Critical organisational psychology

Matthew McDonald

David Bubna-Litic

pp. 597-619

in: Brendan Gough (ed), The Palgrave handbook of critical social psychology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Social psychological theory has made a number of important contributions to how we think about organisational life, from the way in which work is designed to the relationship between managers and employees. This chapter outlines a number of concerns that social psychology has been uncritically accepted without interrogating some important assumptions. We present how critical perspectives on the application of social psychology to work raise some important issues for scholars. Starting with a review of existing critiques, we explore how labour process and social theory can be used to as a basis to develop new lines of research in critical social psychology. The final section reports on the recent popularity of positive psychology and its psychologisation of workplace problems.