How much is research in the top journals of industrial/organizational psychology dominated by authors from the U.S.?

Abstract

Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology, the subfield of psychology applied to the context of work, has been criticized for being dominated by U.S. authors because this dominance could prevent the generalizability of results and the enrichment of theories, paradigms, and approaches by researchers from other parts of the world. Previous estimates on the extent of the U.S. dominance are, however, likely restricted in scope, outdated, and likely biased by non-U.S. researchers who were socialized in the U.S. or received help by U.S. co-authors. As such, we measured the level of U.S. dominance by analyzing 5626 papers published from the top ten journals of the field of I/O psychology in the last eleven years and their authors. The results show that the U.S. dominance continues, although the internationalization of I/O psychology has steadily increased. An additional analysis of the gender distribution across our sample revealed that female first authorship is slightly more common among authors with no U.S. affiliation. We suggest several steps to further increase the level of internationalization.