the use of jargon. How many of the uninitiated couid read terms such as ‘nascent workflow bureaucracy’ or even ‘timeboundedness’ without hesitating? The book should be used as one from which to select chapters on subjects about which we already know a little, it is not an elementary introduction to occupational psychology.
Peter Taylor
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