Work and Organizations

This chapter addresses the relevance of personality and social psychology to the central life domain of work and organizations. It begins with a general discussion of how the field of organizational psychology is distinct from, yet has been informed by, theory and research in personality and social psychology, distinguishing between horizontal and vertical theory borrowing in this regard. It then summarizes research on four key organizational topics that have particularly strong theoretical and empirical records for integrating across personality and social psychology: person–environment fit, job attitudes, leadership, and teams. Within each of these organizational research areas, examples of horizontal and vertical theory borrowing are discussed as well as new theoretical frameworks with the potential to contribute back to the fields of personality and social psychology.