A Message From Your President July 2007

Having just returned from SIOP in New York City, it is time for me to write my first column as president of SIOP. What a conference we had! There were 4,509 individuals registered for the conference, an all-time record. The program was outstanding and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tammy Allen, Program chair, Doug Pugh, SIOP Conference chair, Steven Rogelberg, Sunday Seminars, Joan Brannick, Workshop chair, Mindy Bergman, Placement, Dave Nershi and all of the members of the Administrative Office, and all of the SIOP members who contributed their time, effort, and creativity to the success of the conference!

Stepping in as president is an exciting time, and I am honored to have been elected to this role following in the footsteps of some incredible people. I especially want to thank Jeff McHenry for his leadership of SIOP this past year. He has made a difference and SIOP is stronger for his efforts! One of his lasting contributions is his leadership in pursuing SIOP’s strategic goals, including the development of specific initiatives. I plan to continue to direct our energies towards the attainment of our goals of being (a) the visible and trusted authority on work-related psychology, (b) an advocate and champion of I-O psychology to policy makers, (c) the organization of choice of I-O professionals, and (d) the model of integrated scientist–practitioner effectiveness that values research, practice, and education equally and seeks higher standards in all three areas.

We have initiatives underway relative to each of these goals and I would like to take just a few minutes to briefly summarize some of these efforts. For information on other activities I refer you to Jeff’s column in the April 2007 issue of TIP. Relative to visibility, we continue to increase our visibility within the psychological community. Thanks to the efforts of Tahira Probst who chaired our American Psychological Association (APA) Program Committee for the 2007 APA conference, we have a terrific line-up of I-O presentations and several sessions that are shared with other divisions in APA. In addition, we have increased our involvement in APA governance. Our elected APA Council of Representatives, Janet Barnes-Farrell, José Cortina, Bob Dipboye, Deirdre Knapp, and Eduardo Salas, have initiated collaborative efforts with representatives from other divisions. These efforts increase our visibility within the governance structure of APA and also maintain our presence in the Science Directorate and the Practice Directorate. We also have been successful in nominating individuals to various boards and committees this year and will soon learn whether the individuals we nominated have been elected by the Council of Representatives. These activities raise our visibility within the psychological community, but they also contribute to our goal of advocacy. Our efforts are ongoing so if you are interested in being more involved in APA governance, please contact me or one of our Council Representatives.

One area SIOP has not been very influential within APA is in matters that are initiated by the state psychological associations such as the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Initiative. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that few of us belong to or participate in our state associations. I view this as a mechanism for us to increase the visibility of I-O psychology within the field of psychology and would like to encourage you to consider becoming involved at the state level. Also, there are several activities underway at APA in addition to the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Initiative such as a revision to the Model Licensure Act, which will engage the state associations. For purposes of visibility and advocacy, SIOP needs to have a voice in the state associations. Therefore, we will be trying to develop a register of SIOP members who are active in their state associations and SIOP members who would be willing to become engaged to move us towards our goals of visibility and advocacy at the state level. Judy Blanton, chair of our State Affairs Committee, will be leading this initiative, so if you are involved in your state association or would be willing to become engaged, please let Judy or I know.

In the spirit of collaboration and enhanced visibility within the psychological community, SIOP is also collaborating with APA, the National Institution for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology (SOHP) for their international conference on occupational stress and health entitled “Work, Stress, and Health 2008: Healthy and Safe Work Through Research, Practice, and Partnerships,” which will be held in Washington, DC on March 6–8, 2008. This conference series, first initiated by a partnership between APA and NIOSH, focuses on the changing nature of work, the organization of work, and the relation of work to the health and well-being of workers. The 2008 conference is the seventh conference in the series, and topics over the years have included new employment arrangements, organizational restructuring, work hours and shiftwork, work and family issues, workplace violence, best practices, workforce diversity, the aging workforce, cardiovascular disease and work, disability management, mass disaster and terrorism, and stress prevention programs. If you are interested in any of these or related topics, I encourage you to consider attending this conference.

To date, we have had less visibility and involvement in the Association for Psychological Science (APS). We had several SIOP members give invited addresses at the APS conference in May in Washington DC including Ruth Kanfer and myself thanks to the efforts of Verlin Hinsz, our Program chair for the APS conference. The Visibility Committee chaired by Doug Reynolds has several initiatives underway to enhance the visibility of I-O psychology both within the field of psychology (APA, APS, the Federation, and FABBS) but also to the larger business community and related associations such as SHRM. Therefore, it seems that we are moving forward with our visibility goals and to some extent these efforts also contribute to our advocacy goals.

I would like to highlight one additional advocacy initiative for the coming year. The Scientific Affairs Committee chaired by Steve Kozlowski is planning an event for this coming year in collaboration with the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences. The event is intended to attract policy makers at federal agencies and Congress to showcase the contributions I-O psychology.

Our third strategic goal is to be the organization of choice for I-O professionals. Based on member feedback, we are switching to a new 3-day conference format next year in San Francisco. Steven Rogelberg, Program chair, has described the changes to the format elsewhere so I will not give the details here. However, I believe that the Program Committee has developed several exciting ideas for San Francisco and we hope to see all of you there. Mickey Quiñones, chair of Membership, continues our efforts to develop an institutional research board, which would allow SIOP to have better access to information about our members across the various surveys that we sponsor each year. In addition, we continue to work on our process for matching volunteers with committees. SIOP is our organization and the involvement of our membership in our initiatives is critical to our success.

I want to take this opportunity to once again congratulate all of the award winners and Fellows. You are all extremely deserving of our recognition! Your collective accomplishments are absolutely spectacular, and I believe all of you serve as exemplars of the best of I-O psychology. I hope your accomplishments serve to encourage our members to strive to be the best. I would also like to thank Joyce Bono, Awards chair, George Hollenbeck, Fellowship chair, and their committee members for identifying and selecting such an outstanding group of award winners and fellows.

Our fourth goal is to become the model of integrated scientist–practitioner effectiveness that values research, practice, and education equally and seeks higher standards in all three areas. One initiative relative to this goal is our new journal, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, edited by Paul Sackett. I believe that the format is unique and exciting and will provide an opportunity for our members to voice their perspectives on important topics in the field of I-O psychology. The second major initiative relative to this goal is to clarify and define the scientist–practitioner model. As Jeff indicated in his April 2007 TIP column, we hope that this initiative will include an occupational analysis that will identify a set of behavioral guidelines for the scientist–practitioner model for I-O psychology relative to training and education, professional recognition, and other purposes. One area where the results of this initiative may be very useful is in establishing proficiencies for I-O psychology. APA recognizes four specialties in psychology—clinical, counseling, school, and I-O. Associated with each of these specialties except for I-O psychology is a list of proficiencies. It appears that it is time, maybe past time, for us to promulgate proficiencies in our specialty.

We continue our dialogue with our sister organizations: the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP) and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology-South Africa (SIOP-SA). Several SIOP members attended EAWOP’s conference in Stockholm in May. Additionally, conversations are underway with both EAWOP and SIOP-SA as to how we can strengthen our collaborations. I hope in the coming year that we will extend our network of sister organizations by developing collaborative relationships with other I-O psychology associations around the world. I strongly believe that open dialogue across cultures enhances the science and practice of I-O psychology.

As you can see from the above, SIOP has a busy year ahead and I look forward to working with all of the committees in accomplishing our initiatives and moving forward toward our strategic goals. I also invite input of all members relative to these initiatives or other ideas that you may have to advance our strategic goals. I look forward to hearing from you.