What is I-O?

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is the scientific study of the workplace. Rigor and methods of psychology are applied to issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance, and work-life balance.

SIOP Goes Global. Or Is It the Other Way Around?

Allen I. Kraut and Lauren Mondo
Baruch College*

* An earlier version of this piece was given as a presentation at the 2009 SIOP Annual Conference, New Orleans, April 2009.

With today’s headlines pointing out the large reach of globalization, we were curious about the degree to which SIOP is “going global.”  Is it just our impression, or is it reality that our professional society is in fact becoming more international? As we will show in a moment, it turns out to be reality and to have potentially far-reaching consequences for SIOP.

The Economy

There are several ways to look at globalization from the viewpoint of the U.S., and we chose to first look at the economy in which we are embedded. Specifically, we looked at import and export as a proportion of U.S. gross domestic product. We went back over 40 years, starting in 1967 (about when the first author started his career) and ending in 2007 (about when the second author began her career).  For convenience, we sampled the data every 10 years. These are our “marker” years.

The results are shown in Figure 1. Over this 40-year period, the total dollar value of imports and exports has risen by a factor of 48 (not adjusting for inflation). It has grown steadily, and dramatically, from 10% of U.S. GDP in 1967 to more than 29% of a much larger base in the year 2007. Although imports are somewhat higher than exports, the total volume of goods and services moving across our national boundaries has grown remarkably, from $1 out of every $10 in U.S. GDP to almost $3 out of every $10.

Figure 1.  Increasing globalization, imports, and exports as a % of U.S. GDP

At the same time, the number of passports issued by the United States has grown steadily. As shown in Table 1, 1.6 million passports were issued in 1967, and 18.4 million passports were issued in 2007. This last year in the chart shows a very big jump, which was caused by the “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative,” which requires a passport for travel to Canada, the Caribbean, and all of Latin America. This new law took effect in December 2004. Still, the increase in passports issued up to 2004 rose far faster than U.S. population growth.

Table 1
Increase in U.S. Passports Issued
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Note. A new law in December 2004, the “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative,” requires a passport for travel to Canada, the Caribbean, and all of Latin America.

About 20% of all U.S. citizens currently hold a passport. As our global trade has increased, so have the number of people who travel overseas.  Anyone who has traveled overseas sees the unmistakable signs of global U.S. business, such as McDonald’s restaurants, Citibank branch offices, or American-made movies.

SIOP Membership

But what about SIOP?  Are our members also overseas?  To get a precise idea, we spoke to the SIOP office and, with the special help of Tracy Vanneman, researched the number of SIOP members overseas. (In the following data, Student Affiliates are not included, only Fellows, Members, Associates and International Affiliates.)  Then we proceeded to count SIOP’s membership, including the non-U.S.-based membership. Of course, these overseas members are not necessarily non-U.S. citizens. They may be Americans living overseas, just as we have non-U.S. citizens working within the United States.

Surprisingly, the earliest available data is from 1991. As shown in Figure 2, the total number of SIOP members has increased from 2,556 in 1991 to 3,945 in 2007, a gain of 54%. During that same time, the number of non-U.S. members has risen 10 times as fast, from 86 to 479, which is a gain of 557%.



Figure 2. SIOP’s non-U.S.-based membership doubled in last decade

In other words, although SIOP has grown steadily, the proportion of non-U.S.-based membership nearly doubled from 1991 to 1997 and in the next decade has almost doubled again.  This trend seems to be continuing. In 2008, 22% of new members were non-U.S. based (89 of 407).   Right now, about 1 in 12 SIOP members is based outside of the U.S.  In addition, at the 2009 SIOP conference, it seemed noteworthy that 6 of the 11 new SIOP Fellows are non-U.S. members. 

The “Anglo” Connection

They are a diverse group. Since 1991, the number of countries where our non-U.S.-based members live has grown from 17 nations to 47 nations.  However, 75% (357 of 479 in 2007) come from just 10 countries. As shown in Table 2 the largest number, 144, comes from neighboring Canada.   Perhaps it is no accident that the first SIOP president elected from out of the U.S. was Canada’s Gary Latham, our president last year. (Although he is the second Canadian-born person to be made SIOP president, the first, Victor Vroom, was at Yale University at the time he was elected.)   So maybe Gary Latham was on to something when he stressed the importance of SIOP turning its attention to our global impact? 

