I am very pleased to announce the conclusion of a project that took many years from conceptualization to physical copy on the shelves: the official release of the Cambridge Handbook of Technology and Employee Behavior.
In this edited volume, experts from all areas of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology describe how increasingly rapid technological change has affected the field. In each chapter, authors reveal how this has altered the meaning of I-O research within a particular subdomain and what steps must be taken to avoid I-O research from becoming obsolete. This handbook presents a forward-looking review of I-O psychology’s understanding of both workplace technology and how technology is used in I-O research methods. Using interdisciplinary perspectives to further this understanding and serving as a focal text from which this research will grow, it tackles three main questions facing the field. First, how has technology affected I-O psychological theory and practice to date? Second, given the current trends in both research and practice, could I-O psychological theories be rendered obsolete? Third, what are the highest priorities for both research and practice to ensure I-O psychology remains appropriately engaged with technology moving forward?
Are you excited yet? If so, feel free to grab the book now on Amazon, or you can download pre-prints of my chapter on the existential threats to I-O psychology related to technology, data science as it can be used to support social scientific research methods, or gamification in learning.
If not, let me blow you away with the complete and incredible Table of Contents:
Section 1. Technology in I-O Psychology
- R N Landers – The Existential Threats to I-O Psychology Highlighted by Rapid Technological Change
- T L Sheets, B B Belwalkar, S R Toaddy & T K McClure – Filling the I-O/Technology Void: Technology and Training in I-O Psychology
- M Barney – The Reciprocal Roles of Artificial Intelligence and Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Section 2. Technology in Staffing
- N A Morelli & J Illingworth – The Next Wave of Internet-based Recruitment
- I Nikolauo, K Georgiou, T N Bauer & D M Truxillo – Applicant Reactions in Employee Recruitment and Selection: The Role of Technology
- T M Kantrowitz, D M Grelle & Y Lin – Applying Adaptive Approaches to Talent Management Practices
- N Weidner & E Short – Playing with a Purpose: The Role of Games and Gamification in Modern Assessment Practices
- W Arthur & Z Traylor – Mobile Assessment in Personnel Testing: Theoretical and Practical Implications
- S Adler, A S Boyce, N R Martin & R C Dreibelbis – The State of Technology-enabled Simulations: Where are We? Where are We Going?
- D Vaughn, N Peterson & C Gibson – The Use of Social Media in Staffing
Section 3. Technology in Training and Development
Section 3. Technology in Training and Development
- R N Landers, E M Auer, A B Helms, S Marin & M B Armstrong – Gamification of Adult Learning: Gamifying Employee Training and Development
- S. C. De Janasz & W Murphy – Real Career Development with Virtual Mentoring: Past, Present, and Future
- N Ghods, M Barney & J Kirschner – Professional Coaching: The Impact of Virtual Coaching on Practice and Research
- M C Howard & C J Marshall – Virtual Reality Training in Organizations
Section 4. Technology in Leadership and Teams
Section 4. Technology in Leadership and Teams
- B S Bell, K L McAlpine & N S Hill – Leading from a Distance: Advancements in Virtual Leadership Research
- J E Hoch – Managing Distributed Work: Theorizing an IPO Framework
- S Mak & S W J Kozlowski – Virtual Teams: Conceptualization, Integrative Review, and Research Recommendations
- I C Cristea, P M Leonardi & E Vaast – Social Media and Teamwork: Formation, Process, and Outcomes
Section 5. Technology in Motivation and Performance
- T A Beauregard, K A Basile & E Canonico – Telework: Outcomes and Facilitators for Employees
- D P Ford, M Harmsiri, A J Hancock & R D Hickman – A Review and Extension of Cyber-Deviance Literature: Why It Likely Persists
- A Day, L K Barber & J Tonet – Information Communication Technology and Employee Well-being: Understanding the “iParadox Triad” at Work
- W J Torres, B C Bradford & M E Beier – Technology and the Aging Worker: A Review and Agenda for Future Research
- J T McMillan & K M Shockley – The Role of Technology in the Work-Family Interface
- L Foster & B Kumpf – Work in the Developing World: Technology as a Barrier, Technology as an Enabler
- D L Tomczak & T S Behrend – Electronic Surveillance and Privacy
Section 6. Technology in Statistics and Research Methods
- K L Uggerslev & F Bosco – Raising the Ante: Technological Advances in I-O Psychology
- R N Landers, E M Auer, A B Collmus & S Marin – Data Science as a Foundation for Insightful, Reproducible, and Trustworthy Social Science
- T S Behrend & D M Ravid – Lost in the Crowd: Crowdsourcing as a Research Method
- M Langer, M S Mast, B Meyer, W Maass & C J Konig – Research in the Era of Sensing Technologies and Wearables
- K Giuseffi, B Sievert, B M Wells & F Westfall – Storytelling and Sensemaking through Data Visualization
Section 7. Interdiscpilinary Perspectives on Employees and Technology
- C Chelmis – Microblogging Behavior and Technology Adoption at the Workplace
- R D Johnson & D L Stone – Advantages and Unintended Consequences of Using Electronic Human Resource Management (eHRM) Processes
- R Raveendhran & N J Fast – Technology and Social Evaluation: Implications for Individuals and Organization
How can technologists get along with I-O psychologists in the field? This is one of the most common questions I get when consulting. Typically, it starts with something like, “IO: Every time we ask for something to be changed, it seems like IT drags its feet and complains,” or alternatively, “IT: Every time the I-Os ask for something, it shows they don’t understand what they are asking for. At all.” Everyone gets frustrated and development projects seem to take triple the time they should.
