Personnel/Human Resource Psychology

This chapter is about the industrial side of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, usually associated with research and practice in personnel or human resource management in organizations. The field is described in different ways in different countries. For example, in the United States industrial psychology has been concerned with enhancing individual job performance through appropriate selection, training, and appraisal of staff. The overriding concern is with improving performance outcomes for management, largely through empirical research (Zickar & Gibby, 2007). In the United Kingdom, occupational psychology is the preferred term, reflecting a broader focus on selection and other personnel/human resource management practices to improve performance as well as a long-standing concern with employee well-being and vocational choice. In Germany the preferred term is work psychology (Wart, 2007).