INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN RELATIONS

The development of industrial psychology owes a great deal to Hugo Munsterberg. His book, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, was published in 1913. He is regarded as the Father of Industrial Psychology. His contributions to industrial management were particularly notable in respect of his analysis of jobs in terms of their mental and emotional requirements and in terms of the development of testing devices. Advance were made in selection, placement, testing, training and research practices. Industrial psychology introduced “matching of employees to jobs, for different jobs requiring different skills and abilities”. It emphasised the use of psychology in the field of personnel testing, interviewing, attitude measurement, learning theory, training, and monotony study, safety, job analysis and human engineering.

Psychology such a Poffenberger, Burtt, Hepner and Munsterberg made significant contributions to the field of industrial psychology. Munsterberg developed an extremely active interest is seeking out ways in which psychology could be applied to the problems of industry. He introduced job analysis in terms of mental and emotional requirement of the job. Personnel management grew rapidly in the USA during the 1920’s. A number of companies added personnel departments for the first time, personnel consulting firms began to apper, many colleges and universities began to offer training in this area and personnel research studies were initiated in a variety of settings. The work done at Carnegie Institute of Technology dealing with manpower utilisation in the sales management field is particularly noteworthy. The major areas of specialisation of the personnel managers during this period were selection, training, methods improvement and employee welfare.