Thirty years ago, I faced a choice about postgraduate study. Toward the end of my Applied Psychology undergraduate degree1, I was interested in psychology applied to work, so occupational and organisational psychology was an obvious option, but I chose the MSc(Eng) in Work Design and Ergonomics at the University of Birmingham2, graduating in 1997. Looking back on starting that course, I’m glad I made that choice. It opened up a career involving psychology, human factors and ergonomics, and the design and improvement of work, particularly in aviation and other safety-critical industries.
But I have never identified exclusively with one professional discipline. I think of myself as a work psychologist, a humanistic psychologist and a human factors specialist, with interests spanning industrial, work and organisational psychology, human-technology interaction, and the human experience of work and life more generally. These interests have taken me across professional and disciplinary boundaries, and I have often found the intersections between disciplines more interesting than their separate territories.
One of my professional affiliations3 has been British Psychological Society (BPS), but it has been an odd and not entirely satisfactory abode. Despite my longstanding interest in IWO psychology, I was not eligible for membership of its closest division, the Division of Occupational Psychology, through my training route. I subsequently became a Fellow of the Society “in recognition of a sustained contribution to the development, application or reputation of psychology”, yet I have never had a natural professional home within its divisions and sections. My interests and applications do not find a fit in its professional categories. This has not prevented me from practising psychology or working across disciplines. But it has made me curious about professional categories.
This experience has made me reflect on how the boundaries of psychology influence both professional belonging and the visibility and prominence of areas of knowledge and practice. This is particularly interesting in light of changes to the professional identity and training of occupational psychologists over recent decades. In the 1990s, “human-machine interaction” was explicitly recognised as an area of occupational psychology, but it has since disappeared as a distinct area of the profession’s core knowledge requirements. Meanwhile, technological systems have become inseparable from almost every form of work.
This raises several questions. Has occupational psychology gradually become more concerned with managing people than understanding and designing work? Have its professional boundaries contributed to the declining visibility of human factors and human-computer interaction? Has occupational psychology inadvertently narrowed its relevance to contemporary work, while leaving some psychologists without a professional home?
Whatever happened to human-machine interaction?
Historically, the BPS recognised eight major areas of occupational psychology, including human-machine interaction and design of environments and work, health and safety. These sat alongside areas such as personnel selection, training, motivation, organisational development and employee relations. It was a relatively broad conception of occupational psychology, recognising fairly explicitly that people at work could not be understood independently of the conditions, environments and technologies through which they worked.
In the early 2010s, the BPS Division of Occupational Psychology undertook a review of its postgraduate curriculum. The intention was to modernise professional training, strengthen practical and consultancy skills, and improve graduate employability. These were reasonable objectives, particularly for an applied discipline whose practitioners need to translate psychological knowledge into improvements in organisations.
The revised curriculum, introduced from 2014, consolidated the eight traditional areas into five broader knowledge domains: 1) psychological assessment at work; 2) learning, training and development; 3) leadership, engagement and motivation; 4) wellbeing and work; and 5) work design, organisational change and development. Research methods and the application of psychology to work remained additional components of training. Human-machine interaction was no longer explicitly identified as a distinct area, while human factors and ergonomics could be accommodated within the broader domain of work design.
This change was subsequently reflected in the Health and Care Professions Council’s standards of proficiency. Until September 2023, the HCPC explicitly listed human-machine interaction as an area of knowledge expected of occupational psychologists. The revised standards retained the five broader areas, but no longer named human-machine interaction.
Of course, this does not mean that human factors, ergonomics or human-computer interaction (HCI) have disappeared from occupational psychology education, and some universities continue to address these subjects explicitly. Nevertheless, there is an important difference between an area being recognised as part of a profession’s shared knowledge base and its inclusion depending on the interests, expertise and resources of individual university departments, which are increasingly stretched.
Critically, professional standards influence what is taught, what students learn, what academics specialise in, and what employers expect from graduates. If an area becomes implicit or optional, it may gradually diminish even if it remains relevant to practice. Over time, this can change both professional competence and the way that a profession understands itself.