Table 2
Non-U.S.-Based SIOP Members Are Diverse
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Top 10 countries                                        Number of members
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The tallies in Table 2 also imply some interesting underlying stories. For example, the Netherlands has more SIOP members (33) than does the much larger country of Germany (23). Israel and Singapore have nearly as many as that larger country. This suggests the importance of links forged by graduate training among faculty, the languages spoken, and other connections that account for non-U.S.-based I-O psychologists being aware of and joining SIOP.

Another way to look at the non-U.S.-based membership is to group the countries according to some “cultural” grouping. For this purpose we have adapted the categories suggested by Ronen and Shenkar (2008). These groupings are shown in Table 3. Over half of the non-U.S.-based members (53%) come from other “Anglo-American” countries. The other three major groupings in Europe account for another 22%.  Another 15% come from Asia/Far East, many of these from English-speaking Singapore, Hong Kong, and India. One can easily draw the conclusion that most non-U.S.-based SIOP members live in countries where English is the official or semi-official language.

Rise in Articles and Authors From Overseas

Aside from SIOP membership, the true influence of non-U.S.-based SIOP members on the field is probably most visible in journal publications. For this purpose we went to two of the leading journals in our field, Personnel Psychology and the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP). By examining the articles and authorship in each of our 5 “marker” years, the impact of non-U.S.-based authors becomes quite visible.

As shown in Figure 3 the number of articles in the Journal of Applied Psychology with at least one non-U.S.-based author rises from 10% in 1967 to 43% in 2007. That dramatic rise is more weakly echoed by the number of articles in Personnel Psychology, which rises from almost 4% to about 21% in 2007.  Out of curiosity, we looked at the makeup of the 2007 editorial boards of these two journals and were not surprised that whereas 8% of Personnel Psychology’s editorial board was from out of the U.S., the JAP editorial board’s overseas representation was half again as high, with 12% from out of the U.S.

Figure 3. Rise in number of articles with at least one non-U.S.-based author

As might be expected, the top I-O journals, in Figure 4, also show sharp rises in the number of authors who are non-U.S. based.  In JAP the number of authors goes up from 8% in 1967 to 33% in 2007. In Personnel Psychology, the number of non-U.S.-based authors rises from 5% to 14% over that 40-year period. In recent years, there has been a trend towards multiple authorship, which makes a count of the number of authors somewhat problematic. For example, one Personnel Psychology article in 2007 had 20 non-U.S.-based authors. We counted it as only one author from overseas. Otherwise the proportion of non-U.S.-based authors would be 26% rather 14%. 

Figure 4. Rise in non-U.S.-based authors in top I-O journals

(After this research was completed we became aware of a similar count of non-U.S.-based authorship in the same two I-O journals, with more complete data points, from 1963 to 2007.  That research came to the same conclusion of a sharp increase in the numbers of non-U.S.-based authors [see Cascio and Aguinis, 2008].)

Collaboration—A Growing Trend

The increasing role of non-U.S. researchers would be all the more exciting if it suggested collaboration among I-O psychologists from different countries. In fact that seems to be the case. As shown in Table 4, U.S.-only authors published 90% of the JAP articles in 1967 but only 57% in 2007.  Over those 40 years, the share of non-U.S.-only authors rose from 10% to more than 23%.  Most excitingly, the proportion of articles that were authored collaboratively across nations rose from 0% in 1967 to 20% in 2007.

Personnel Psychology saw a similar if somewhat weaker trend, also shown in Table 4.  Non-U.S.-only authors accounted for almost 4% of the articles in 1967 and nearly 14% in 2007. Collaborative articles, across U.S. and non-U.S. authors, appeared first only in our 1997 sample. The proportion barely rose from 6% in 1997 to 7% in 2007.

More Cross-National Samples

Table 5 shows another trend which seems to accompany non-U.S.-based authors and the increasing collaboration across countries. Namely, we see more samples being made up of non-U.S. groups and even cross-national groups. In JAP articles the proportion of non-U.S.-only samples has gone up from 10% in 1967 to 30% in 2007.

In Personnel Psychology, the proportion of cross-national samples or non-U.S.-only samples has climbed from 0% in 1967 to 28% in 2007. The reality is that with more non-U.S. and cross-national samples, our theories and concepts are more likely to lead to a truly global I-O psychology.

