Business and Organizational Psychology qualifications are becoming more and more popular among professionals in corporate sector
In the Sri Lankan corporate sector, psychology still does not enjoy the same degree of popularity, acceptance and attention that it receives in other parts of the world, but the use of psychological theories, models and testing in business is slowly but steadily increasing in Sri Lanka. Similar to any other concept, this is also an example of the process of evolution seen in any field. The Sri Lankan corporate sector has grown and developed to the level that it now should go beyond mere observation and imitation to observation, understanding and application.
For example, most of the practices and strategies recommended at the workplace are based on the fact that these practices and strategies have been found to be successful in other organizations. In other words, this is observing successful strategies and practices of others and replicating them at your workplace. Unfortunately, this process has not achieved the success it has anticipated and organizations have resorted to testing one strategy after the other on trial and error basis, resulting in significant loss of money, effort and time.
In analyzing why such methods fail, the answer is obvious. No two organizations are alike. Even two branches of the same company could be very different in terms of the people who work, cultural and sub cultural norms, clientele and other various factors. Thus, applying what works in one place to another is no better than resorting to probability or intuition.
Not “what works” but “Why it works”
What we should do instead is to understand the underlying mechanisms of a successful strategy or practice to identify the reasons behind its success. Once we have identified the key underlying factors that lead to its success, we are able to devise a strategy that is suitable for the setting that we need to achieve the same success, thereby not focusing on “what worked for them’’ but “why it worked for them”. This would not only prevent blind imitation of practices, which could lead to disastrous results, but also the application of proven mechanisms with the understanding of the core factors that lead to success.
Some of us are born with the ability to analyze and understand these processes and some of us would gain such skills and expertise over time as a result of working in the field and working with people for so many years. But what about the others? The majority of us would fall in to the category where either our main strength is not analyzing and understanding human behavior or we have not worked long enough to gain such skills through experience.
Expertise and Experience
When you sit in an audience of a speech of a successful business leader, what amazes you is either his or her natural skills or the skills gained through years of experience. If you are not born with a skill, or you cannot wait till you gain it through experience, the best option is to learn how to acquire that skill. This is where a professional and credible source of learning could give you the advantage you need, still being young. If one analyzes and summarizes what all of us do the business, it could be simplified to understanding, predicting and influencing people. When we say we are providing leadership, motivating staff, improving job satisfaction, advertising, branding, forecasting or for that matter anything in business, we simply try to predict and/or influence people. But we would know how to influence them only if we can predict their behavior, and to predict their behavior, we should understand them, and to understand them we should be able to analyze them.
This is where our knowledge of human behavior could be put to good use. As mentioned previously, some are naturally gifted with the ability to do so and some may learn these to a certain degree through experience. But for others the way to gain this expertise is to obtain these skills through learning.
Business Psychology
Business Psychology is a field of study in which such skills could be learnt. If someone is interested in receiving a broad view and an understanding of human behavior and thinking, he or she may need to study psychology in depth, but the essential aspects of human behavior needed for a work setting could be covered to a certain degree through business psychology programs. But the important thing is these programs should not be undertaken with the aim of gathering paper qualifications or titles. Unless you are enthusiastic and truly interested in psychology and, therefore, properly engage in the process of learning, your knowledge of human behavior would not be very different at the end of the program compared at the start.
Recently introduced masters level qualification, Master Practitioner in Business & Organizational Psychology offered by CIIHE School of Psychology has become very popular and attracted many individuals from different fields in the corporate sector.
These are some of the prominent features of this program.
Not For The Certificate Collectors
This program is definitely not for certificate collectors. Neither is it a marathon of power point slides. This is designed for the ones who truly seek to understand human behavior and apply that knowledge to influence people around you in a positive way.
At CIIHE School of psychology, we are serious about education and for us education is dissemination of knowledge in a way it truly benefits the recipient. Therefore you are expected to come for classes regularly, engage in meaningful discussions, be inspired by the things you learn and develop further curiosity to engage in self learning.
Beyond Gambling & Intuition
One key objective of this program is to provide evidence based, well researched Scientific insights to the corporate leaders that would influence their behavior and attitudes and further facilitate their decision making.
You will be able to avoid the risk involved with basing your strategies based on intuition or the painful journey of becoming successful by learning from trial and error.
Use the knowledge already available to improve your performance and the impact you have on others.
Your Return on Investment
Neither the value, nor the cost of something is judged by comparing its price to other things in the same category. Analyze your return on investment and predict your success.