So why does this happen?
The key is recognizing that psychologists have a very different base working model of the world than IT experts do. Because of their training, IT experts tend to think in terms of systems – there are inputs, processes, and outputs – and fixing problems means modifying those systems or designing new ones by changing either the data coming in, what’s done with it, or how it is presented.
Psychologists do not think this way. Psychologists instead tend to view systems as fixed entities. For example, few psychologists think of Excel as multiple layers of input, calculation, and data display/visualization subsystems working in tandem. To them, it’s just a “spreadsheet app.”
That ultimately means that psychologists typically do not really appreciate the complexities of system design or inter-system communication. My favorite example of this is in web design from my own experience – a non-systems-thinker (not an I-O in this case, but close enough) was using a web-based survey platform created by a company, but the thinker didn’t like where the logo was placed and asked it to be moved about an inch to the right.
The non-systems thinker did not at all understand why that was a huge and complicated request, yet it was. You see, under the hood, the display system had been built in such a way that the rest of the page was aligned to that image’s placement. You might ask, “Well why would they have done that?,” but as any IT person knows, the code you’ve got is the code you’ve got. Perhaps it should have been written differently the first time, but it’s far too late to change that now. At this point, a lot of things need to be reworked to get that image moved, and all that time is expensive.
To a person with an IT background, the risk of this happening is way more obvious. When another IT person asks, “Can you move the image?,” what they are really asking is, “Do you know if the system has been created in such a way that moving that image will be a small or large project?” To your average I-O psychologist, the website is a static object – just push the image over, what’s the big deal?
This sort of difference in perspective also works the other way. Psychologists tend to conceptualize humans as hugely complicated input-process-output machines but often don’t interconnect those systems. For example, a classic psychological principle is the “mere exposure effect” which describes how familiarity with something generally leads to a preference toward that thing. For example, if you purchase a clock and your roommate/significant other doesn’t particularly like that clock, over time, after seeing it every day, they will like the clock more.
A classic study on mere exposure was about people; it found that the people living at the bottom of the stairwell in an apartment building tended to have more friends in the building than anyone else. They attributed to this to the fact that more people literally passed in front of their door and thus had greater opportunity to say hello. More hellos = more exposure = more friends. The mere exposure effect.
This sort of “fact” about human nature, plus hundreds or thousands of other such facts, form a sort of catalog of effects in a psychologist’s mind: “if you do this to a person, they will be more likely to do that” or “people like this tend to behave that way.”
Some of these “rules” are very specific, which a lot of IT folks don’t really appreciate. So they will just slap together some requested software prototype, assuming it’ll be worked out in testing, making a bunch of little decisions that they see as unimportant, and the psychologists will have a myriad of seemingly random requests, some of which are much more difficult to change than others.
I have found that this sort of misalignment is at the core of problems in IT-psychologist cross-functional teams. The best way to address it is training.
The IT folks need to learn that humans are very complicated and to consult the psychologists on anything human-related in the systems they are building, down to pretty fine details. You need to anticipate the sort of things psychologists might request and build flexibility in assuming they will want changes later. Don’t build to spec; build to possibility (this is also at the core of agile development, but you need to be more careful about it here).
The psychologists need to learn that the systems they are messing with are very complicated and to assume that any small change they request is likely hugely more complex under the hood. Don’t become frustrated when things you think are small can’t be changed; instead, look for workarounds, keep an open mind, and remember that two technical requests with the same outcome are still different requests. “Move the image 1 inch to the right” is a different request from “Add 1 inch of whitespace to the left of the image so that it looks like the image is 1 inch to the right.” One is much easier than the other.
If you work on a tech-IO cross-functional team, someone needs the expertise to identify these sorts of translation issues when they come up. Otherwise, partnerships become dysfunctional. Everyone gets frustrated, assuming the other side is purposefully being difficult.
