Welcome to the Business Psychology blog
Hi and thank you for finding time to visit this blog of mine. In this first blog entry I will try to answer maybe the two most fundamental questions asked of any blog:
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Who are you (well in this case, me)
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What will you be blogging about
Without much ado, let’s answer the questions at once.
My name is Omar Mounir Bitar, and I am an Organizational Psychologist, obtaining my degree from the Institute of Work Psychology – University of Sheffield. A question I often get once the cat is out of the bag (apart from if I just read that person’s mind – think all psychologists get this one from time to time) is what does an organizational psychologist actually do? I am not going to bore my readers (hopefully plural) with a long essay about my profession, but rather mention very briefly some of the things I do and that interest me. I am currently working full time in the somewhat controversial sphere of Igaming, or online gambling as it is also known as. No, I can reassure you that by working I do not refer to being a professional poker player online (I am not really good at all), but rather operating as an organization development manager with one of the more successful European betting companies. It’s rather interesting and challenging working with a business that is so dependent on knowledge and exists solely on the internet, especially from a strategic Human Resources point of view.
I also lecture at a university, trying to fit in as much as possible, but that isn’t easy with an already full schedule. The topics I lecture are mostly psychology related areas such as social psychology, organizational psychology, Organization Development and Change, Human Resources, Statistics, Research Methods to mention a few. I am rather fortunate with my students thus far, all being enthusiastic and engaging. I suppose that’s why I enjoy lecturing as it is a rewarding experience, as you certainly don’t lecture for the money.
From time to time I participate in research projects of both academic and applied nature, something I really appreciate. Unfortunately, somehow I am stuck with only 24 hours in a single day, and more often than not I simply do not have the opportunity to act on this interest of mine. Well, unless they are of applied nature and used in the sphere of business that is. This is certainly an area I need to work on, finding time and opportunity to do more research.
And then there is the book I am working on… for some time now. As amazing as it sounds, despite the advent of amazon.com and all its catalogues of research and statsbooks, there is still the need of a well written and easily accessible book that deals with both quantitative and qualitative research methods and analyses (e.g. statistics). There are many excellent books on the market, but very few that actually covers research methods of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, and the same when it comes to quantitative and qualitative analyses. And even fewer books that cover all these areas together. And even fewer that are written in a way that makes it understandable for normal persons introduced to these topics for the first time….. phew, what an undertaking I have started. Rest assured, though, that I have made some serious progress on this particular project, and could be sharing some of the writings here, in this blog. Always important to gather feedback.
So these are the things I do, well at least some of the more relevant ones. I suppose it follows that I am a very curious person, who likes to learn about and understand human behaviour in different contexts, especially the so called web 2.0 and how it affects the way we work and interact – psy 2.0 as I conveniently call it.
So, this was my attempt to briefly answer the first question “who are you”, and I get the feeling that I better stop here and rather make another entry where I answer the second question “what will you be blogging about”
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[...] Brian Wolfman wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNo, I can reassure you that by working I do not refer to being a professional poker player online (I am not really good at all), … but rather operating as an organization development manager with one of the more successful European betting companies…. [...]