It is important to acknowledge that the BPS has not neglected psychology and technology altogether. Its Cyberpsychology Section, established around 2018-19, provides an interdisciplinary community concerned with people’s interactions with digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, online behaviour, digital health and human-computer interaction. This is a welcome development, and there is overlap with human factors and work psychology. Nevertheless, cyberpsychology and the design of sociotechnical work systems are not synonymous. Their interests overlap, but cyberpsychology is organised primarily around psychological questions concerning digital technologies, whereas sociotechnical work design encompasses a wider range of interactions between people, technologies, environments, organisations and activities.
This is not the first time that psychologists have sought a professional community for human-technology interaction within the BPS. In the 1990s, Prof. Neville Stanton and colleagues helped develop engineering psychology in Britain, including a BPS Special Interest Group on Engineering Psychology. Noyes and Stanton (1997) identified its formation, alongside the first International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics in 1996, as evidence of growing interest in the field. The group no longer exists as a recognisable BPS network, although it is unclear whether it sought full Section status or why it ceased operating. Its history illustrates, though, that engineering psychology once had a distinct organisational presence within the Society, rather than being represented only through occupational psychology or other established areas.
Professional education and the future of work
The rationale for the occupational psychology curriculum changes is interesting. In 2013, the BPS Division of Occupational Psychology commissioned a report, Eight areas review: Horizon scan of current employers of occupational/organisational/business psychologists, to explore employers’ views about the curriculum and future professional requirements.
The study included an employer survey, supplemented by interviews and focus groups. Its executive summary, reproduced in a 2014 University of the West of England programme specification, suggested that most of the eight traditional areas remained relevant. However, there is a curious statement: “The findings suggest that in general the majority of the eight areas are still applicable to the world of work, although some areas (for example Human-Machine Interaction) are less relevant and are being replaced by other emerging areas (for example, talent analytics and ‘big data’).”
Many will find this conclusion rather surprising (at least in hindsight). Talent analytics and big data are examples of increasingly technologically-mediated work, involving interactions between people, data, algorithms, interfaces and organisational systems. They create new questions (about attention, judgement, trust, decision-making, control, workload, expertise, accountability, etc.), many of which are familiar concerns of psychologists working in the area of human-machine interaction.
Perhaps the finding reflected a decline in employer demand for occupational psychologists to undertake work traditionally described as human-machine interaction. By then, human factors engineering, ergonomics, HCI and user experience design had developed their own professional communities, training programmes and specialist expertise. One possibility is that employers increasingly associated the design and evaluation of technological systems with human factors engineering, ergonomics, HCI and user experience specialists, rather than occupational psychologists. Current job advertisements and professional role descriptions seem to suggest that this is the case.
There is a difference, though, between asking employers what they currently expect occupational psychologists to do and asking what knowledge psychologists will need to understand and improve work in the future.
This creates the possibility of a self-reinforcing cycle. Employers recruit professionals for the services they associate with them, while professional training reinforces those expectations. As an area of expertise becomes less visible within a profession, employers may become less inclined to seek that expertise from its members, and reduced demand may then reinforce its declining prominence in training.
“There is a difference between asking employers what they currently expect occupational psychologists to do and asking what knowledge psychologists will need to understand and improve work in the future.”
This raises an important question: should professional education primarily reflect existing employment patterns, or should it also anticipate the changing nature of work and the knowledge needed to understand it?
Designing work or managing people?
This brings me to a fundamental distinction: the difference between managing people and designing work. These activities are closely related, and neither can be done well without some understanding of the other. However, they direct attention towards different aspects of organisational life, and therefore towards different kinds of explanation and intervention. They are orientations towards understanding and improving work, rather than exclusive territories belonging to different professions. Both can be found within occupational psychology, human factors and organisational practice more generally.
A people management perspective tends to focus on the characteristics, capabilities, attitudes, motivations and behaviours of individuals and groups. When something needs to improve, the response may involve selection, training, coaching, supervision, communication, engagement, performance management or organisational development. These are important interventions, drawing on substantial bodies of psychological knowledge and research.
