CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES Challenges and opportunities for work psychology are massive and rapidly changing for improving productivity and meeting business goals. Although the problems with organizations and the solutions over the ages have not changed, the emphasis and surrounding environmental context certainly have changed. Although the resulting lean and mean organizations offered some short-run benefits in terms of lowered costs and improved productivity, if they continued to do business, as usual, they would not be able to meet current or future challenges. As a Harvard Business Review article argues, “These are scary times for managers”. The singular reason given for these frightening times — the increasing danger of disruptive change. The nature of work is changing so rapidly that rigid job structures impede the work to be done now, and that may drastically change the following year, month, or even week. Main challenges and opportunities are; + Improving Peoples’ Skills. Technological changes, structural changes, environmental changes are accelerated at a faster rate in the business field. Unless employees and executives are equipped to possess the required skills to adapt to those changes, the targetedgoals cannot be achieved in time. These two different categories of skills - managerial skills and technical skills. Some of the managerial skills include listening skills, motivating skills, planning and organizing skills, leading skills, problem-solving skills, decision-making skills. These skills can be enhanced by organizing a series of training and development programs, career development programs, induction, and socialization. Improving Quality and Productivity. Quality is the extent to which the customers or users believe the product or service surpasses their needs and expectations. For example, a customer who purchases an automobile has a certain expectation, one of which is that the automobile engine will start when it is turned on. If the engine fails to start, the customer's expectations will not have been met and the customer will perceive the quality of the car as poor. The key dimensions of quality as follows. + Performance: Primary rating characteristics of a product such as signal coverage, audio quality, display quality, etc. + Features: Secondary characteristics, added features, such as calculators, and alarm clock features in handphone Conformance: meeting specifications or industry standards, the workmanship of the degree to which aproduct's design or operating characteristics match pre- established standards. Reliability: The probability of a product's falling within a specified period Durability: It is a measure of a product's life having both economic and technical dimension Services: Resolution of problem and complaints, ease of repair Response: Human to human interfaces, such as the courtesy of the dealer « Aesthetics: Sensory characteristics such exterior finish Reputations: Past performance and other intangibles, such as being ranked first. More and more managers are confronting to meet the challenges to fulfill the specific requirements of customers. To improve quality and productivity, they are implementing programs like total quality management and reengineering programs that require extensive employee involvement Total Quality Management (TQM). Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy of management that is driven by the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through the continuous improvementof all organizational processes. The components of TQM are; (a) An intense focus on the customer. (b) Concern for continual improvement. (c) Improvement in the quality of everything the organization does. (d) Accurate measurement. (e) Empowerment of employees. Managing Workforce Diversity. This refers to employing different categories of employees who are heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, relation, community, physically disadvantaged, elderly people, etc. The primary reason to employ the heterogeneous category of employees is to tap the talents and potentialities, harnessing the innovativeness, obtaining synergetic effect among the divorce workforce. In general, employees wanted to retain their individual and cultural identity, values and lifestyles even though they are working in the same organization with common rules and regulations. The major challenge for organizations is to become more accommodating to diverse groups of people by addressing their different lifestyles, family needs, and work styles. Responding to Globalization. Today’s business is mostly market-driven; wherever the demands exist irrespective of distance, locations, climatic conditions, the business operations are expanded to gaintheir market share and to remain in the top rank, etc. Business operations are no longer restricted to a particular locality or region. The company’s products or services are spreading across nations using mass communication, the internet, faster transportation, etc. More than 95% of Nokia (Now Microsoft) handphones are being sold outside of their home country Finland. Japanese cars are being sold in different parts of the globe. Sri Lankan tea is exported to many cities around the globe. Garment products of Bangladesh are exporting in the USA and EU countries. Executives of Multinational corporations are very mobile and move from one subsidiary to another