11. Contributions from Men of Affairs
While Munsterberg firmly maintains that trained psychologists must design and conduct experiments, he is also firm in maintaining that the "representatives of practical life" are much better equipped to define the instances in which psychological tests ought to be applied.
During his research he has contacted companies in a variety of industries, naming paper mills, machine shops, mining firms, railroads, departments stores, publishers, breweries, and various other venues. "Everywhere it was acknowledged that they had given hardly any conscious attention to the real psychological dispositions of their employees."
They did seem to notice whether employees were energetic or slothful, honest or dishonest, agreeable or quarrelsome, and so on - and they did seem to have some notion that employees possessing certain personality traits were better workers than others - but all in a vague and unspecific manner. Moreover, while many seem to acknowledge that finding the best kind of worker was critical to economic success, few saw psychology as a too fit for that purpose.
A loose observation: when young people are employed by companies, they are very often found to be unfit for the position in which they initially applied, and are shifted around to other departments to eventually find a position in which they are capable of success. This is a very imprecise and costly process of trial and error.
He mentions a pencil factory he visited. In the packing department, employees developed the ability to grasp a dozen pencils at a time. Those who could do so in a single motion, without counting each, were highly efficient - and some seemed to learn this quickly and effortlessly whereas others never seemed to get it quite right. Those who failed were transferred to other departments - for example the one where pencils are stamped with the brand - and often found a place where they showed great fitness.
He also speaks to job design, and uses an example of an accounting office that reconciled cards that contained figures (expected versus actual amount paid). Some of the clerks were very good at this - they would riffle through the slips so quickly that a bystander could scarce read a single figure, and yet without making an error in thousands of comparisons. A separate set of employees would then total the slips on calculators (adding machines). When the firm attempted to consolidate the two tasks, they found that the employees who were best at reconciling the slops were "useless on the machines" and some of the most proficient machine operators were very slow and inaccurate at reconciling the figures on the slips.
Examples such as the pencil factory and accounting office "might be heaped up without end." And by the practice of shifting people from one place to another, a large corporation is more effective as a long-term employer because it can find the proper place for a man, whereas a smaller company with fewer functions under one roof often has no place for an employee who does not work out at the position to which he is initially hired. It is by this virtue that some men drift from place to place, forever drifting in a trial-and-error attempt to happen upon a proper fit. It is a "limitless waste of human material."
(EN: This is particularly poignant in the present day, when the notion of lifelong employment at a firm seems laughably antiquated. Even large firms are quick to dispose of people who do not work out at their initial job, and release rather than retrain after a layoff. Arguably, this saves the expense of re-training - but given that America has lost most of its manufacturing to producers overseas, who are more efficient and yet still maintain a tradition of lifelong employment, it does raise the question of whether the "new" way of treating people as disposable resources is quite as efficient as it seems, in the large scale and over the long term.)
Munsterberg suggests that there ought to be a universal classification of industrial occupations - as many people in different companies work at the same kinds of jobs - that would better enable men to select for themselves a method of employment that leverages their best skills. Employers, meanwhile, could use assessment testing to determine which applicants are best suited to a job - or when their initial assessment is found to be in error, to re-assess the employee rather than dismissing or randomly reassigning him.
He speaks at length about how this might be done - evaluation of employees who excel as compared to those who do not, and so forth. (EN: All of which seems tedious and largely moot. The Department of Labor offers a catalog of occupations and a battery of assessment tests, and employers do look for psychological traits in new employees. My sense is that it is not done very extensively or very well, and still seems to have potential - and it is not the tools but their poor application that is at fault.)
Education and training also have a role to play: not only can a student be encouraged toward a career in which he has greater potential to be successful, but education and training can help to bolster the areas in which he is mismatched. The earlier in life this can be done, the better.
He also notes that the ability to do a job should not be the sole criterion. There is a common notion that a person is happy doing work at which he is most productive, but this does not always bear out in practice. Specific studies into German textile workers (McComas, 1911) demonstrate an inverse relationship - the better a textile worker is at his job, the more he tends to hate it, whereas hapless workers were among the happiest employees.
As an aside, this study also contradicts the common practice of sorting out as "misfits" those employees whose demeanor is less than cheerful. Ultimately, it is in their best interest to find an occupation at which they would be happier, but it is in the best interest of the employer to place them where they are most effective. A shop of delirious imbeciles is unlikely to be profitable.
While the author advocates for psychological measurement and matching, he does concede it is imperfect. People are very good at pretending to be what is wanted when they are looking for a means of income. A person who excels in some regards may be terrible in others. And a given trait may be valuable only to a certain degree - such that exceeding the mark is just as bad as failing to measure up in terms of their ultimate performance.
But it remains true that psychology is, and forever has, been a factor in hiring decisions as employers who interview a candidate depend on their impression of the candidate's character. The psychological approach merely makes this process more accurate and scientific than gut-feel approaches.