The science–practice gap and employee engagement: It’s a matter of principle.

Abstract

The science of Industrial/Organisational Psychology has generated a large body of knowledge over the last century, yet we continue to lament the fact that what we have learned is not being applied to the extent that it should. Practitioners argue that the science is not accessible, fails to address important current and proceeds at such a pace that it is often outdated before it becomes available. To the contrary, I argue that the value of science is the discovery of valid and generalizable principles that can be applied to work-relevant issues as they become current. The challenge is to identify these principles and to translate them into a set of heuristic guidelines that can be used to facilitate managerial decision making. I illustrate this process as it might be applied in the case of employee engagement, but argue that it can be applied to other hot issues, both current and future.Keywords: science-practice gap, evidence-based management, employee engagementIndustrial and organisational (I/O) psychology is a science and a practice and this duality is what attracts many students to the field. In the optimistic eyes of new students it is a field that affords one the opportunity to (a) do research that has practical application, (b) take scientifically based knowledge into the workplace to make a difference, or (c) both. Unfortunately, the dream is often shattered by the reality that one typically has to make a choice between science or practice and, once made, the chasm between the two faces of the disciplines widens. Those who chose science may find that to get published they must focus more on theoretical relevance and methodological rigor than on practical implications. Those who chose practice find that the studies they learned how to conduct and critique in graduate school do not address the complex and nuanced problems they are asked to resolve in the field. Moreover, they often discover that they cannot keep up with the burgeoning body of literature and that increasing levels of sophistication in methodology and data analyses make the science less accessible.One of the consequences of this situation is a gradual shifting of perspective that can lead to antagonism rather than synergy of science and practice. The scientist gets frustrated by the fact that practitioners are not listening, and the practitioner sees the science as out of touch with what is going on in the workplace and too slow to be of much value. This scientist-practitione * gap has been written about extensively (see Rynes, 2007) and a number of potential solutions have been offered (e.g., practice-focused research; scientist-practitioner collaboration). My objective is to elaborate on one possible solution and to illustrate h rw it might be used to address an issue I believe nicely characterize ; the scientistpractitioner divide-employee engagement. Althoigh I focus on employee engagement, the approach I take here car be applied to a much wider range of practical issues currently of concern to practitioners (e.g., executive compensation, work-life balance, diversity management) as well as those likely to emerge in the future (for examples, see Locke, 2009).The piece of the puzzle I focus on here is the importance of principle, its discovery in science, and its application in practice. I begin by elaborating on the problem as it applie:. to scientists' and practitioners' perspectives on employee engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). I then make the case that I/O psychology as a science has generated an extensive set of findings e nd support for numerous basic psychological principles that can 1« used to understand and foster engagement in the workplace. To support this case, I provide examples of research findings for which there is reasonable evidence of generalizability from me; a-analytic reviews, along with the well-established psycholog cal principles underpinning these and other findings. Finally, I b iefly describe how these findings and principles might be used to develop guidelines for diagnosis and intervention in organisation ;. …