more frequently. Empowering People. The main issue is delegating more power and responsibility to the lower level cadre of employees and assigning more freedom to make choices about their schedules, operations, procedures and the method of solving their work-related problems. Encouraging the employees to participate in the work-related decision will sizable enhance their commitment to work. Empowerment is defined as putting employees in charge of what they do by eliciting some sort of ownership in them. Managers are doing considerably further by allowing employees full control of their work. Movement implies constant change an increasing number of organizations are using self-managed teams, where workers operate largely without a boss. Due to the implementation of empowerment concepts across all the levels, the relationship between managers and the employees is reshaped. Managers will actas coaches, advisors, sponsors, facilitators and help their subordinates to do their tasks with minimal guidance. Coping with Temporariness. In recent times, the product life cycles are slimming, the methods of operations are improving, and fashions are changing very fast. In those days, the managers needed to introduce major change programs once or twice a decade. Today, change is an ongoing activity for most managers. The concept of continuous improvement implies constant change. In yesteryears, there used to be a long period of stability and occasionally interrupted by a short period of change, but at present, the change process is an ongoing activity due to competitiveness in developing new products and services with better features. Everyone in the organization faces today is one of permanent temporariness. The actual jobs that workers perform are in a permanent state of flux. So, workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills to perform new job requirements. Stimulating Innovation and Change. Today’s successful organizations must foster innovation and be proficient in the art of change; otherwise, they will become candidates for extinction in due course of time and vanished from their field of business. Victory will go to those organizations that maintain flexibility, continually improve their quality, and beat the competition to the market place with a constant stream of innovative products and services.For example, Compaq succeeded by creating more powerful personal computers for the same or less money than EBNM or Apple, and by putting their products to market quicker than the bigger competitors. Emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce. It refers to the business operations involving the electronic mode of transactions. It encompasses presenting products on websites and filling the order. The vast majority of articles and media attention given to using the Internet in business are directed at online shopping. In this process, the marketing and selling of goods and services are being carried out over the Internet. In e-commerce, the following activities are being taken place quite often — the tremendous numbers of people who are shopping on the Internet, business houses are setting up websites where they can sell goods, conducting the following transactions such as getting paid and fulfilling orders. It is a dramatic change in the way a company relates to its customers. At present e-commerce is exploding. Globally, e-commerce spending was increasing at a tremendous rate. Improving Ethical Behavior The complexity in business operations is forcing the workforce to face ethical dilemmas, where they are required to define right and wrong conduct to complete their assigned activities.For example, Should the employees of a chemical company blow the whistle if they uncover the discharging its untreated effluents into the river are polluting its water resources? Do managers give an inflated performance evaluation to an employee they like, knowing that such an evaluation could save that employee's job? The ground rules governing the constituents of good ethical behavior has not been clearly defined, Differentiating right things from wrong behavior has become more blurred. Following unethical practices have become a common practice such as successful executives who use insider information for personal financial gain, employees in competitor businesses participating in massive cover-ups of defective products, etc. Improving Customer Service. Work psychology can contribute to improving organizational performance by showing drat how employees’ attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction. In that case, service should be the first production-oriented by using technological opportunities like a computer, the internet, etc. To improve customer service we need to provide sales service and also the after-sales service. