Review of Psychology in Business and in Industry

Abstract

Reviews the book, Psychology in Business and in Industry by John G. Jenkins (1935). This book is a systematic and concise presentation of the whole field of business psychology. The treatment on each topic is necessarily brief and the author was doubtless confronted with the problem of what to omit. For the most part his selection appears sound. The introductory section distinguishes handbooks of technical information from manuals of practice, contrasts the lay and the experimental approach to industrial problems and discusses the nature of experimental and statistical analysis. In the second section, the discussion of tests is necessarily curtailed but contains a few well-chosen examples. There is a commendable emphasis on correlating tests with the criterion. The third section on industrial production opens with a consideration of the effect of drugs. The fourth section deals with personnel problems such as handling and motivating workers. The final section of the book is devoted to advertising and selling. The book touches on practically all the topics that are of importance in the field under discussion although some mentions are of necessity extremely brief. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the book is the critical evaluation of underlying principles which will induce people working in this field to avoid cutting corners. The arrangement of the book is logical and follows an obvious topical outline. Jenkins has done a careful and worth-while piece of work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)