Industrial And Organizational Research Articles

Voice of a “Seasoned” OB Professor

I will be making some highly personalized comments on the Aguinis et al. (2017) focal article concerning rigor versus relevance, renaming/rebranding industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, and I-O psychology versus business school organizational behavior (OB). Before commenting, however, I feel compelled to briefly frame my remarks from the perspective of my 50-year academic career. For example, I think it is important to note that I go back to the early 1960s at the University of Iowa, College of Business. I was studying for my PhD in the just emerging field of management and organizations (nothing was offered called organizational behavior or strategic management). However, and very unusual for the times for management majors, I also took a minor in the psychology department concentrating on social and I-O psychology. Also, after receiving my PhD in 1965, for my 2-year military obligation, after infantry officer training I was assigned to West Point and taught cadets the required psychology course and military leadership. This background had a formative and lasting impact on my thinking about OB and I-O psychology.

Traditional Science–Practice Research in I-O: Are We Missing the Trees for the Forest?

Abraham Lincoln was fond of saying “killing the dog does not cure the bite” when referring to problems and their persnickety pervasiveness. When thinking about the problems facing the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology profession, there is no greater source of frustration than the gap between a scientist's findings and the application of those findings to practice. In recent years, organizations such as the White House Behavioral Sciences unit, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation in partnership with The Economist Intelligence Unit, and many others have explored the gap between research and practice and have highlighted every major derailer, from delays associated with peer-reviewed publication cycles to a lacking infrastructure for bringing science to practitioners. In 2014, the SHRM Foundation even went so far as to implement a strategy based on driving research directly to practitioners through executive round table forums. Despite the best efforts to identify strategies for closing the gap, many organizations have failed to find the optimal means for bringing I-O psychology research to the masses of human resource (HR) practitioners and, in many cases, even I-O psychology practitioners dealing with significant organizational issues.

Beyond Blaming the Victim: Toward a More Progressive Understanding of Workplace Mistreatment

Theories of human aggression can inform research, policy, and practice in organizations. One such theory, victim precipitation, originated in the field of criminology. According to this perspective, some victims invite abuse through their personalities, styles of speech or dress, actions, and even their inactions. That is, they are partly at fault for the wrongdoing of others. This notion is gaining purchase in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology as an explanation for workplace mistreatment. The first half of our article provides an overview and critique of the victim precipitation hypothesis. After tracing its history, we review the flaws of victim precipitation as catalogued by scientists and practitioners over several decades. We also consider real-world implications of victim precipitation thinking, such as the exoneration of violent criminals. Confident that I-O can do better, the second half of this article highlights alternative frameworks for researching and redressing hostile work behavior. In addition, we discuss a broad analytic paradigm—perpetrator predation—as a way to understand workplace abuse without blaming the abused. We take the position that these alternative perspectives offer stronger, more practical, and more progressive explanations for workplace mistreatment. Victim precipitation, we conclude, is an archaic ideology. Criminologists have long since abandoned it, and so should we.

A Systems-Based Approach to Fostering Robust Science in Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Credibility and trustworthiness are the bedrock upon which any science is built. The strength of these foundations has been increasingly questioned across the sciences as instances of research misconduct and mounting concerns over the prevalence of detrimental research practices have been identified. Consequently, the purpose of this article is to encourage our scientific community to positively and proactively engage in efforts that foster a healthy and robust industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. We begin by advancing six defining principles that we believe reflect the values of robust science and offer criteria for evaluating proposed efforts to change scientific practices. Recognizing that the contemporary scientific enterprise is a complex and diverse network of actors and institutions, we then conclude by identifying 12 stakeholders who play important roles in achieving a culture of robust science in I-O psychology and offer recommendations for actions we can take as members of these groups to strengthen our science.

Most Frequently Cited Sources, Articles, and Authors in Industrial-Organizational Psychology Textbooks: Implications for the Science–Practice Divide, Scholarly Impact, and the Future of the Field

Most future industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology practitioners and researchers initially enroll in an introductory I-O psychology course during their junior or senior year of undergraduate studies, making introductory textbooks their first in-depth exposure to the field and an important knowledge base. We reviewed and analyzed the 6,654 unique items (e.g., journal articles, book chapters) published in 1,682 unique sources (e.g., scholarly journals, edited books, popular press publications) and authored by 8,603 unique individuals cited in six popular I-O psychology textbooks. Results showed that 39% of the top-cited sources are not traditional academic peer-reviewed journals, 77% of the top-cited articles were published in cross-disciplinary journals, and 58% of the top-cited authors are affiliated with business schools and not psychology departments. These results suggest that the science–practice divide in I-O psychology may develop later—perhaps after graduates obtain employment as either practitioners or researchers. Also, results suggest I-O psychology is closer to business and management than social psychology and psychology in general. We discuss additional implications for the science–practice divide, how to define and measure scholarly impact, and the future of I-O psychology as a field, including the movement of I-O psychologists to business schools and the sustainability of I-O psychology programs in psychology departments.

