Applying Work and Organizational Psychology in the Field of Labor Relations: Exploratory Study in Trade Unions in the Basque Country

Imanol Ulacia, Klara Smith-Etxeberria () and Angel Beldarrain-Durandegui
Additional contact information
Imanol Ulacia: Department of Social Psychology, College of Psychology, University of the Basque Country, 20018 San Sebastian, Spain
Klara Smith-Etxeberria: Department of Basic Psychological Processes and Their Development, College of Psychology, University of the Basque Country, 20018 San Sebastian, Spain
Angel Beldarrain-Durandegui: Department of Social Psychology, College of Psychology, University of the Basque Country, 20018 San Sebastian, Spain

Social Sciences, 2022, vol. 11, issue 12, 1-13

Abstract: Historically, the relationship between work and organizational psychology and trade union organizations has been one of mutual indifference and neglect. The aim of this study is to explore whether trade union members’ social representations of organizational psychology affect their organizations’ engagement with this discipline, conditioning their ability to derive benefit from its findings. In a sample of 448 members of the four main trade unions of the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain, social representations of six concepts relating to Psychology or Trade Union Activity were explored using the free association technique. Forty-five categories were created and their frequency and percentages were calculated. In addition, the means of the categories shared by the representations of two different concepts were crossed and statistically tested. Although some associations were found between the representations of the two sets of concepts, most were non-significant. These results highlight that the structure of the representations of Psychology gives only a partial explanation for this lack of connection. The implications of the study and its limitations are discussed, and some recommendations for future research are proposed.

Keywords: work and organizational psychology; labor relations; trade union organizations; limitations; social representations; Basque Country (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/12/570/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/12/570/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:11:y:2022:i:12:p:570-:d:992316

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().