Having completed your M.S. degree in I/O psychology, you have just landed your first job as a personnel specialist with Acme Aluminum, Corp. Before completing your degree, you gained experience as an intern where you had the opportunity to develop a test for selecting software developers and conducted a morale survey to determine the reason for the high rate of turnover for the company you worked for.

Your boss, Melinda Maleeva who is the HR director is convinced that someone with your background will be valuable to the organization. However, Al McMettle, the CEO, is wondering why HR would need a personnel specialist. Mr. McMettle came up through the organization from having started as a worker on the shop floor, and learned the aluminum extrusion process from the ground up. Since he has had no management training or formal education beyond his bachelor's degree in engineering, he knows little or nothing about the contemporary status of Human Resources Departments. In conversations with Melinda, he has indicated that knowing how to handle people and getting them to work hard is simply common sense. He believes that some managers are natural leaders while others can never learn to become effective leaders. In his day, the only function of Personnel was to handle payroll and make sure the organization was staffed adequately.

Melinda Maleeva asks you to write a brief (5 pages) statement to her describing what you can bring to the department. She intends to relate what you have to say to Mr. McMettle to convince him you will be worth your mettle.

She says that you need to enlighten the CEO about what I/O psychology is all about and convince him that you are needed to improve the HR functioning. If you make a convincing argument, you stand to gain quite a lot of autonomy and will serve directly under Melinda as her organizational behavior expert and be the chief person to design and bring about needed organizational changes. Keep in mind that, since Al is an engineer, he likes to be persuaded with facts and empirical information, not just a bunch of rhetoric.

In talking with Melinda and others who have been at Acme for a while, you find out that the company has grown dramatically over the past five years from three plants located throughout the mid eastern region to five now. One of the new plants is located in New Mexico and the other is in California. The number of employees has grown from 250 to 385. Two of the plants in the northeast have begun to experience problems with labor unions and morale seems to have become a problem.

To prepare your statement, you think it might be useful to try to educate Al on what organizational psychology is all about, and how it may help to improve the company's functioning. Since Al is an engineer, he may appreciate how systematic study and observational methods may prove useful to understanding the organization better.

Assignment: Write a five page statement describing how expertise in organizational psychology can benefit Acme. You must convince Al that you are worth the salary you have been offered and that you can contribute to the bottom line. Be sure to demonstrate that you have a good grasp of what organizational psychology is about, how it has emerged and ways its methods can be applied to help this organization. The paper should include references in APA style, be well organized, and carefully edited. Sources you may wish to consider are Landy chapters 10, 11, and the Annual Review article and any others you may find on your own.