A work design perspective starts with understanding how work actually happens, including the interactions between people and the wider system. Attention extends to activities, equipment, interfaces, procedures, information, resources, staffing, roles, coordination, time, space and the conditions that shape everyday work. The intention is not simply to influence people’s behaviour, but to understand and improve the circumstances and conditions of behaviour.
Consider a situation in which staff are experiencing high workload, making mistakes and becoming frustrated with their work. One response might focus on workload management training, resilience, motivation, supervision, competence or wellbeing support. Another would examine whether the work itself is unnecessarily difficult, fragmented, demanding or poorly supported, and whether changes to technology, procedures, information, staffing or organisational arrangements could improve the situation.
In air traffic management, where I have spent much of my career, controller workload is influenced by traffic complexity, airspace design, sector configuration, interfaces, staffing, coordination requirements, procedures and automation, among other things. Controllers must continuously adapt their activities to changing circumstances, often in close coordination with colleagues. Training and individual competence are obviously essential, but there are limits to the extent that they can compensate for inadequate tools, conflicting procedures, insufficient resources or poorly designed working arrangements.
This distinction is not confined to occupational psychology. In a recent commentary in Ergonomics, Putting EHF into practice: five (more) challenges, Nuno Cebola and I argued that a similar tension is emerging within ergonomics and human factors itself. While ergonomics has traditionally been associated with fitting work to people, the term Human Factors has become increasingly broad in industry, sometimes encompassing almost anything concerned with people at work. This includes activities such as training, coaching, safety culture, communication and behavioural improvement, alongside the design and evaluation of work systems.
We suggested that this expansion may be contributing to a distinction between Ergonomics or Human Factors Engineering, with a clearer orientation towards work and system design, and Human Performance Improvement, concerned primarily with influencing behaviour and culture. One illustration is NATS, the UK’s primary air navigation service provider, which has had separate Human Performance and Human Factors teams. As we described in the paper, the former comprised mainly psychologists working on training, safety culture, coaching and related activities, while the latter comprised mainly ergonomics and human factors professionals focusing on system design and assurance.
There are good reasons for organisations to develop expertise in both orientations, and psychologists contribute to system design, just as ergonomists contribute to behaviour, culture and organisational change. Management is itself work that needs to be designed and supported, while training, coaching and organisational development also require design. Equally, technological and organisational changes depend on relationships, participation, communication and learning. But different problems require different kinds of expertise and intervention. Training and coaching may help people perform difficult work more effectively, but they do not necessarily make the work less difficult. Similarly, changes to interfaces, procedures or organisational arrangements may improve the conditions of work, but still require appropriate learning, communication and support.
The issue is whether the professions concerned with people at work are developing a sufficiently clear and balanced understanding of their different contributions. If Human Factors becomes an umbrella term for almost everything involving people, its distinctive contribution to work and system design may become harder to recognise. Conversely, if occupational psychology is identified with assessment, development, motivation and organisational change, it risks overlooking aspects of work that are central to understanding both human performance and wellbeing.
One consequence of focusing primarily on people’s behaviour is that the adjustments they make to compensate for difficulties elsewhere in the system can remain unnoticed. People adapt, coordinate, anticipate, recover, improvise and make trade-offs to get the work done, usually successfully and often without these activities being particularly visible to those managing or designing the system. Some of this adaptation can be satisfying and an expression of expertise, while some may be frustrating, exhausting or risky.
These adaptations are one reason why understanding work-as-done is so important. Job descriptions, procedures, process maps and performance indicators provide useful but necessarily incomplete representations of work. Without engaging with those who do the work and understanding the circumstances in which it takes place, we risk designing interventions around assumptions about work rather than the realities of everyday practice.
The concern, then, is one of relative emphasis. If occupational psychology becomes increasingly associated with assessing, selecting, motivating, developing and managing people, while the design of their work, especially computer-mediated work, becomes less prominent, it may leave important influences on performance and wellbeing outside its field of attention. Occupational psychology may risk becoming more effective at helping people fit the conditions of work than at helping organisations create conditions that fit people.