Minimizing the POSH Bias Through Education: Necessity of the “How-To” Component

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) neglected the “how-to” component of their proposal for increasing humanitarian efforts in the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Implementing change at an earlier point in the education process, through social justice awareness and applied service learning, is likely to lead to a more robust and fruitful shift away from a POSH bias compared to an attempt at persuading those currently in the field to adopt this change after their training (although I would never argue that the latter is utterly irrelevant). I hold an unwavering conviction that a natural route toward change would be to ensure that I-O psychology educators are explicitly focusing on the humanitarian workplace movement within our courses and that I-O professionals in organizations aid this cause by encouraging a humanitarian perspective as they train their newly hired, fresh-faced I-O graduates. The purposeful threading of humanitarian goals into I-O psychology education, in large part through service learning or civic education, is the key to our effectiveness. Without such a focus in the beginning stratum of I-O psychologists’ training, our other well-intentioned attempts at shifting the field's focus toward humanitarian concerns may be in vain. Below, I offer suggestions to reach this goal.

Workers in Poverty: An Insight Into Informal Workers Around the World

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) present compelling arguments on a moral/humanistic need for I-O psychologists to consider workers that are living and working in deep poverty. Their case nicely shifts focus to large percentages of global workers who heretofore have only been represented minimally in the scholarly discourse in our field. I would like to accomplish two goals in this commentary. First, I would like to present a brief historical perspective on why industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology's focus has been on POSH workers. Second, I will provide conceptual extensions to Gloss et al.’s (2017) focal article by presenting some insights into the world of informal workers.

A Missing Link in Gloss et al. (“From Handmaidens to POSH Humanitarians”)

Among many salient shifts in international development research over the last few decades has been growing legitimacy in recognition/documentation of the “rise of the South” as noted in the UNDP Human Development Report (2013). This has redirected both research and practice beyond just Northern (read “Western”) approaches, opened up new resource flows for “Southern” institutions, and initiated a whole new set of initiatives around “South–South” cooperation (Malik, 2014). To Mahbub ul Haq's original theme of “enlarging people's choices” were added new dimensions of looking beyond just western economies (and solely “economistic” analysis and prescriptions) for solutions to existential threats to sustainable development among the world's poorer nations (UNDP, 1990, p. 9). Fundamental shifts such as these, epitomized in Mahbub's well-known statement on human capacity, provide the basis for the focal article by Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) that builds skillfully on a framework, which of course also calls on Amartya Sen's work (so closely aligned with and influential in the Human Development Report series). The result is an original, carefully argued, and, perhaps some will agree, long overdue article synching the broad discipline of modern industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology into a more realistic awareness of how the majority of the world's populations sustain their livelihoods. However, there is a crucial “space” that I-O psychology seems to be still missing, and one barely touched on by this article, and that is the macropolicy environment that brings institutions in government and civil society together in more strategic approaches to developing human “resourcefulness.”

The “How” Matters as Much as the “Who”

It appears that although Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) have considered many of the arenas where industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology intersects with impoverished or atypical populations, an oft-overlooked domain is that of I-O psychologists working in military settings. Arguably the largest humanitarian aid and development organization in the world, national militaries offer a rich opportunity for I-O psychologists to study not only the more “POSH” aspects of work, but also the difficulties surrounding employees who must address impoverished citizens, lack of resources, bureaucracy far removed from the front lines, discrimination, threats to safety, and all kinds of cross-cultural interactions. As such, this humanistic, humanitarian movement could do well from studying the ways military units have successfully and not-so-successfully approached a timely and difficult subject.

Employee Work Ethic in Nine Nonindustrialized Contexts: Some Surprising Non-POSH Findings

Gross, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich's (2017) article argues that industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology has a limited perspective that rarely goes beyond the specific professional populations in formal economies of high-income countries—a perspective they refer to as a POSH perspective. This valuable criticism should also eschew the notion that workers in nonindustrialized countries are necessarily different.