Becoming a professional in business psychology will place you among the highest earners in the corporate sector. As a Business Psychologist, a consultant, a coach or a corporate trainer you will no longer be waiting for a monthly pay cheque, you will be your own boss, billing by the hours. You will fully recover the cost of the program from less than 5 to 6 corporate trainings.
When you look at the number of electives and the nature of the electives you will realize that we don’t have the expertise in Sri Lanka to deliver some these modules and therefore they will be taught by visiting professors from UK. These value additions would make the program expensive to deliver compared to other qualifications that could be offered for a lesser cost using part time lecturers and several modules being taught by the same person.
International recognition
Master Practitioner in Business & Organizational Psychology is a qualification validated by ABE UK. CIRP has partnered with ABE UK, in validating the program to offer the students an internationally recognized qualification to ensure that your qualification is accepted wherever you decide to use it.
ABE UK is the quality assurance partner in this qualification so MPBP is recognized as a level 7 qualification by British Standards, specifically by Ofqual the British government regulatory body for awarding and accreditation boards.
Level 7 is Master’s degree level and parallel MSc/MA’s awarded by universities and professional masters and postgraduate advance diplomas by professional bodies. ABE is one of the oldest international professional bodies and one of the few professional bodies to have centers in 5 continents and have collaboration agreements with over 500 universities around the world.
Academic Vs Professional
CIIHE School of psychology (CIRP) is an academic and a research institute and majority of our qualifications are academic awards. From 2014 to 2018 we offered an academic qualification in Business Psychology in partnership with our franchisee university. It was one of the most successful program attracting senior manager to director level students.
However based on the feedback from the students and the senior lecturers who were delivering the program the need of a more professionally oriented program was identified. There are various fundamental differences between these forms of qualification. An academic qualification involves the study of a subject with an academic discipline and research focus. The overriding purpose of this qualification is a contribution to the learner’s specialized knowledge of a subject and not necessarily the application thereof.
The purpose of a professional qualification is to impart knowledge, understanding and practical experience to the learner to enable the learner to apply the knowledge in a practical manner, in a professional practice. This obviously leads to a completely different set of skills, each with different purposes and contexts for the world of work.
If you wish to self-examine this, you could compare the modules of the previous and the new programs to identify the improvements we have made to make this a more applied and a professional award. And we take pride in the fact that this is the first time such a qualification in business psychology is offered in this entire region.
Some students have inquired if this qualifications could be offered through a university rather than a professional body, though we think it is unnecessarily considering that the whole idea is that this is a professional qualification and would increase the fees further, we will be providing them a what they desire as well, but of course it will come with an additional price.
Program structure
Now that you know the basic details of the program we would like you to go through the entire curriculum and see if this program meets your expectation and if it is in line with your future goals. We would want you to take a well-informed decision and it is our responsibility to provide all the information.
All the modules in this program are assessed though course work and CIRP has a strict plagiarism policy. The dissertation is 7500 words.
This program involves 6 compulsory modules and a student could select 3 elective modules based on their choice.
These are the compulsory modules.
Understanding Human Behaviour & Thinking
Application of Psychological concepts to an organizational context requires thorough knowledge in fundamentals of psychology. This module aims at providing you a solid foundation in the essential theories and models of psychology, so that you are able to understand human behaviour and thinking patterns from a scientific perspective.
You will learn about classical theories of Freudian Psychology that emphasizes on the importance of your unconscious mind to the recent discoveries of how our brain functions that are revealed through neuroscience.
Training, Development & Coaching
Organizations spend millions upon millions on training and development of their staff. Some training methods seem effective while other have no beneficial outcome. Some people could easily be trained while it is very difficult to change some. Thus the idea that anyone could be trained to do anything and the notion that some training methods are always effective is slowly dying. We are entering the era of coaching that is identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals and working on one on one basis to enhance the strengths. Psychological applications play a vital role in identifying ones strengths and weakness and customizing strategies for improvement.
Well-being at Work
Wellbeing at work is a state in which we are able to realise our own potential, cope with the normal stresses of life and work productively and fruitfully. Psychological and physical aspects of well-being are both equally important as they strongly influence each other. As a result many organizations now actively engage in programs that enhances employee well-being. By mastering the concept of well-being you are not only able to design and execute programs, policies and projects aimed at making the place you work a healthy, happy and a positive place but also reflect on yourself to improve your wellbeing that positively affects you, your career and your relationships with loved ones.