“Occupational psychology may risk becoming more effective at helping people fit the conditions of work than at helping organisations create conditions that fit people.”
Professional homelessness
My own experience of the BPS raises a related, but somewhat different, issue. Despite being a Fellow, I have never had a natural professional home within its divisions and sections. I practice and sometimes research in the field of industrial, work and organisational psychology, but did not follow the occupational psychology training route required for full divisional membership of the Division of Occupational Psychology. Nor is there a dedicated BPS section for humanistic psychology (there are many other sections), and no obvious dedicated professional home in the UK for humanistic psychologists whose work is outside psychotherapy and counselling4.
There are, of course, good reasons for professions to establish specific divisions, with associated requirements concerning qualifications, supervised practice and experience. But there is something curious about a professional society recognising someone’s contribution to psychology at a high level while lacking an obvious place for that person’s professional identity and interests.
I wonder how many other psychologists experience something similar, particularly those working in industry, technology, safety, design, research, consultancy and other interdisciplinary settings. Many may have qualifications in psychology and apply psychological knowledge extensively, but work in roles that do not correspond to the BPS’s practitioner divisions. In my own field, such psychologists tend to identify as work psychologists, organisational psychologists, engineering psychologists, human factors specialists/psychologists.
Some may belong to other professional bodies, as I do through the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. Others may not feel particularly attached to any professional society; professional identity is not a concern for everyone. But it seems important to understand how many psychologists working outside established professional pathways feel professionally homeless.
There is an interesting comparison here. In my earlier reflections on practice, I described the value of being somewhat organisationally homeless, remaining on the edges, building bridges between teams and professions, and maintaining a degree of independence from established organisational structures. I still find this interesting, since some of the most interesting opportunities for understanding and improving work are found at the interfaces, where conventional responsibilities and expertise do not align neatly with problems that arise.
But there is a difference between choosing to work across boundaries and being unable to find a professional community that adequately reflects one’s interests and contributions. The former may be a useful position from which to work across boundaries and provide freedom, perspective and opportunities for connection. The latter concerns the absence of a community in which one’s expertise and identity are recognised and represented. This may create difficulties with belonging, representation, and influence, and this is where I fear occupational psychology may be now when it comes to the increasingly digital world of work.
“There is a difference between choosing to work across boundaries and being unable to find a professional community that adequately reflects one’s interests and contributions.”
My experience is not unusual in the history of British psychology. Other groups have questioned whether the Society’s established divisions adequately represent the work they do. In the late 1990s, a group of psychologists working in business and consultancy proposed establishing a Division of Business Psychology within the BPS. Their proposal argued that many psychologists working in commercial organisations, consultancy and other applied settings did not feel adequately represented by existing professional structures. A recent reflection on the Association’s founding vision (O’Reilly, 2026) revisited the original proposal, describing how practitioners sought recognition and a professional community for a field that did not fit comfortably within the existing BPS structure: “There was a time when those working at the intersection of psychology and business felt they had no real professional home.”
The group was concerned that psychology had become increasingly disconnected from the everyday concerns of business and organisations, and that psychologists were losing influence to management consultants, trainers, recruitment specialists and other professionals. They also observed that business psychologists came from diverse academic and professional backgrounds, including occupational, clinical, educational and other areas of psychology.
The authors of the proposal envisaged a professional community that would bring together psychologists working across boundaries and strengthen the influence of psychology in organisational life. The BPS Council did not approve the proposed Division of Business Psychology in 2000. The group subsequently established what became the independent Association for Business Psychology, which continues to provide a professional community for business psychologists and others applying psychology in organisations.
The episode raises the question of whether professional societies are most effective when they organise psychology around established narrow specialisms, or when they widen to provide space for emerging and interdisciplinary areas of practice5.
