Toward Reviving an Occupation with Occupations

Abstract

The notion of occupation has long played a vital role in understanding the psychology of individual behavior, choice, perceptions, and attitudes in work contexts. However, the centrality of occupation to research found within the broader organizational psychology and behavior literature has been largely supplanted in favor of a more organization-centric lens. The primary goal of this review is to build a case for renewing direct efforts to more meaningfully integrate occupation into organizational psychology and behavior scholarship. In doing so, this review outlines what it means, and why it matters, to once again take occupations more seriously in our theory and research. I discuss five essential ways occupations influence important organizational psychology and behavior phenomena and exemplifying evidence from previous research. The review concludes with illustrations of occupationally focused questions that could be investigated across several specific organizational psychology and behavior topics.