Students (at least the ones we have worked with) always seem to want to know how "it really works" out there, which makes these issues even more salient than normal for myself and my co-instructor, both personally and professionally, when teaching the class. I don’t know if other people feel the same way, but these types of discussions often seem to end up somewhere between explaining to people "how it should work" versus "how we do it" versus "how others do it" versus "how you don’t want to do it no matter what." When all these perspectives converge on the same message it’s great. Unfortunately, as many of the authors and columnists in this issue point out, circumstances and perspectives differ considerably among professionals and across situations in all sorts of ways.
Another interesting tidbit worth sharing here is the other continued realization I have while teaching this course—that is, data-driven methods are one of the key differentiators of I-O and applied psychology from other types of consulting approaches. Although I’m pretty sure I have touched on this topic in these pages in the past, it never ceases to amaze me how so many professionals are out there in the business marketplace pitching their answer, model, or cute concept with absolutely no skills or interest in ever seeing an ounce of data to support (or refute) it. There are even conferences chocked full of these types. So, next time you hear rumbling in the wind at a SIOP conference regarding our having done such-and-such a data-based technique to death, just remember that these approaches are (at least for some us in the field) what differentiate us from them.
In any case, for all you full-time academics out there, I say keep up the good job. For all you full-time practitioners with no experience in teaching, I say, it’s tougher than it looks, so give ‘em a break (to quote an overused NY highway construction sign). And for that questionably highly unbalanced group of people currently doing both, I say it’s time to head for the mountains.
As I alluded to earlier, however, teaching wasn’t the only extra curricular activity I was involved in this past summer. As did many other SIOP members, I was fortunate this year to be able to capitalize on the cross-over conference week in San Francisco and attend both the 24th International Congress of Applied Psychology (sponsored by IAAP) and the Focus on Science weekend during the opening of APA’s 106th national conference.
Having never been to one of the Congresses before (this was the first to be held in the U.S.A.), I have to say that I was very impressed with the IAAP conference as a whole and would definitely recommend it to people in the future. Although there is a long lag in the submission-to-presentation process (and unfortunately the next one is not until 2002), in many ways it is very similar to a SIOP conference in terms of the content, interests, applications and research discussed, with the added benefit, of course, of being very international.
The APA Focus on Science weekend was also a positive experience for me and I think the independent emphasis placed on the applied areas this year was very helpful (e.g., there was a separate book with all the I-O and related applied listings separate from the much, much larger APA one). All in all, I think Mike Burke did a great job helping to bring a number of I-O people to both conferences. Although I can’t quite remember who I saw where exactly, I did see a number of people during various sessions and posters and even across the hallways, including Bernie Bass, Debbie Major, Deniz Ones, Roger Gill, Bob House, Roya Ayman, Jim Farr and, of course, Mike Burke. There were plenty of other SIOP members there as well. Next year, the APA conference will be held in Boston (see the call for this from Murray Barrick elsewhere in this issue).
Come Together
I don’t know about anybody else, but I have always been fascinated with the whole notion of professional paradigms and the ways these simultaneously explain and limit our understanding of the world. I think it all started in college, when after taking both introductory psychology and introductory sociology courses, I decided that a double major in both the micro and macro perspectives would provide an interesting juxtaposition. Of course, sorry to say, I can’t remember much from either of these more general areas, having delved into the even more specific realms of I-O and OD, but the concept of comparing approaches and perspectives has always been a draw for me. Whether it was reading Kuhn (1970), watching one of those Tom Peters tapes recanting the failure of industry to recognize its impending demise, or even (dare I say it) reading about boundary spanning in Katz and Kahn (1978), the notion has stuck with me so strongly that it has oozed out into much of my professional life. Aside from more normal research-type papers (is that an oxymoron?), I’ve been involved in papers describing differences in the values and practices of I-O versus OD practitioners (e.g., Church & Burke, 1993), and worked on "thought pieces" (if that means anything) that raise questions regarding the definition of various specialties and rising trends in vendor mentality. Moreover, at least half my columns in TIP over the last few years have poked around the edges of the uniqueness of such concepts as teamwork, TQM, organizational learning and the like.
And by the same token, while I fully consider myself to be an Organizational Psychologist at heart and by training, I also belong to (and in some cases am quite active in) related types of professional associations (and perspectives) that focus on related but often somewhat different areas of the organizational experience. Some of these include areas such as organization development (OD), human resource development (HRD), organizational behavior (OB), and even training and development.
Why should anybody care about my mental wanderings, you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I think it is good and responsible practice to be connected to and aware of other types of related fields out there working with organizations (some of which are often even getting involved in or competing directly with I-O related interventions and functions), a colleague recently recommended I read a book that many people are talking about—Consilience by Edward Wilson (1998)—which interestingly enough speaks to this very topic. Although Wilson is clearly a hard scientist, and not of the social variety, he does make some very interesting points about the need to identify learnings/laws/principles across the physical and social sciences and to help integrate these into a body of fundamental knowledge for all human existence. In so doing, he also makes some comments about the fractured and independent state of many current fields of knowledge, which though by no means was directed at the general area of organization science, I think still quite easily applies. While Wilson is clearly tackling something even bigger than I ever had in mind—after all, I just want to develop linkages and distinctions between I-O, OD, OB, OMT and HRD—the idea of the coming together of knowledge across various disciplines, subdisciplines, and professional practice areas is fundamentally the same and something we ought to seriously consider as social scientists. APA President Martin Seligman (1998) made a similar point in his recent column in the APA Monitor with a call for more complete scientific activity that includes both analysis and synthesis. Interesting enough, he also describes the origins of a long-standing tradition of keeping I-O psychologists out of various academic programs because they were too applied.