Coaching psychology provides an interesting contrast. In the early 2000s, psychologists interested in coaching initially explored establishing a special interest group within the BPS Division of Counselling Psychology. However, the emerging community drew members from several areas of psychology, many of whom did not identify with counselling psychology.
Instead, a cross-disciplinary Special Group in Coaching Psychology was established in December 2004, attracting almost 2,000 members by the end of 2005. In their account of its development, Palmer and Whybrow (2006) noted that the group also appealed to psychologists who lacked a professional home elsewhere within the BPS.
The histories of business psychology and coaching psychology illustrate different responses to a similar problem. Business psychology developed an independent association after its proposed BPS division was rejected, while coaching psychology found a home within the Society. More recently, the Cyberpsychology Section has provided another interdisciplinary community. These examples suggest that professional communities need not be organised exclusively around established practitioner divisions or regulated titles. Sections and cross-disciplinary groups can provide opportunities for professional belonging and collaboration without requiring every emerging field to become a separate profession. However, question of the profession’s name remains.
What’s in a name?
An international comparison makes the terminology particularly interesting. Among the major professional associations and divisions I have examined, the BPS appears unusual – perhaps even unique – in retaining Occupational Psychology as the formal name of the field. Across much of continental Europe and Ireland, Work and Organisational Psychology is the established terminology. Australia and New Zealand use Organisational Psychology, and the United States, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore use Industrial-Organisational Psychology. The UK seems to be an international outlier.
Of course, the different terms often describe substantially overlapping fields. But the comparison raises an interesting question about professional identity. If the BPS were establishing its professional divisions today, would it still choose Occupational Psychology, or would Work and Organisational Psychology better reflect the breadth of contemporary psychological practice and its international connections? The European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP) brings together researchers and practitioners from different traditions of work and organisational psychology.
I would welcome a discussion about renaming the Division of Occupational Psychology as the Division of Work and Organisational Psychology. This would make work itself more visible and encourage a wider conception of the field, while aligning the name internationally.
There is, however, an interesting complication. Since 2009, Occupational Psychologist has been a legally protected professional title regulated by the HCPC. The BPS could rename its division without changing that statutory title, but changing the protected title itself would require changes to the relevant legal and regulatory arrangements.6
One possible unintended consequence of these arrangements is a form of institutional path dependence, in which earlier decisions about professional titles, qualifications and boundaries increasingly constrain future choices. As these arrangements become embedded in regulation, accreditation, training, membership and professional identity, they may reinforce one another, making established categories progressively harder to reconsider, even when the field of knowledge and the nature of work are changing. Over time, such self-reinforcing processes can produce institutional lock-in, where changing a profession’s identity becomes difficult not necessarily because existing arrangements remain the most appropriate, but because so much has come to depend on them (Sydow et al., 2009). This is particularly relevant to professional boundaries and jurisdictions, which shape how professions establish, maintain and negotiate their claims to particular areas of knowledge and practice (Abbott, 1988). It’s an interesting conundrum for organisational psychologists…
Despite the constraints, I think the question of professional naming deserves serious consideration, particularly as the field seeks to remain relevant to changing forms of work. Names influence how professions understand themselves, how others understand them and the activities with which they become associated.7
Perhaps the more important question is whether professional structures should be designed around established titles and qualifications, or whether they should also be designed to accommodate the changing ways in which psychological knowledge is applied.
Work and organisational psychology in the age of AI
The development of artificial intelligence brings these questions into sharper focus. AI is transforming activities traditionally associated with occupational psychology, including selection, assessment, training, performance management, leadership and organisational decision making. At the same time, it is creating new questions about human-technology interaction that cannot be separated from the design and organisation of work.
Consider a professional using AI to support decisions. One perspective might focus on trust, acceptance, cognitive biases and competence. Another might examine the design of the interface, how information and uncertainty are communicated, how functions are allocated, and how the person maintains understanding and control. A wider perspective might consider how AI changes relationships, professional judgement, accountability, learning and the distribution of expertise across an organisation. Each of these perspectives requires different knowledge and methods.
