Humanitarian work psychology: The contributions of organizational psychology to poverty reduction

Abstract

a b s t r a c tAchieving the MDG goal of reducing world poverty by 50% by 2015 requires the cooperative effort of many disciplines. To date the discipline of organizational psychology has not played as significant a role as it might in this endeavor. With the recent establishment of the Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, this discipline signaled its commitment to the global effort. Organizational psychology offers to bring its expertise to poverty reduction: its ability to assess needs and capacity, develop partnerships with stakeholders, bring about and manage change, and systematically review, evaluate, monitor and revise high level mandates, policy development, program implementation and consultation on personnel issues. Its successes as practitioners-scientists in private enterprise will enhance its credibility for success in the public sphere. The article reviews the research and practice of some of the organizational psychologists presently engaged in poverty reduction and how humanitarian work psychology might enhance the efforts of anti-poverty organizations.

Anti-Poverty Psychology

“…Reflecting its own cultural, economic, and political origins, psychology has highlighted family traits (Lewis 1959), work traits (Harris 1973;McClelland 1961), community traits (Allen 1970), and cultural traits (Sinha and Holtzman 1984). Biases like these have led to much self-castigation, loss of professional confidence (Murray 1998), and not a little stereotyping from outside the profession, about psychology's own capabilities vis-à-vis poverty reduction (Berry et al 2011). Since the 1990s however, a balance between arrogance on the one hand and self-doubt on the other has progressively been struck.…”

“…According to some reviewers, psychology has not had a great track record in connecting to various United Nations chapters (Berry et al 2011). For that reason a Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology was formed.…”

The Human Resources Challenge to Community Based Rehabilitation: The Need for a Scientific, Systematic and Coordinated Global Response

“…This sort of analysis is essential in order to identify appropriate types of tasks to be shifted, whereby appropriate decision making and patient/client safety are combined with technical efficacy. This more scientific approach, based on the service needs in different countries, needs to be developed to incorporate literature from organisational psychology on job analysis specifically (Harvey, 2009) and application of the newly established specialty of humanitarian work psychology (Carr et al, 2008;O'Neill Berry et al, 2011). Figure 2 illustrates some of the challenges in developing a new cadre for CBR and how addressing these may contribute to improving services.…”

The Impact of Psychological Factors and Religious Adherence on Household’s Dealing with Poverty-Driven Vulnerability Situation: A Critical Discourse on Kelantan and Terengganu

“…Farmers develop the above threats by them experiencing negative events and stressors such as natural disasters (Berry et al, 2011, Yeung & Chan, 2007 and financial difficulties (Gorgievski et al, 2010). Poverty also found to be the main source leading to psychological problems (Kahn et al, 2000;Goudge et al, 2007;and Berry et al, 2009). Vol.…”

“…Therefore, households' strategies are important elements that determine the level of their poverty. The effectiveness of risk management and coping strategies to insulate households from stressors is determined by many factors: severity and frequency of the shocks or negative event (Kamur & Routray, 2009); Economic condition (Eriksen & Silva, 2009); households' psychological situation (McCubbin & figley, 1983;Chaudhuri, 2003;Garnefski et al, 2005;Beedell & Rehman, 1999;Goudge et al, 2007;Berry et al, 2009;Hinton and Earnest, 2010) and religious adherence (Ensor, 2003;Chester et al, 2008;Gaillard & Texier, 2010;Levin, 1994, Mitchell, 2003Albernethy et al, 2003;Andreana, 2010;crawfold, 1998;and keonig, 2007).…”