Abstract:

Problem:
Since Work and Organizational Psychology should prepare students to their successful professional activity aimed to organizational-psychological factors, very important question is “How to connect psychological theories of job analysis and real practice taking place at a typical organization with its weaknesses and shortcomings?” Therefore, the purpose of our research is to identify, describe and systematize problems of managerial professional performance at big Russian companies. We suppose, that proposed way of organizing and ranking the managerial problems help to develop the course “Work and Organizational Psychology” for students at Psychological Departments.

Theoretical background:
We develop our research methodology, based on ideas of work analysis by Morgeson, F.&Dierdorff, E.C. (2011) and job design by Morgeson,F.& Humphrey (2006), psychological theory of activity by Leontjev A. (1976), the Job Demands–Resources model by Demerouti, E. & Bakker, A.B. (2011), and a theory of performance by Campbell, J.P. et all (1993).

Methodology:
To collect problems, we asked to Russian managers (254 participants) to describe 5 main problems of their professional activity. Resulting 1200 answers were received, but only 580 cases could be recognized as problems (or cases) of professional activity. Further, to analyze the collected cases content-analysis and then cluster-analysis were applied. Following both analysis, we divided all cases using two axes:
1) current problems – problems of organizational development and changes;
2) addressing the causes – mitigation of effects.

Thereby, four clusters of cases could be investigated.

Theoretical significance:
The main conclusion, based on research results, is that the most representative cluster of collected cases is the cluster “current problems, addressing the causes” thus managers prefer to pay more attention to urgent problems rather than essential, and invest their efforts to solve emerging issue rather than to eliminate its cause a timely manner. Hence, this point of view on managerial activity demands from researchers to provide the psychological analysis of managerial performance in more detail.

Practical implication:
Consequently, applied approach is useful instrument, which may be presented and recommended to students, who plan to work at such job positions as HRM specialist or work psychologist at the big companies.

Keywords:

Managerial problems, course Work and organizational psychology.