Beyond these considerations, there is also a humanistic dimension. The question is not simply whether AI enables people to perform their work more accurately, efficiently or safely, but what kinds of work and working lives these technologies help to create. Systems can be usable and reliable – and seem effective – while also reducing opportunities for judgement, learning, autonomy, coordination, relationships, enjoyment or meaningful contribution. This is an area in which work and organisational psychology, human factors and humanistic psychology could make complementary contributions.
“The question is not simply whether AI enables people to perform their work more accurately, efficiently or safely, but what kinds of work and working lives these technologies help to create.”
So psychologists have much to contribute, but doing so requires more than studying people’s attitudes towards technology or helping them adapt after major design decisions have already been made. Psychologists need to be involved in understanding and shaping the work itself. It is therefore interesting that the 2027 European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology has adopted the theme Bridging people, organisations and technology. This seems to invite closer connections between work and organisational psychology, human factors, ergonomics, HCI, systems engineering and other disciplines.
Designing the profession for the work of today
Looking back to 1996, I remain pleased that I chose work design and ergonomics at Birmingham, a course that I started thirty years ago this month. My subsequent career has crossed boundaries between psychology, human factors, systems thinking, organisational practice and the arts. It has reinforced my view that no single discipline provides an adequate foundation for understanding and improving complex human work.
My concern is that some of psychology’s (potentially important) contributions to the design and improvement of work have become less visible within occupational psychology’s professional identity and training requirements, while their relevance to contemporary work has increased. At the same time, established professional boundaries may leave psychologists working across disciplines without a natural professional home.
All of these concerns are connected. Professional structures influence who belongs, what counts as relevant knowledge, what is taught, what practitioners are expected to do, and how a profession responds to changes in the world it seeks to understand.
The professional boundaries, qualifications or regulation are necessary, of course. They serve important purposes in maintaining standards, protecting the public and supporting professional development. And the answer is not necessarily to expand occupational psychology to encompass everything concerned with people at work. Different disciplines bring different perspectives, knowledge and methods, and there is considerable value in maintaining their distinctive contributions while strengthening the connections between them.
Nevertheless, I think there are questions worth reconsidering. Should human-technology interaction once again be explicitly recognised within occupational psychology’s core knowledge requirements? Could professional membership and communities better accommodate psychologists whose work crosses established disciplinary boundaries? Would Work and Organisational Psychology better reflect the breadth of the field and its international identity, after all? And how might the profession develop closer relationships with human factors, ergonomics, HCI and other disciplines concerned with the design and experience of work?8
These questions seem increasingly relevant as AI, automation and other technologies reshape working activities, relationships, responsibilities and opportunities. The challenge is to ensure that psychologists possess the knowledge needed to understand these developments, and to consider what psychology should contribute to them. Improving work involves more than helping people perform effectively within existing arrangements. Crucially, it involves understanding and shaping those arrangements so that work supports system performance and human wellbeing.
Perhaps the most useful starting point is not the established boundaries of the profession, but the realities of work and the needs, experiences and aspirations of those who do it, as well as those who are served by it.