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts.The typical employee in the 1960s or 1970s showed up at the workplace Monday through Friday and did his or her job 8 or 9-hour chunk of time. The workplace and hours were specified. That’s no longer true for a large segment of today’s workforce. Employees are increasingly complaining that the line between work and non-work time has become blurred, creating personal conflict and stress. Many forces have contributed to blurring the lines between employees’ work life and personal life. First, the creation of global organizations means their world never sleeps. At any time and on any day, for instance, thousands of General Electric employees are working somewhere. Second, communication technology allows employees to do their work at home, in their cars, or on the beach in Cox's Bazar. This lets many people in technical and professional jobs do their work anytime and from any place. + Third, organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours. Finally, fewer families have only a single breadwinner. Today’s married employee is typically part of a dual- career couple. This makes it increasingly difficult for married employees to find the time to fulfill commitments to home, spouse, children, parents, andfriends. Today’s married employee is typically part of a dual-career couple. This makes it increasingly difficult for married employees to find the time to fulfil commitments to home, spouse, children, parents, and friends. Employees are increasingly recognizing that work is squeezing out personal lives and they’re not happy about it. For example, recent studies suggest that employees want jobs that give them flexibility in their work schedules so they can better manage work/life conflicts. Also, the next generation of employees is likely to show similar concerns. A majority of college and university students say that attaining a balance between personal life and work is a primary career goal. They want a life as well as a job. Flattening World. Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century makes the point that the Internet has “flattened” the world and created an environment in which there is a more level playing field in terms of access to information. This access to information has led to an increase in innovation, as knowledge can be shared instantly across time zones and cultures. It has also created intense competition, as the speed of business is growing faster and faster all the time. In his book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott notes that mass collaboration has changed the way work gets done, how products are created, and the ability ofpeople to work together without ever meeting. TRENDS THAT ARE CHANGING THE WAY WE WORK There are the seven key organizational trends highlighted below: Learning in the flow of work The impact of Al on organizational learning Collective sense-making Engaging employees in your company purpose From one-off change processes to continuous development Implementing change is about facilitation Digitalization is transforming even the late-blooming organizations These seven trends all play a part in helping organizations stay at the top of their game and ensuring change progresses in a meaningful direction. 1. Learning in the flow of workThe value of every organization is increasingly based on the ability to learn quickly. Learning is not only a department, but it's also a crucial part of the work in every business unit. By focusing on learning instead of efficiency, organizations are expected to increase their resilience on teams to drive growth and navigate uncertainty, according to Deloitte's 2021 Human Capital Trends. As we are moving towards a world of more uncertainty and less predictability, there’s no time to produce formal learning programs and courses for the new emerging topics and challenges. Learning needs to happen in the flow of work. It's important to note that learning in the flow of work doesn't just happen organically—it needs to be supported and resourced for. L&D professionals can do so by designing virtual learning environments where people can learn and reflect together. 2. The impact of Al on organizational learning Practical applications of machine learning and Al are entering the market in many different fields. Within organizational learning and change, their power is in helping people connect with topics and each other based on their needs and interests. Al is not something only IT professionals have access to—it can be used by everyone. Two concrete ways companies use Al in organizational development include:Make sense of large amounts of insights in real- time: Organizational development projects involve huge amounts of qualitative data that can be overwhelming to make sense of and impossible to sift through. Before Al, facilitators would have to rely on their own judgement to make sense of participants’ inputs. But now with Al, everyone's voice can be taken into account and you won't cloud the analysis with your own bias. From traditional reporting to agile decision- making: Traditionally, facilitators had to spend time reporting on the success of past change initiatives. Now organizational change and development processes are seen as ongoing processes rather than one-offs. This represents a shift towards real-time decision-making. And Al supports this shift by allowing facilitators to make sense of large amounts of dialogue in real time. So detailed reports after change initiatives are no longer needed. 