Good Science-Good Practice
Jamie Madigan
Ameren Services
Marcus W. Dickson
Wayne State University
There are always plenty of great articles to draw from for a column dedicated to examining the combination of good science and good practice, but sometimes the column practically writes itself. Case in point: A chunk of the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP), a publication of the British Psychological Society, was dedicated to examining whether the traditionally academic journal should be of more use to practitioners and, if so, how that feat could best be accomplished. The discussion (in part a reaction to that journal’s recent inclusion of “practical relevance” as a rating criterion for submissions) is focused on JOOP, but it could easily be transplanted to any other scientific journal with a similar mission and readership. (We’re grateful to John Arnold for bringing this issue of JOOP to our attention.)
At the center of the debate is an article entitled “But What Does it Mean to Practice? The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology From a Practitioner Perspective” by Garry Gelade. The author starts by highlighting concerns about the growing schism between highly scientific and pedantic research that most practitioners can’t even understand much less make use of on the one hand, and easily digestible but scientifically untenable research on the other. From there, Gelade makes use of some creative thinking to describe how JOOP could be of more use to practitioners in three general ways: addressing practitioners directly, reducing the emphasis on methodology, and increasing focus on the practical implications of the research.
Gelade’s first suggestion is to use language that’s more inclusive of practitioners who are on the lookout for practical solutions to issues that often sprout up in the wild of the workplace. This could be as simple as acknowledging these issues and addressing practitioners in the opening sentences or abstract of an article but also extends to the general tone of articles and an attempt to avoid “bland and turgid prose” (Gelade, 2006).
Perhaps a more controversial suggestion put forth by Gelade is to minimize articles’ emphasis on methodology that can bog down readers whose interests or education lies outside of such technical matters. Instead, the author argues that more space should be allotted to discussing practical concerns, exploring the meaning of the research for practitioners, and making it more digestible for nonacademics. After all, who among us has never been guilty of skipping the Methods section of an article and heading straight to the Discussion?
Finally, in a suggestion that builds on the previous one, Gelade suggests that researchers “stick their necks out a little more” and hazard discussions of their work’s implications for practitioners and other researchers. What exactly do their findings mean, and how can they be translated into action, policy, or decisions for those in other organizations? Researchers are often wary of overgeneralizing their results in order to conform to the standards set by the scientific method (we personally often joke that “more research is required” whenever I wish to avoid an unpleasant decision), but perhaps this caution can prevent them from doing so when such generalizations are actually warranted.
In acknowledgement of the virtues of open debate and discussion, the editors of JOOP also invited other researchers to write responses to Gelade’s article in which they reacted to his recommendations. The contributors to this effort included Toby Wall, Gillian Symon, and Gerard Hodgkinson. Their reactions ranged from qualified agreement to more strongly worded rejection, but all were thoughtfully formed and intriguing. Generally, though, they focused on three points: that we shouldn’t do anything to widen the practitioner/scientist divide, we shouldn’t throw out good science to accommodate practitioners, and JOOP isn’t for pure practitioners anyway.
The first point raised by the detractors to the original article is that JOOP should not do anything that actively encourages a divide between practitioners and academics. Accepting only articles that water down the scientific nature of the research or, worse yet, avoid it altogether would only be a disservice to both sides if the journal’s mission is to enhance the practice of our field. This is a point that speaks clearly to the authors of this very column, given how it is dedicated to finding research that unifies the two sides, not that which emphasizes their differences. Gelade, in turn, counters this point in a rebuttal by saying that changes need not be that extreme and that scientific journals in other fields, like medicine, accomplish this feat by having callouts or sidebars that offer more directly worded and useful synopses of the research.
The second theme that emerged from the reaction pieces is that we should not throw out good science just to accommodate practitioners who have not been trained to make use of it in its nondistilled form. After all, pieces focused on pure theory or methodology have an important role in keeping issue-based research honest. Hodgkinson (2006) points out that many theories (he offers Herzberg’s 1966 two-factor model of motivation and job satisfaction as an example) seem sound and promising at first but bow or break under the testing weight of methodologically based research of the kind that Gelade seeks to push aside.
Finally, most of the reaction pieces touched on a reality that many humble and open-minded scientists may be content to downplay but which needs to be brought up: JOOP is not an outlet for pure practitioners who lack the training and inclination to consume and make sense of scientific research. Gelade obviously isn’t proposing that JOOP be turned into the I-O equivalent of People Magazine or Highlights, but one doesn’t have to go anywhere near those extremes to appreciate that changing the journal may not be commensurate with its mission of disseminating scientific research to its readers, be they academics, practitioners, or both.