Still Too POSH to Push for Structural Change? The Need for a Macropsychology Perspective

My mother, who lived her early years in the British Raj in India, assures me that POSH referred to the well-to-do European's wish to travel “Port Out, Starboard Home” on ships to and from India, which meant enjoying the predominantly shaded side of the ship, protected from the ravaging heat that “ordinary” folk had to endure. What an apt, provocative, and profound analogy Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) have given us in their description of the primary focus of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology on “Professional, Official, Secure, and High income” work.

Let's Reduce the Human Footprint Before Building Human Capabilities

The case for making human capabilities the business of I-O psychology is at first glance persuasive. It is indisputable that I-O psychology and its associated fields still suffer from a strong bias favoring POSH (Professionals, Official work in formal economy, Safe from discrimination, and High-income countries) and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies. Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) also provide ample evidence of human development indices being low among countries that are underrepresented or unrepresented in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology studies. Moreover, it cannot be denied that many of the evidence-based recommendations that we now make with confidence will not hold water in these poverty-stricken areas of the world. However, when one juxtaposes the case for building human capabilities with the extant approaches of restoring equity in society, one is confronted with the grim possibility that the idea of human capabilities may not only fail to make significant positive differences in the lives of poor people in the world, but may also worsen the quality of life of everyone on this earth. In this short essay, I discuss two major problems with the human capabilities approach and propose a modification to the approach that can potentially help solve the problem of poverty.

STRETCH Goals for I-O Psychology

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) present a compelling argument (or rallying call) for there being a “moral imperative for I-O psychology to overrepresent people living in the deepest forms of poverty in both science and practice” (p. 330). We agree. Our research has been dominated by a POSH perspective, and it is incumbent upon us to ensure that our science benefits those who are most affected by poverty. We believe the interest in engaging in humanitarian work psychology is growing among industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists, yet many of us may not feel prepared to conduct such research and/or we may feel that we lack the skills to do so. Further, as Gloss et al. (2017) note, to the extent that we are unprepared to engage in research that benefits those living in poverty, in particular, we run the added risk of harming the very populations we are wanting to help. As such, the interest is there, but we may be daunted by the method. We argue that in order to heed that rallying call, without harm, we need to develop our own capabilities to engage in this important work.

“Life Doesn't Happen at the Between-Person Level,” or a Cautionary Note on Generating Scientific Inferences Through Meta-Analyses

The implicit philosophy for how research and practice in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology has pursued inferences about our field's core phenomena has largely been based on a nomothetic, variable-based, and aggregate/“large-sample” ideal. As Tett, Hundley, and Christiansen (2017) expertly highlight, there are more insightful means for drawing inferences about the nature of such aggregate relationships based on meta-analytic techniques than the current practice in the organizational sciences. However, the motivating force behind our commentary has less to do with the issues raised by Tett et al. (2017) concerning the practice of using meta-analysis for purposes ofvalidity generalizationand more to do with the practice of using meta-analysis for purposes ofscientific inference. Between-person philosophies in which the end-goal is to identify general conclusions that apply to the aggregate (cf. Hanges & Wang, 2012) have historically guided our scientific inferences and have supported the proliferation of meta-analytic techniques (including what Tett et al. describe as tertiary analyses based on such findings). These philosophies have led to a dearth of understanding at thewithin-personandsocial systemlevels—the levels at which most of our meaningful phenomena exist (e.g., Hamaker, 2012; Von Bertalanffy, 1950). Learning, performing, decision making, communicating, sense-making, feeling/expressing emotion: These are the concepts that drive the lived experiences of individuals both inside and outside of the workplace, and all are vulnerable to being misunderstood or misinterpreted by focusing only on aggregate evidence at the between-person level. Consequently, we wish to first supplement Tett et al.’s recommendations for drawing generalizability inferences in meta-analysis and suggest a “pre-emptive” question (i.e., Question 0) to the list of four they advance in their focal article.

Handmaidens to Capitalism

Although I wholeheartedly agree with Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) that a focus on those living in the deepest forms of poverty is sorely needed in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, the real issue is not so much who we serve buthowwe serve, and specifically how we continue to neglect the systemic failures of capitalism at the root of poverty. Ultimately, it is this global market system that determines not only the distribution of wealth but also how wealth is often achieved at the expense of another's poverty. Moreover, it is this system that constrains and undermines capabilities. For these reasons, I am skeptical of the authors’ proposal for mitigating the pervasive POSH bias in our field, especially because this bias seems premised on a pervasive neglect of capitalism the authors fail to fully address.