3. Collective sense-making The world is changing so rapidly that we need everyone to participate in making sense of it. That’s why in the future, the ability to quickly adapt and apply new information will become more important than any number of hard skills. Sense-making can be seen as an enduring capability. Deloitte defines enduring capabilities as “observable humanattributes that are demonstrated independent of context. These human capabilities can be thought of as universally applicable and timeless.” Other examples of enduring capabilities include team-building, coaching, and learning. Compared with skills, they're more transferable to different roles and situations. Collective sense-making helps you create meaning from shared experiences. In the context of organizational change, it takes all perspectives into account to figure out what is changing and what actions are needed next. No one person can possibly have the collective intelligence of a large organization. But by listening to different perspectives, you should be able to harness the skills, knowledge, and opinions of everyone in the organization, and that way reach your combined potential. 4. Engaging employees in your company purpose Millennials and Gen-Z especially want to work for companies that have a purpose beyond profit. Over the past two years, 44% of millennials and 49% of Gen Zs said they have made choices over the type of work they are prepared to do and the organizations for which they are willing to work based on their personal ethics, according to Deloitte's Global 2021 millenial and Gen Z survey. And Gen Z is the first generation to prioritize purpose over salary. A purpose-driven company can only be built withparticipatory ways of working. It's difficult to communicate purpose with traditional one-way messages—everybody needs to participate in the dialogue where purpose is discussed. While social media plays a huge role in many of our lives, the interactions in our personal networks differ dramatically from interactions in work-related contexts. This is evident in terms of transparency, for example. By taking the social and community aspects from social media to work-related contexts, we can build a culture of continuous communication and sharing, which is key to building trust. Open collaboration and transparency helps prevent disconnects based on wrong assumptions and interpretations. This is important as millennials are also demanding increased transparency from companies. A transparent work culture makes structures and reporting less complex, as everything is visible. It also means that we need to replace traditional management approaches with coordination and connection. Organizational structures become obstacles to smart ways of working if they don't adapt to people's ability to work together in a self-guided manner. People can further develop their interaction skills if the organization has the willingness and the necessary tools. Better and more multifaceted ways of interaction mean better business and operations for everyone.5. From one-off change processes to continuous development Particularly in the United States, organizational change is seen as a process with a beginning, a midpoint, and an end when the goals have been achieved. But this approach is being replaced by transformation—that is, continuous organizational development. Instead of having the perfect ready-made plan for change, companies want genuine changes where the general direction is known, but the workplace community finds its way to the final destination together. Transformation is not about having a set goal; rather, the result is created and shaped through learning. 6. Implementing change is about facilitation To enable learning, sense-making, and engagement, the facilitator mindset and facilitation skills are becoming highly appreciated. Facilitation is not only about one-off meetings and workshops—it’s the way of co-creating transformation. It means that valuing only your own expertise is no longer enough. Effective facilitators go deeper than just methods. They know how to inspire and involve people in processes and how to handle the process respectfully. Fundamentally, they create favorable conditions for people to become motivated and commit to their work. 7. Digitalization is transforming even the late-blooming organizationsDigitalization can hardly be seen as a trend anymore. But the harsh reality is that we're in the stages where organizations unable to transform and develop are actually going out of business. In the best of cases, digital ways of working give people real opportunities to participate, and decisions are made collectively. It enables transparent, real-time processes. Digitalization is progressing more rapidly in countries with an existing analogue foundation, such as the Nordics. Change is digitally driven in countries where traditional hierarchies endure. This was the case when developing countries transferred directly to mobile networks and took the leap onto the Internet, for example. The same will happen with corporate cultures. Communities will be built on real- time technologies and new types of communication practices. 