State of I/O Psychology in the Philippines • Several universities in the country offer an MA in IO Psych

as well
A Brief History of IO Psychology • Two universities offer a PhD in IO Psych
• One of the youngest fields of Psych in the country o ADMU has a PhD in Social-Organizational Psych
• Studies human behavior in work settings o UST has a PhD in Industrial Psych, and a PhD in
• Also called Work Psych or Occupational Psych Human Resource Mgmt
• Pioneers include: • Other universities offer a PhD in Organizational Development
o (Riggio, 2000) (but CHED recognizes these to be under Business
• Hugo Munsterberg Administration, not Social Sciences)
o Experimental psychologist who became interested
in the job design and selection for jobs as Research in IO Psychology
streetcar operators • Research in the country in this field is still in its infancy
• Frederick Taylor • (Bernardo 1997) – a survey done showed that only 5% of
o Credited with igniting the field of IO when he research in the Philippines is done in IO Psych
began to sue scientific principles to improve the • Popular research topics include
efficiency and productivity of jobs o Human Resource Development
• Growth of IO Psych was driver by war o Organization Development
o WW1 and 2 needed an efficient way to screen for o Leadership and Productivity
soldiers • Unfortunately, 80% of researches in IO Psych are student
o Roger Yerkes, president of the APA, and a group of theses and dissertations and remain unpublished
psychologists, created an intelligence test for the • Main venues for published researches are the Philippine
placement of soldiers Journal of Psychology, books and monographs
• Elton Mayo, in the 1930s
o Hawthorne experiment
o Studies used to examine the effects of the
physical work environment on worker productivity
• IO started as an application of Social Psych, but was emerged
as a separate field
o Started by the group known as the American
Association of Applied Psychologists (AAAP)
o Merged with the APA
• In 1982, the division was then named as the Society of
Industrial Organizational Psychology (SIOP)
• Oldest IO-related association is the International
Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP)

Beginning of IO in the Philippines

• Mariano Obias – first Filipino IO psychologist
• Graduated with a PhD in Comparative and Physiological
Psychology from Stanford in 1955
• Fr. Jaime Bulatao – in the 1960s, started the science of the
group process in the ADMU
• In the 1970s, the Institute of Applied Behavioral Science was
established
• In 1974, the ADMU Dept of Psych established the Ateneo
Human Resources Center, and renamed to the Ateneo Center
for Organization Research and Development (CORD)
o This center was intended to be the practice and
extension arm of the Psych dept, especially in IO
Practice of IO Psychology in the Philippines
and Social Psychology.
• Besides in teaching, IO psychologists have mainly practiced in
• In 1962, the Psychological Association of the Philippines was
the field of Human Resource Management (HRM).
founded
• 49% of HR practitioners have psych or behavioral science
o IO psych committee was created in 1988
backgrounds
• First documented IO psych research was “The Personality of
• (Lanuza, 2005)
the Esteemed Filipino Employee” by Aurora Yambot in 1966
• Within HRM, typical areas of practice include:
• First recognition for work in IO was given to Dr. Amaryllis T.
o Recruitment and selection
Torres in 1985 in recognition of her researches in population,
o Training and development
industrial psych, social development, and human dev training.
o Compensation and benefits
o Rewards management
Education in Psychology
o Performance improvement
• An Introduction to IO Psych course is a CHED-mandated
o Labor and employee relations
requirement of AB and BS Psych programs
o Organization development
• Other institutions also offer BS Industrial Psych programs
• Four key roles of HR practitioners of today
altogether
 o Administrative expert o Employee development
o Employee champion o Performance management
o Change agent o Compensation and benefits
o Strategic partner o Interface of people and technology
o (Dave Ulrich, 1997) • Talent management
o Concerned about attracting and keeping the high
potentials or performers in an organization
• Work-life balance
• Emotional Intelligence