So, the takeaway? If you are developing technology and I-Os are involved, get an I-O with some IT expertise, an IT expert with some I-O expertise, or preferably, (at least) one of each!
It appears that TNTLAB’s move to the University of Minnesota is not slowing us down, as we’ve had another banner-year in terms of SIOP activity, with 13 distinct events for SIOP 2019! That ties our previous record (of 13) two years ago. If you’re interested in following TNTLAB events at SIOP, here is a convenient list. Come see us!
Dr. Landers presenting…
- Panel discussion on the future of assessment technology (Saturday 11:30AM National Harbor 2-3): Sheets, T., Omori, C. L., Andrews, L., Kim, B. H., Landers, R. N., & Mracek, D. L. (2019, April). Predicting prediction: A discussion of technology in assessment & selection. Panel presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Rapid-fire IGNITE presentations on new assessment methods (Thursday 5:00PM Chesapeake 4-6): Johnson, T. K., Ellison, L., Ennen, N., Landers, R. N., Prager, R. Y., Oelbaum, Y., Miller, B. H. (2019, April). Candidate experiences matter: Navigating new frontiers in assessment technologies. IGNITE presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Practical advice on how to anticipate and prevent problems communicating results of analyses (Thursday 10:30AM Potomac D): Chakrabarti, M., Landers, R. N., Tarulli, B. A., & Zabel, K. L. (2019, April). SIOP Select: Communicating results in a complex world. Invited panel at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Community of interest exploring new approaches to data presentation and visualization (Friday 11:30AM National Harbor 1): Jankovic, R. & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Statistics plus data visualizations: How technology brings power to the people. Invited community of interest at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Practical skill building workshop session on social media (registration required for CE credit; Saturday 8:00AM Maryland A): Vaughn, D. & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Friday Seminar 1: Fad to fixture: Social media in the workplace. Invited Friday Seminar at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- New research methodologies coming out of data science and the training you need to keep up (registered Doctoral Consortium attendees only)
Current or recently graduated students presenting…
- Cutting edge in the analysis of text for selection (Saturday 12:30PM Potomac D): Armstrong, M. B. & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Essay word counts as reflections of general cognitive ability and broad abilities. In Johnson, T. K. M. (Chair) & Gray, R. (Co-Chair), Use Your Words: Text Analysis in Selection and Assessment. Symposium presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Using machine learning to get useful prediction and/or construct measurement from trace data (Saturday 8:00AM Maryland A): Auer, E. M., Marin, S., Landers, R. N., Collmus, A. B., Armstrong, M. B., Mujcic, S., & Blaik, J. A. (2019, April). Predicting g with Trace Data: Evidence from a Game-based Assessment. In J. F. Capman (Chair), Looking Under the Hood: Making Use of Trace Data. Symposium presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Back-to-back with the next presentation on this list, a skill-building workshop on creating reproducible and interactive analyses in R and Python (free, no registration required; Thursday 3:30PM Maryland D): Auer, E. M. & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Creating reproducible and interactive analyses with JupyterLab and Binder. Master tutorial presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Big skill-building workshop on data science in I-O psychology (free, no registration required; Thursday 1:30PM Maryland 4-6): Auer, E. M., Collmus, A. B., Marin, S., Callan, R. C., & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Leveraging data science to facilitate insightful, reproducible, and trustworthy I-O. Master tutorial presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
- Get up to date on both games and gamification research (Friday 5:00PM Chesapeake J-L): Marin, S. & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Using gamification’s extrinsic motivators to foster intrinsic motivation. In S. Marin (Chair) & Armstrong, M. B. (Co-Chair), Leveling on Game-Thinking: Research Trends in Gamification and Game-Based Assessments. Symposium presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.
Featuring work by lab members…
- A broad exploration of how new technologies are changing classic I-O psychology approaches to problems (and introducing new problems to solve; Friday 8:00AM National Harbor 10-11): McCloy, R. A., Sinclair, A., Koch, A. J., Purl, J. D., Dalal, R. S., Oswald, F. L., & Landers, R. N. (2019, April). Measurement: New methods for classic problems, classic methods for new problems. In R. A. McCloy & Kell, H. J. (Chair), New/Classic Methods for Classic/New Problems. Symposium presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Presented National Harbor, MD.
- Symposium exploring technology-mediated interivews and all the new problems they introduce (Saturday 8:00AM Chesapeake A-C): White, J. C., Auer, E. M. & Behrend, T. S. (2019, April). The influence of applicant accent and resume in technology-mediated interviews. In M. Langer and K. G. Melchers (Chairs), Job Interview Technology: Effects on Applicants, Evaluators, and Adverse Impact. Symposium presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, National Harbor, MD.