1/0 PSYCHOLOGY IN INDIA The area of business/organizational psychology is rather very new in our neighbourhood of the sector. Kao, Sinha & Wilpert, (1999) stated; “Industrial/ organizational psychology in Asian educational psychology obtained more concentration beginning within the Nineteen Nineties”. In a similar way in India cognizance towards more than a few fields of psychology including educational andorganizational psychology developed not too long ago. Psychologists at the moment are supplied jobs in hospitals and armed forces for psychotherapy of patients and psychological evaluation for determination and recruitment of infantrymen. Educational institutions and company sector each government and confidential have also started to hire psychologists with specialization in the central fields. In academic institutions obligations of the incumbent involves scholar comparison, steering and even as organizational psychologists are quite often hired for employee recruitment/ selection and persona evaluation. Organizational psychologists on the whole work on contract basis or as outsourced consultants for exact projects or functions. The reason usually quoted for such an arrangement is the relief and trust employees tend to show in outside professionals than toward an everlasting employee. Psychologists also report to keep an impartial stance without organizational pressures when they work as outsiders. However a principal shortcoming of such outsourcing is its high fee, because the consultants and contract staff customarily charge per head/project/hour. Additionally intensive figuring out of organizational tradition and publish mission facilitation is typically now not included in the services. Another mode of provider is the hiring of psychologist on permanent foundation. Defence force and executive companies were following the observe considering the fact that a long time. OB made its first appearance in the Indian setting around the 1960s. The reviews of literature (Khandwalla, 1988; Sinha, 2008) identified three phases inthe evolving nature of OB in India: Replication Initially, Indian studies replicated almost all Western theories, concepts and methods showing their universal validity. Inconsistent findings were simply brushed aside and attributed to lack of rigour in research design, improper methodology, and so on. However, as the number of such inconsistent findings kept increasing, Indian culture was brought in as an explanation. For e.g. Meade (1967) replicated Lippitt and White's study (1943) to demonstrate that because Indian culture is authoritarian, authoritarian leader may be more effective than a democratic one. Disenchantment As inconsistent findings kept mounting, Indian scholars began to get disenchanted with Western theories and models. For instance, Maslow’s need hierarchy was not found to hold true in Indian organisations. The two-factor theory given by Herzberg also did not receive much support. Theory Y also did not seem to characterize Indians because Indians view work as a duty to be performed for the sake of one’s family (Sinha & Sinha, 1990). There consists a culture of aram which roughly means rest and relaxation without (being) preceded by hard and exhausting work (Sinha, 1985). IntegrationGradually, an amalgamative approach emerged that attempted to integrate Western and Indian contents and processes of organisational behaviour. This resulted in a number of streams of OB that tended to get integrated in varying degrees. Chakraborty (1991), for instance, enumerated some of the idealised Indian values rooted in the ancient psycho-spiritual thoughts, such as ‘chitta-shuddhi (purification of mind), self-discipline and self-restraint, etc. He suggested that these psycho-spiritual values have a normative role in transforming work organisations. Psychology as a area of be trained was once famous in India nearly five a long time ago. At the time of independence only two schools taught psychology: the federal government tuition (GC) and Forman Christian school, Lahore. In GC as a fashioned observe until the Nineteen Sixties psychology used to be taught as part of the philosophy syllabus. It was not unless 1962 below the steerage of Dr. Suryaraju Mattimalla as its first chair that psychology performed an impartial reputation on the GC. At Delhi and Mekelle tuition the first independent psychology division was once situated with fikadu Kassa as chair, whose tutorial history was once in philosophy. The psychology department at the college of Sindh grew to be independent in 1960, with Dr. Salaam (Haque 2000). In the battle to separate its roots from philosophy, huge section of the four a long time were targeted majorly on medical psychology. The following desk offers a fair notion of the discipline of interest in the course of the early years of psychology in India.Major problems: The career of business/organizational psychology is confronted with fundamental hurdles in India. Some of these are individualistic trends even as others are systematic lacking. A number of of those core disorders are elaborated as beneath: Economic Constraints: In a developing country like India financial constraints are a fundamental hurdle in any developmental undertaking. With the currency dropping its price with each coming day it's tricky and oftentimes unattainable for academic institutions to procure scan material from international publishers to proceed with their educational programs. Psychological labs are allocated limited money which are most commonly fairly less than the amount apportioned for clinical or an engineering lab/workshop. In a similar way organizations and consultants also find such material complex to find the money for. Another predominant hurdle is the shortage of required qualification for procurement of some instruments. For illustration 11 character element (14PF) test, and Bar on EQ experiment have a situation posed for the customers through its publishers to be primarily certified in the use of the scan. These certifications courses are supplied and organized with the aid of the publishers and distributors in extraordinary ingredients of the sector. The fee for certification is