Local Trends in IO Psychology

• (Franco 2005)
• Top issues reported by Philippine organizations are:
o A poor economy
o Lack of peace and order in the country
o Poverty
o Rise of skilled employees leaving to work abroad
o Globalization
Issues in IO Psychology
o Increasing use of information technology
• Naming – the label of IO Psych, is not very well known or
• In order for HR practitioners to become more relevant, they
understood
need to build not just technical HR competencies, but also
• Many labels are used by people in this field such as:
competencies related to:
o Organizational psychologist
o Business knowledge
o Work psychologist
o Organization development
o Occupational psychologist
o Interpersonal competence
o Job psychologist
o Personal clarity
• Open to misinterpretation by laymen

Research and Knowledge Building

Searching for an Identity
• Practice of IO Psych in the Philippines is one of adoption
• Study of work behavior isn’t exclusive to IO Psych
rather than creation
• In the Philippines, only half of HR practitioners are trained in
• Paradigms, frameworks, and models used in the country are all
behavioral sciences
largely based on concepts, research, and experiences of other
• Others have backgrounds in management, communications, etc
countries and cultures
• (Lanuza 2005)
• Majority of the IO researches are descriptive in nature
rather than theory testing or building
Differences between the IO psychologist vs the business trained HR
practitioners
Disseminating Knowledge
• Area of expertise
• Very little of the research in IO gets published
o Business-trained practitioners have an edge in
• Our journals are not readily available nor are interesting to
terms of understanding of the business
HR practitioners
o IO psychologists have a greater familiarity with
• Current initiatives include:
science and research, and are more likely to use
o PMAP’s People Manager magazine
empirical data as a way of knowing rather than
o Ateneo CORD’s The Way We Work book
experience or case studies
o People at Work Pulse column in the Philippine Daily
• Focus
Inquirer
o Business-trained HR professionals tend to focus on
o Trendwatcher Series monographs
economic and organizational outcomes
o IO psychologists have operated at the micro-level,
Multi-disciplinary collaborations
focusing on individuals
• Because of the applied nature of IO Psych, there is also a
need to work with those from other fields such as
To License or Not to License
management, sociology, and anthropology. This is seen both in
• The debate on licensure of IO psychologists has been ongoing
the Philippines and countries abroad
for the past decades, in countries where the practice is fully
• IO goes beyond just business organizations. IO is also
developed
applicable to academic, government, and non-government
• For: it will prevent and curb unethical practices, and raise the
organizations. These different types of businesses can learn
standard of the profession
from one another through the intervention of IO.
• Against: unlike clinical psychologists whose practice is
• The practice of IO generates the need to safeguard ethical
protected by client-therapist privacy, IO practice is done in a
practices and standards. Unfortunately, there really isn’t an
public arena, and the quality of service can be validated by
agreed-upon list of guidelines for the conduct and practice of
clients
IO, as well as in training IO psychologists.
• There is a need for better marketing of the IO profession
Emerging Trends in IO: Global Trends in IO
and programs, in order to raise the stature of IP psychology.
• Growing use of technology in IO functions
The competitive advantage/s of IO students vs business
o Testing
management programs should be established.
 • There is also a need for a greater effort in making the
international presence of IO psychologists heard. Examples
of these could be representation in international
organizations, conferences, publications, and in general global
discourse.
• IO psychologists also need to start examining their role in
nation-building (in the Philippines). Even though there are
already individual IO psychologists working with the
government, there is still much more that could be
contributed as a community of scientists and practitioners.
o Individual universities have already spearheaded
this effort such as in ADMU and in UP.
• There is a need for a stronger and more focused community
of IO psychologists.
o There is the need of a critical mass of IO
practitioners in the country
o Issues such as whether the licensure of IO
psychologists should be included in the proposed
Psychology Bill are difficult to address without
dialogue and clear direction

Summary
• Filipino IO psychologists can play a vital role in nation building
• Their increasing population as well as the growing body of
knowledge and research in human resource management can
highlight the potential to help not just individuals, but
organizations and national policy as well.
• However, there are still many challenges that need to be
conquered such as resource constraints, identity and image
issues, and the need to balance the demands of science and
practice.