What we wrote above gives you the gist of things, but there are more nuances, details, and launch pads for deep thought to be found within the articles themselves. We highly recommend the whole issue to you, so if you are a JOOP subscriber already, great, if not, get the issue from a colleague, interlibrary loan, the Internet (www.bpsjournals.co.uk/joop), or whatever source is available to you.
There are, of course, lots of other recent articles that deserve mention here this month. One of those comes from the relatively new journal Academy of Management Learning & Education. This article, by Michael Useem, James Cook, and Larry Sutton, is a case study focusing on the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado and on the decisions made by one particular leader in a condition of high stress. As the authors note,
“The specific focus of our analysis is the set of leadership decisions among the firefighters….Our method is to examine the events of the fire in sufficient detail to pinpoint the critical decisions and then extrapolate their implications for leadership decisions in other settings and institutions, including company management. Our purpose is not only to identify the factors that facilitate or undermine optimal leadership decisions, but also to help specify the developmental steps that organizations can take to help their leaders reach better decisions on behalf of the enterprise” (p. 462).
As with any case study, it is important not to overgeneralize from the single case to too broad a population, but this article provides a very detailed description of the crisis situation, of the decisions made and the reasons behind them, and how the successful and unsuccessful decisions can be explained in the context of existing leadership and crisis management theory. Ten specific decisions are analyzed, with each decision placed in a context of what was happening minute by minute, what information or experience was needed to make the optimal decision, was that information or experience available to the primary decision maker, what were the outcomes of the decision, and what lessons can be drawn for other organizational and leadership contexts. The richness of the case study makes this article an interesting possibility for inclusion in in-house leadership training programs or leadership development courses (undergraduate, MBA, executive), and we would use an analysis of the arguments in the article as an exam question or a class assignment in a doctoral course.
Finally, The Leadership Quarterly’s August issue contained an exchange of letters between George Hollenbeck and Morgan McCall on one side and Robert Silzer on the other related to the value of leadership competency models. Of course, it is no surprise (especially not to anyone who saw the 2003 SIOP debate that led to this exchange of letters) that Hollenbeck and McCall take the position that competency models for leadership are unhelpful and that they lead the field backwards rather than forward, but Silzer argues that leadership competency models provide significant theoretical and practical benefits to organizations, especially compared to (a) job analytic approaches to leadership assessment, or (b) no approach to leadership assessment.
What we found most useful in this exchange is that issues around competency models in general, and around leadership competency models in specific, are more clearly presented than we have seen anywhere else. Hollenbeck and McCall lay out their list of assumptions about leadership competency models in Letter 1 (e.g., “Assumption 1: A single set of characteristics adequately describes effective leaders.”), including clear references to leadership theory and research to support their contention that these are in fact assumptions necessary for competency models to be tenable. Silzer replies in Letter 2 with an explanation of his view of what leadership competency models are (and are not), and in some cases he accepts at least a portion of these assumptions, but in others, he rebuts the necessity of the assumption (e.g., “Competency models do not make the assumption that a single set of characteristics adequately describes effective leaders…. They are simply an attempt to leverage the experience, lessons learned, and knowledge of seasoned leaders for the benefit of others and the organization,” p. 403).
At the end of the four letters, there is no clear resolution as to the appropriateness of leadership competency models. What there is, however, is a much clearer understanding of the issues and decisions involved in implementing leadership competency models and of the benefits and costs of this approach for organizations in terms of selection and development. Having read the letters, it is much easier to understand both why some oppose these models vehemently and why others rely on them wholeheartedly.
That’s about it this time. As always, we look forward to hearing from you. Are these articles useful? Do you have suggestions for articles we could highlight? Would you like to see us pay more or less attention to certain areas of the field? We’re always keeping an eye out for new things to cover but welcome your input.
References
Gelade, G. A. (2006). But what does it mean in practice? The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology from a practitioner perspective. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 153–160.
Gelade, G. A. (2006). Wider and wider. Broadening the readership of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 179–181.
Hodgkinson, G. P. (2006). The role of JOOP (and other scientific journals) in bridging the practitioner–researcher divide in industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 173–178.
Hollenbeck, G. .P, McCall, M. W., Jr., and Silzer, R. F. (2006). Leadership competency models. The Leadership Quarterly, 17, 398–413.
Symon, G. (2006). Academics, practitioners, and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology: Reflecting on the issues. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 167–171.
Useem, M., Cook, J., and Sutton, L. (2006). Developing leaders for decision making under stress: Wildand firefighters in the South Canyon Fire and its aftermath. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4, 461–485.
Wall, T. D. (2006). Is JOOP of only academic interest? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 161–165.