Industrial psychology is potentially one of the broadest and most significant divisions of psychology. In practice, however, it has developed predominantly as a management technique.* Rarely is the research activity conducted from society's standpoint.No invidious distinction is intended. Improvement of management procedures can be enormously valuable. Nor is it suggested that the two types of development are opposed. The title of the paper is "industrial psychology as management technique and as social science"-not management technique versus social science.
Industrial psychology in America has been most concerned with productivity and organizational effectiveness. Working people are studied primarily as means to the ends of efficiency, whether of the single enterprise or of the larger society. Even when attention is directed to attitudes, feelings, and morale, interest usually centers on how these subjective states affect performance.
Vocational selection is a practical affair. True, certain of its methods and tools are distinctly psychological. But any decision as to what may and what may not be labelled the "psychology" of vocational selection must be regrettably arbitrary. The close interrelation existing between applications and "pure" science in this field, or better, between administrative and research activities, bears upon the nature of the present review in several particulars. In the first place, the dependence of the scientific aspects of vocational selection upon the actual progress of employment procedure makes it desirable to sketch, in barest outline, the developments in industrial employment practice before we proceed to a more detailed discussion of the work that has been done on separate phases of the employment problem. Secondly, it is to be noticed that since the literature dealing with employment
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