A recent myriad of discussions across the I/O blogosphere on the status of I/O psychology as a science had led me to notice something peculiar about people in these discussions – the tendency of some to self-identify as only a single part of the larger I/O-OBHRM community.
For example:
In this post on the SIOP Exchange, Herman Aguinis discusses the need within I/O psychology to bridge the scientist-practitioner divide. In the comments, however, this is reinterpreted by a few people. Tom Baker, for example, comments “It’s good to hear of I-O’s continued interest in staying relevant to HR.” Aren’t they essentially the same thing?
In this post at In the Jungle, George Guajardo posts on the reasons that I/O psychology should be considered a science (which is definitely worth a read in and of itself), and uses the term “organizational science” to refer to I/O-OBHRM research in general, which is probably a much better term than I/O-OBHRM. But a comment from Frank Z. once again draws a line: “I/O Psychologists” are somehow altogether different from HR professionals practicing “psychology.”
And finally, in this post at iOrgPsych, Eva includes the line, “Industrial/Organizational Psychologists (Practitioners).” Didn’t Tom Baker just say those were different people?
All of this made me wonder – what’s the difference? Early in my graduate education, I thought of myself as an industrial psychologist – I tended and still tend to focus on the topics more often thought of as “I-Psych,” like training, performance appraisal, and testing, although recently virtual teamwork and stress related to technology (more O-ish topics) have been on my radar. Now heading to graduation in two weeks, I think of myself as an industrial-organizational psychologist, mostly through the nudging of my adviser, Paul Sackett. To the faculty at Minnesota, though a single I/O psychologist might lean toward I or O, that person still has a responsibility to be an expert in both. It helps that the line between them and the topics that inspire them are often not very different, as might be inferred from my recent article in TIP.
But what about the larger business community? Is HR really all that different from I-Psych? Is OB really all that different from O-Psych? Aren’t they all really the same field, just with slight differences in focus and methods? We all ask questions about the people in our organizations. We all seek to learn what they want, what they feel, and how to help them be the best employees they can be, whether for their own sake or the organization’s.
Wouldn’t time be better spent integrating them all than describing the differences? Shouldn’t the issue shift from “It’s good to hear of I-O’s continued interest in staying relevant to HR” to “How can we best combine the efforts of I/O and OBHRM for the good of organizations?”
May 6!
Well, not impossible. But very difficult! Especially if the five people that you are e-mailing don’t all check their e-mail at least every day or two. But after 31 total e-mails over the course of a week, I have a defense date – May 6.
I’m not nervous… Yet.
What this has shown me is that I must respond to graduate students by e-mail within at least 24 hours for me to be happy with my interactions with my advisees. I’ve been told by some that this is an unreasonable expectation and also, by others, that 24 hours should be an absolute maximum. I imagine I will ultimately land somewhere in the middle.
I also learned today that technically, the defense involves two components: a public presentation and a private examination. The presentation can technically be attended by anyone, although in practice, no one else ever shows up. So before two weeks from today, I need to prepare a short (probably 30-45 minute) presentation primarily about my results and discussion – all of the new material since my proposal meeting.
Also, now suddenly having more free time than I have in 6 months, I am finally able to get back to several projects that I have been putting off. I noticed during my second or third year of graduate school that my to-do list shifted from a procrastination model (putting off projects because I didn’t want to do them yet) to a necessity model (putting off projects because other projects needed to get done). I don’t imagine it’ll ever switch back.
Courtesy blog.lib.umn.edu
PZ Meyers recently commented on an older article about how primary and high school textbooks get chosen and why Texas has overwhelming power in nationwide adoption rates. It’s really quite… well… disturbing. I won’t go into too much detail here, but if you’ve ever wondered why your old textbooks seemed so bland and flavorless while simultanouesly getting many of the facts wrong, that article will be enlightening. Generally, many textbooks are apparently written by freelance or hired writers, and an expert is tapped to simply sign their name to the finished product.
I’m going to admit something that apparently is less common for an academic than you’d think: I’d like to write a textbook. I think that it’s not that popular an idea because textbook-writing is more about consuming research than producing it. You take lots of published papers, some representing years of effort on the part of researchers, and whittle them down to their component nuggets of knowledge. You then take those nuggets and weave them into an interesting story, both interesting and informative.
Of course, that’s pretty difficult. We’ve all read articles and texts that drag on forever, thinking, “I could have written this more clearly in a quarter the length!” Or maybe it’s just me.
I’m not sure what my textbook would be about. Probably technology in some regard, since that’s my expertise, but the specific topic is a little hazy at the moment. Fortunately, this isn’t a short-term goal – this is something I want to tackle many years from now, post-tenure. But it’s definitely a hurdle I’d like to leap.
My worry is that the higher ed academic publishing market is similar to that described in the article linked above. How much freedom does one really have? I know that most academic writers don’t produce the test questions or exercises that come with their texts, for example, which was quite a surprise. Just how much of it do you really get to write, and how much is just spit out by a publishing firm, waiting only on a stamp of approval from someone with a “Ph.D.” after their name?
Update 4/20: Apparently things might be a-changin’ in Texas.