Steps towards bridging the scientist-practitioner gap in the field of Work and Organizational Psychology in Romania

Abstract

In the last two years, the Romanian Association of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (APIO) has proposed to develop a series of actions to create bridges between the Work and Organizational psychology (WOP) community and the HR specialists from the Romanian market. In order to better understand the specifics of the practitioners in this field and to subsequently reduce the gap between them and Academia, in 2016, APIO conducted a survey in the Romanian HR community. The data were collected through an online questionnaire and 215 HR specialists and organizational practitioners participated in the survey (83% women). The HR specialists expressed their interest for implementing or optimizing a variety of diagnosis intervention services concerning all levels of analysis within a workplace: individual, group, and organization. The majority of the HR professionals who participated in our survey acknowledged the need and reported an increased interest in being better informed and keeping up-to-date with scientific data regarding various topics at the intersection of HR and WOP. Only 20% of the respondents expressed very little interest in such activities. In line with these conclusions, APIO proposed a set of possible measures in order to bridge the gap beween WOP researchers and HR practitioners that would benefit from the support of APIO members within the following years.