Anyway, back to Wilson. In short, he proposes that we strive for consilience (i.e., the unification of knowledge "by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation," p. 8). Although I won’t spoil the ending for interested readers, listed below are some of the choice bits and quotes that I found particularly intriguing (including the importance of telling a story, a message that is also a key theme in the data-driven methods course I described above):
On reductionism and the fractured nature of the sciences:
"The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarship"
(p. 8).
"Split into independent cadres, [social scientists] stress precision in words within their specialty but seldom speak the same technical language from one specialty to the next. A great many even enjoy the resulting overall atmosphere of chaos, mistaking it for creative ferment" (p. 182).
"Each discipline of the social sciences rules comfortably within its own chosen domain of space and time so long as it stays largely oblivious of the others" (p. 191).
"The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science" (p. 54).
"Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic responses to immediate need" (p. 13).
"The question remaining is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalties of human nature" (p. 126).
On the uses and abuses of theory:
"Anyone can have a theory; pay your money and take your choice among the theories that compete for your attention. Voodoo priests sacrificing chickens to please spirits of the dead are working with a theory. So are millenarian cultists watching the Idaho skies for signs of the Second Coming" (p. 52).
"Still, scientific theories are a product of imagination—informed imagination" (p 53).
"Nothing in science—nothing in life, for that matter—makes sense without theory. It is our nature to put all knowledge into context in order to tell a story, and to re-create the world by this means" (p. 52).
"The greatest challenge today, not just in cell biology and ecology but in all of science, is the accurate and complete description on of complex systems" (p. 85).
As you can see, Wilson’s comments and ideas are somewhat radical even from our perspective (can you imagine the reaction he’s receiving in his own fields?). With words like "minutissima" and "consilience," great quotes and intriguing comments, and ideas that are close to the edge, I found it to be a refreshing look at the world of science in general and of particular relevance to the need for integration within the realm of the organizational sciences as well. Not that I know what one does with the concepts or anything, but it is intellectually intriguing to say the least, and I recommend it to others.
Right Here, Right Now
Featured Articles
Ok, so what should you be reading in this issue of TIP? Well, SIOP President Elaine Pulakos starts off the issue with an update of some recent work being done by a number of government agencies to help standardize the many competing occupational classification systems that exist in the field. She also introduces us to the O*NET database (given the similarity in names, members of the ODNET might wonder how they are classified under this system). Elaine then presents a breakdown in percentages of I versus O topics at this past year’s SIOP convention in Dallas in response to some attendees’ questions of balance.
Brent Holland
Next, Jeff McHenry takes aim at a central problem in delivering 360 feedback through the eyes of his old military pal Gunny Su. He raises the question: How does one give decidedly tough feedback to a coworker who thinks that the S.A.R.A. acronym stands for Sudden Aggressive Response Activity? (As opposed to the normal response to receiving feedback which is Shock, Anger, Rejection, Acceptance.)
Just when you thought that Robert Tett’s article from last issue would be the last word on the conscientiousness construct until next year in Atlanta, guess again, dear readers. Judy Collins takes on the issue from yet another angle (socialization), and concludes that there may indeed be more here than meets the meta-analytic eye. As an aside, I hope someone has proposed at least a session or two for next year’s SIOP and/or APA conferences on this, since, as the cheesy phrase goes, "there’s a lot of energy around this topic."
Finally, we have two articles that report on some interesting legal issues for the workplace. First, Jim Sharf takes us on a tour of some of the issues and recent decisions regarding temporary or contract employment (a role that many consultants are facing and may be in the cards for many more). Then Shanan Gwaltney Gibson and Heather Roberts-Fox provide an interesting overview of several recent Supreme Court rulings in one of the most active years ever for sexual harassment disputes. These cases attempt to answer the central question: Can an organization can be held responsible for its employees' illegal behaviors, despite not having had explicit knowledge that they were occurring?
Editorial Departments
On the column side of things, Mike Harris starts us off in Practice Network by taking on one of the more popular SIOP topics these days—competency modeling. After providing an overview of the concept, he raises the question (and then proceeds to answer it) as to whether or not this whole movement is really any different from a traditional I-O job analysis approach.
October’s TIP-TOPics by Dawn Riddle and Lori Foster covers one of the most pressing issues for students—finding a job after finally finishing one’s degree. Their piece provides a number of useful tips and techniques for constructing teaching portfolios, questions, and answers concerning both the academic and applied (thank you) job search processes, and pointers on where to go for more information on ways to work through those sticky work–family balance issues that often occur with any job.
Janine Waclawski then takes us on a tour of the Real World of psychologists on film (including one that stars a homicidal cannibal), followed by a visit with the planet metaphor-loving Dr. John Gray. Based on the comments she received from Andy Lee, Bill Kahnweiler and Nancy Tippins, I’d say she’s not alone in her concerns regarding the public’s understanding (or lack thereof) of psychology in general, let alone I-O psychology. Interestingly, Wilson (mentioned above) may have at least one explanation for this issue, which he calls the paradox of the social sciences:
and Bob Hogan then a closer took at some of the potential negatives inherent in the rising implementation of electronic cottages—otherwise know as the telecommuting revolution. Aside from the challenges of alienation, a loss of work-related identity, and a need for strong self-discipline, they also raise an interesting question—where are all the studies on this topic? Do I hear a possible call for one or more symposia (or perhaps even a debate) on the subject for an upcoming conference?