References and further reading
- Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226189666.001.0001
- British Psychological Society. (n.d.). Cyberpsychology Section. https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/cyberpsychology-section
- British Psychological Society, Division of Occupational Psychology. (2013). Eight areas review: Horizon scan of current employers of occupational/organisational/business psychologists [Report; executive summary reproduced in the University of the West of England’s 2014 MSc Occupational Psychology programme specification]. https://info.uwe.ac.uk/programmes/specification.asp?file=C81112-4527.pdf
- Choi, M. (2025, October 13). The power of possibility: 25 years of the ABP’s Yuenyeung spirit. Association for Business Psychology. https://theabp.org.uk/the-power-of-possibility-25-years-of-the-abps-yuenyeung-spirit/
- Davis, M. C. (2019). Embedding human factors and ergonomics in MSc organizational psychology. In Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018) Volume IV: Organizational Design and Management (ODAM), Professional Affairs, Forensic. Advances in intelligent systems and computing (Vol. 821, pp. 67–71). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96080-7_9
- European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology. (n.d.). EAWOP. https://eawop.org/
- European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology. (n.d.). EAWOP Congress 2027: Bridging people, organisations and technology. https://eawop.org/congress/biennial-congress-homepage
- Health and Care Professions Council. (n.d.). Professions and protected titles. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/about-us/who-we-regulate/the-professions/
- Health and Care Professions Council. (2023). Standards of proficiency: Practitioner psychologists. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/standards/standards-of-proficiency/practitioner-psychologists/
- Noyes, J., & Stanton, N. A. (1997). Engineering psychology: Contribution to system safety. Computing & Control Engineering Journal, 8(3), 107–112. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/2605/1/Engineering%20psychology-%20contribution%20to%20system%20safety.pdf
- O’Reilly, C. (2026, April 27). Standing on their shoulders: Reflections on the founding vision of business psychology. Association for Business Psychology. https://theabp.org.uk/standing-on-their-shoulders-reflections-on-the-founding-vision-of-business-psychology/
- Palmer, S., & Whybrow, A. (2006). The coaching psychology movement and its development within the British Psychological Society. International Coaching Psychology Review, 1(1), 5–11. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsicpr.2006.1.1.5
- Shorrock, S. (2005). Regulation – How is the public to be protected? The Psychologist, 18, 402.
- Shorrock, S., & Cebola, N. (2025). Putting EHF into practice: Five (more) challenges. Ergonomics. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2025.2509360
- Sydow, J., Schreyögg, G., & Koch, J. (2009). Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box. Academy of Management Review, 34(4), 689–709. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.34.4.zok689
Footnotes
- My bachelor’s degree in Applied Psychology offered an unusually broad choice of specialist modules. My final-year subjects included Human Factors in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Industrial Psychology, Human Relations at Work, Personal Relations, and The Psychology of Personal Being. Together, these provided an excellent introduction to what I now think of as industrial, work and organisational (IWO) psychology, while also introducing me to human factors, technology and humanistic psychology. It is difficult to imagine finding anything like this particular combination in a contemporary undergraduate psychology degree, especially one structured around the core requirements for BPS accreditation. ↩︎
- Sadly, this course no longer exists. Current Human Factors and Ergonomics courses accredited by the CIEHF are at https://ergonomics.org.uk/knowledge-hub/postgrad-study.html ↩︎
- The other is the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF). ↩︎
- There is a further complication concerning humanistic psychology. The UK previously had an independent Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain, of which I was once a member. The association was dissolved in 2025. There appears to be no comparable dedicated professional home for humanistic psychologists working outside counselling and psychotherapy. This is a sad outcome for the ‘third force’ psychological tradition, concerned with human experience, meaning, agency, relationships and growth, all of which are relevant far beyond therapy. It is another example of how the professional organisation of psychology may fail to reflect the breadth of its intellectual traditions and contemporary applications. There is also an interesting historical irony here. Humanistic psychology developed partly in response to perceived limitations in behaviourism and psychoanalysis, seeking a more comprehensive understanding of human experience. Yet in the UK, its professional legacy is now concentrated in psychotherapy, rather than in psychology more generally, or in sectors such as education and work, despite the relevance and importance of humanistic psychology to such sectors. ↩︎
- The CIEHF developed membership routes intended to accommodate different kinds of expertise and experience, especially the creation of Technical Member category. ↩︎
- The title “occupational psychologist” is legally protected in the UK under the Health Professions Order 2001. This means that anyone using this title in a professional context must be registered with the HCPC. This reflects the curious, and in my view mistaken (Shorrock, 2005) route that the UK took in protecting specific (broadly divisional) titles, rather than the root term “psychologist” (which is protected in Australia, for instance). ↩︎
- The dual name of Human Factors and Ergonomics is another problematic issue, but not for this post. ↩︎
- Psychology graduates wishing to enter the world of human-technology interaction may be well advised to look to Master degrees in Human Factors and Ergonomics. ↩︎
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