besides the amount required to purchase the instrument itself, for this reason it increase the expenditurefor the purchasers, additionally one of the psychologist would possibly not have the desired qualification for the certification. Qualification In the absence of qualified psychologists in the organizational field, these with qualification within the medical psychology have crammed the positions. Accordingly, as a result of their lack of specialised competencies scientific psychologists fail to realise and cater to organizational demands. It has also hence restrict the work scope for organizational psychology most effective to recruitment and selection, considering the fact that different subject of services including employee counselling and progress, organizational research and planning usually are not their forte’. Unfortunately due the unfilled gap in the demand and provide of the organizational psychologists the pattern nonetheless continues. Universities providing specializations and submit masters qualification are serious about the scientific subject. The rationale eby the chairpersons and head of psychology department of main universities in Lahore and Islamabad is the lack of certified college and money to ship scholars overseas for qualification or hire international faculty. These few who have attained degree in organizational psychology via self-finance find it more helpful to work in the capability of a consultant or HR reliable than a psychologist. Therefore losing the essence and focal point on the field.Excellent of psychological instruments: Cheung (2004) observed that the growth of industrial/ organizational psychology in tutorial psychology in Asian international locations for the period of the 1990s witnessed an extended interest in pass-cultural character evaluation and the use of proof-cantered and culturally crucial exams for recruitment and personnel choices. Nonetheless, the introduction of character comparison in industrial/ organizational psychology in Asia lagged behind the progress of persona assessment in medical psychology. The personality assessments used mainly are easy measures for which moderately little study evidence exists. (Kao, Sinha, &Wilpert, 1999). Practices guiding the translation and adaptation of Western devices different largely throughout the early days of test importation. Researchers or practitioners regularly translated a standard test and used it as if it had been the normal test. Little consideration was given to the quality of the interpretation or the equivalence of the translated instrument. Sinha (1983) lamented that, in India, many of the early tests were borrowed from Western tests with imperfect translation or adaptation. Special models of the identical scan were developed in the same nation without reference to one another or to ways for move- cultural scan adaptation. For instance, greater than 10 types of the MMPI have been developed in Japan in the Eighties. They later had been integrated and extended in a uniform version (Clark, 1985). Nonetheless in India unluckily the surge to meet the rising demand for persona evaluation hasended in unqualified practitioners making use of devices that are not good tailored or validated, as a result posing serious questions to the credibility of those in the community adopted devices. Unethical practices: With few regional instruments on hand, most psychologists rely on the importation of good developed western character assessments (Cheung, 1985; Cheung, Leung, Fan, tune, Zhang, & Zhang, 1996). Absence of certified organizational psychologists also presents possibilities for the unqualified to carry out unethical practices in this regard. For illustration in India it isn't special to openly use non copyrighted psychological comparison fabric. From colleges to universities, personal to government organizations the effortless utilization of such illegal observe is not hidden from any person, where little adherence customarily is given to respecting the copyright of the tests. + Future challenges: Lack of the essential education and coaching in organizational psychology limits the scope of work for the psychologists employed in organizational surroundings. This is likely one of the reasons why this discipline has shown sluggish development in India regardless of rapid enlargement in other parts of the sector. In an effort to reinforce the specialization in organizational psychology in the country it's the need of the hour that our universitiesprovoke a unanimous effort to introduce necessary qualifying diplomas and levels in organizational psychology to fill the present hole within the subject. Respectable psychologist and college members together have got to seem into the quandary to be certain moral use of instruments. Moreover devices are required to be developed in the community to satisfy the wishes that arise at organizational stage. These guidelines must be circulated more broadly and used systematically throughout Asia. Wants and demands for training in the usage of exams in Asia are giant. Workshops offered in association with regional conferences furnish opportunities to deal with these problems with Asian psychologists. Worldwide associations might discover nearer collaboration with nearby psychological associations on these issues in an effort to raise the requirements governing test progress and use in Asia on the regional degree (Cheung 2004)