Psychology of Strategic Leadership
Inter-generational differences in attitudes and expectations of employees, rapidly changing socio-economic environment, multi-cultural work places and political and financial instability around the world has made leading organizations more challenging than ever before. This module would expose you to a range of models of strategic leadership found to be more reliable and effective as opposed to everyday leadership theories.
Research Methods for Business
Working in the corporate sector is becoming more and more based on numbers and scientific approaches in decision making. If you are to progress in the organizational ladder, you need to become an expert in analyzing data using statistical applications and making decisions based on the interpretations of these data. Therefore knowledge and skills in research is essential for the modern day corporate management and leadership. This module will assist you understand business related statistics and methods of researching human behavior and thinking in a simplified manner.
Dissertation
This is the module where you can make an impact in the field of your work. You are able to combine what you have observed in your field during your career; questions about how and why people behave in such ways that triggered your curiosity and your assumptions based on your experience and convert it to a scientific research project. This would provide you the opportunity to engage at a postgraduate level research and publish your findings.
On successful completion of this dissertation, You could publish your paper in a journal and share your findings with the world, Present your paper at a conference and bring recognition to you and your organization, Be recognized as an academic as well as a professional in your field and become an authority in your field as an expert in the selected area.
Elective Modules
Students are expected to select 3 electives from the titles given below. You could either select these purely based on your interest or your future career goals
Consumer Psychology
Marketing is all about the ability to understand, predict and influence human behavior. Individuals who are able to understand preferences of people and how these preferences vary based on age, culture, socio-economic class and with time are able to predict consumer behavior. Other areas that support marketing such as consumer research, advertising and branding heavily depend upon psychological concepts. During this module you will be exposed to the well-researched scientific psychological theories applicable to consumer research, advertising, branding, sales and marketing.
Psychometric Testing for selection and Assessment
Corporate sector is moving away from intuition and experience based decision making and becoming more and more dependent on evidence based, scientific and objective decision making. In a world where employee retention has become a challenge, it is vital to recruit right people for the right job. This module would give insights for HR professionals to reflect on current traditional methods of screening and selecting and make the required changes including psychological methods of assessing and selecting people for work.
Cyber Psychology
World has moved from face to face interaction to social networking and press advertising to digital marketing. IT has infiltrated almost every aspect of our life. To cater to this increasing demand IT industry has become more competitive and understanding human perception, their mental processes, how they perceive signs and colors and how preferences vary from one generation to another is vital to make IT applications user friendly and appealing to people. This module will introduce one of the latest branches of psychology, Cyber and IT psychology and is ideal for professionals in the IT sector to understand the human factors that affect their products.
Effects of Change – Organizational & Personal
Change and ability to adapt to change is vital for survival in the corporate sector. Organizations change much more common now a days and changes such as restructuring causes great deal of stress in employees, sometimes making them leave organizations. On the other hand people change jobs more frequently, move to completely different organizational cultures that tests their ability and they adapt fast. These are ones understanding of themselves and other could be a definite advantage. This module would talk about psychological processes that make us adapt as well as resist change. Understanding them could make us guide others through change and personally gain from change than losing.
Psychology of building and maintaining teams
Whether we are at work, contributing to a charity project or running a family it is all about working with teams. People are different and they have different personalities, abilities and very different goals. Our success in managing these small teams would depend upon how well we understand dynamics at play. Team work is definitely a good way to achieve goals but research has shown that it is not the remedy for all situations. This module will give you psychological insights in terms of how to select people for teams, how to allocate roles that suit their personality, how to manage conflicts and most especially when to create teams at work and when not to.
Funding Options
CIIHE School of psychology Installment Scheme
CIIHE School of psychology offers it’s own installment plan to facilitate the student who may not be able to pay the full course fee at once. You could pay 50% as the down payment and the balance in 3 installments.
Student Loan facilities by Banks
CIIHE School of psychology is thankful to all the banks who have partnered with us to provide student loans to this qualification. We are delighted that the banks have recognized the importance of this qualification and their correct analysis of the re-payment capacity of the students once they have obtained this qualification.
For more information, talk to one of our Student
Counsellors on 0112 507071 / 2, visit our campus at No. 230, Galle Road, Colombo 04 and talk to one of them personally, or ‘Like’ us on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/ciiheSrilanka, or even email us on info@ciihe.com and we will be more than happy to help you get going on your path to a successful future.