Meta-Analysis and the Myth of Generalizability

Rejecting situational specificity (SS) in meta-analysis requires assuming that residual variance in observed correlations is due to uncorrected artifacts (e.g., calculation errors). To test that assumption, 741 aggregations from 24 meta-analytic articles representing seven industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology domains (e.g., cognitive ability, job interviews) were coded for moderator subgroup specificity. In support of SS, increasing subgroup specificity yields lower mean residual variance per domain, averaging a 73.1% drop. Precision in mean rho (i.e., low SD(rho)) adequate to permit generalizability is typically reached at SS levels high enough to challenge generalizability inferences (hence, the “myth of generalizability”). Further, and somewhat paradoxically, decreasingKwith increasing precision undermines certainty in meanrand Var(r) as meta-analytic starting points. In support of the noted concerns, only 4.6% of the 741 aggregations met defensibly rigorous generalizability standards. Four key questions guiding generalizability inferences are identified in advancing meta-analysis as a knowledge source.

The Licensure of Industrial and Organizational Psychologists: It's Déjà Vu All Over Again

If one has been involved in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) since its inception, as we have, one will have had several opportunities to reflect on the issue of licensing to regulate the practice of industrial and organizational psychology (IOP). Some find value in licensure, but the vast majority of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists do not. As the target article written by the Licensure of Consulting and Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychologists (LCIOP) Joint Task Force (2017) documents, there have been several policy statements made by SIOP leadership over the years. The essence of SIOP's policy is quite clear and consistent. Although SIOP does not support and will not promote the licensure of I-O psychologists, it does support a pathway to licensure for those who desire it, and is supportive of efforts to reduce the many barriers to licensure for those who desire it. It is our understanding that SIOP's participation in the LCIOP Joint Task Force was predicated on this long-standing policy.

Whither I-O Psychology and Legislative Restrictions?

We think that before reading our reactions to the focal article, readers should be aware of the history of the Licensure of Consulting and I-O Psychologists (LCIOP) Joint Task Force. The Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) initiated the LCIOP, and the objectives of the task force were developed without input from Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). In June 2013, Don Crowder informed Mark Nagy (SIOP Chair of State Affairs) that the ASPPB approved the establishment of a joint task force related to licensure of consulting and industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists. The membership composition of the task force was determined by ASPPB, and SIOP was allotted one member. By including a member of SIOP, ASPPB can describe the task force as a cooperative effort and SIOP ostensibly has the opportunity to help shape recommendations made with regard to the licensure of I-O psychologists. Don Crowder now serves as the president of ASPPB. In Crowder's October 2016 ASPPB meeting address, he encouraged jurisdictions to review their statutes, and, if permitted, require licensure for both health service providers (HSPs) and general applied psychologists (GAPs).

With the Right Map, Survey Key Driver Analysis Can Help Get Organizations to the Right Destination

Cucina, Walmsley, Gast, Martin, and Curtin (2017) raise an important issue in evaluating whether our current approaches for key driver analysis on employee opinion survey data are indeed best practices. As has been argued elsewhere (Putka & Oswald, 2016; Scherbaum, Putka, Naidoo, & Youssefnia, 2010), there is and can be misalignment between current and best practices. We agree with Cucina et al. that our field should engage in larger discussion of these issues. That discussion is critical, as industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists are competing with those outside our field who have either little knowledge of best practices in data analysis (but who have been empowered by technology that automates the analysis) or little knowledge of psychology (but a great deal of knowledge in big data analytical techniques). I-O psychologists are in the vanguard of survey data analysis (Ducey et al., 2015), and we have a responsibility to maintain the standards of our field as well as to wield our influence to guide other practitioners outside our field on sound theoretical and analytical approaches.

Survey Key Driver Analysis: Our GPS to Navigating Employee Attitudes

Cucina, Walmsley, Gast, Martin, and Curtin (2017) started an important dialogue about survey key driver analysis (SKDA). We believe that promoting more useful and valid ways to understand survey data is critical not only for the organizations we serve, but also for advancing the relevancy of our field. We use the terms useful and valid quite intentionally. “Useful” is driven by our practitioner side, but “valid” is driven by our science side. It is the science that often sets industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology apart from other fields. But in some ways, it also holds us back from being timely and relevant. Overall, we believe that the focal article erred too much on the science side.