An unpublished study by Anne Marie Ryan and Michelle Gelfand (in press) has also remarked on this trend. They report that 7.7% of the SIOP annual conference panels and symposia were on cross-cultural topics during the 3 years 2006–2008. They also note that a review of four top I-O journals over the last 3 years shows that 36% of the articles had a non-U.S. author or coauthor, whereas 29% had a non-U.S. sample.  However, only 6% were specifically cross cultural. (In addition to JAP and Personnel Psychology, they looked at the Academy of Management Journal, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.)

Implications of This Change

We can see that our economy is increasingly globalized and that the SIOP membership is also increasingly globalized. So what can we do about that? What should we do about that? How do we prepare, as I-O psychologists, to work effectively in a global environment?
In thinking about the answers to these questions, our suggested remedies can be put into three major areas.  (We recognize that some organizations and individuals are already doing what we suggest below. At the same time, we want to encourage broader consideration of these possibilities and hope they will stimulate consideration of even more possibilities.)

Selection

Part of the solution may be for U.S. universities to consider graduate student candidates from overseas more often and not restrict ourselves only to U.S. candidates. Perhaps selection processes should give more credit to graduate student candidates who have lived overseas or had other non-U.S. experiences. Perhaps we should give more weight to knowledge of foreign languages or other efforts which express knowledge or curiosity about the world outside of the U.S.

Another type of selection consideration should be used in selecting from those already within the profession of I-O psychology when filling key positions.  Specifically, it seems smart to assure the diversity of editorial boards, such as those of our professional journals, to represent non-U.S. viewpoints. In fact, even SIOP’s own journals, like TIP and the recently established Industrial and Organizational Psychology, might review their editorial board makeup to ensure that non-U.S. viewpoints are well represented.  (In fact, we have already seen several columns in TIP that take a global view.)  All of SIOP’s committees could be reviewed to see if their makeup appropriately represents the growing minority of SIOP members who do not reside in the U.S.

Training

Training of graduate students would benefit if textbooks and assigned journal articles were chosen to reflect a global perspective. Of course, textbook writers with a global viewpoint are also to be desired. Ryan and Gelfand (in press) suggest revisiting and revising the entire graduate student curriculum. Graduate student training might also include the stimulation of internships overseas or with global organizations.

Training (and “retraining”) also applies to faculty.  For many years, quite a few I-O professors have taken their sabbaticals in countries other than their own.   A broader use of visiting professorships can also be of great utility. In fact, Paul Spector and his colleagues at the University of South Florida have had Chinese scholars and students studying at their school for many years. Similarly, Don Davis and his colleagues at Old Dominion University have had many Chinese scholars and students visit their institution (and earn degrees) and reciprocated with their own visits overseas.  As one might imagine, such visits and contacts stimulate cross-national research and an I-O psychology that is more globally applicable.  (More accounts about such initiatives would make for informative feature stories in TIP and other outlets.)

Broadening Concepts and Methodology

I-O psychology would benefit from concepts and methodology that are truly universal. One way to accomplish this would be to foster more cross-cultural studies and more collaboration among scholars and practitioners in different countries. To a small extent, I-O psychologists who work in large global corporations already do this, but their work may not be widely known.   Of course, we might stimulate such sharing with nonmembers of these organizations by encouraging our global colleagues to hold workshops and make presentations at the annual SIOP conference and other professional meetings.

In conclusion, the research we report here has provided some surprising (at least to us) and provocative findings. The globalization we see around us has permeated SIOP and its membership. We are increasingly impacted by our growing global membership. This shows up in our journals and the people who publish in them. We can see that I-O concepts are spreading and being tested overseas as well. It seems only sensible to recognize what is happening and to take the steps that will prepare us individually, and as a professional field, to meet the future. It is already here.

References

     Cascio, W. F., & Aguinis, H. (2008). Research in industrial and organizational psychology from 1963 to 2007: Changes, choices, and trends. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 1062–1081.
     Ronen, S., & Shenkar O. (February, 2008). Culture clustering revisited: A nested meta-analysis. International Business Forum, Virginia Commonwealth University.
     Ryan, A. M. ,  & Gelfand, M. (in press). Internationalizing the I-O psychology curriculum. In F. Leong, T. Marsella, & M. Leach (Eds.), Internationalizing the psychology curriculum in the United States: Meeting the challenges of globalization.