The meaning of employee engagement is ambiguous among both academic researchers and among practitioners who use it in conversations with clients. We show that the term is used at different times to refer to psychological states, traits, and behaviors as well as their antecedents and outcomes. Drawing on diverse relevant literatures, we offer a series of propositions about (a) psychological state engagement; (b) behavioral engagement; and (c) trait engagement. In addition, we offer propositions regarding the effects of job attributes and leadership as main effects on state and behavioral engagement and as moderators of the relationships among the 3 facets of engagement. We conclude with thoughts about the measurement of the 3 facets of engagement and potential antecedents, especially measurement via employee surveys.

Sampling strategy has critical implications for the validity of a researcher's conclusions. Despite this, sampling is frequently neglected in research methods textbooks, during the research design process, and in the reporting of our journals. The lack of guidance on this issue often leads reviewers and journal editors to rely on simple rules of thumb, myth, and tradition for judgments about sampling, which promotes the unnecessary and counterproductive characterization of sampling strategies as universally “good” or “bad.” Such oversimplification, especially by journal editors and reviewers, slows the progress of the social sciences by considering legitimate data sources to be categorically unacceptable. Instead, we argue that sampling is better understood in methodological terms of range restriction and omitted variables bias. This considered approach has far-reaching implications because in industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology, as in most social sciences, virtually all of the samples are convenience samples. Organizational samples are not gold standard research sources; instead, they are merely a specific type of convenience sample with their own positive and negative implications for validity. This fact does not condemn the science of I-O psychology but does highlight the need for more careful consideration of how and when a finding may generalize based on the particular mix of validity-related affordances provided by each sample source that might be used to investigate a particular research question. We call for researchers to explore such considerations cautiously and explicitly both in the publication and in the review of research.

Innovation, the development and intentional introduction of new and useful ideas by individuals, teams, and organizations, lies at the heart of human adaptation. Decades of research in different disciplines and at different organizational levels have produced a wealth of knowledge about how innovation emerges and the factors that facilitate and inhibit innovation. We propose that this knowledge needs integration. In an initial step toward this goal, we apply a dialectic perspective on innovation to overcome limitations of dichotomous reasoning and to gain a more valid account of innovation. We point out that individuals, teams, and organizations need to self-regulate and manage conflicting demands of innovation and that multiple pathways can lead to idea generation and innovation. By scrutinizing the current use of the concept of organizational ambidexterity and extending it to individuals and teams, we develop a framework to help guide and facilitate future research and practice. Readers expecting specific and universal prescriptions of how to innovate will be disappointed as current research does not allow such inferences. Rather, we think innovation research should focus on developing and testing principles of innovation management in addition to developing decision aids for organizational practice. To this end, we put forward key propositions and action principles of innovation management.

As world economies and organizations transform to minimize, mitigate, and neutralize their environmental impact and adapt for environmental sustainability, industrial and organizational psychologists are uniquely positioned to aid in these efforts. Industrial and organizational (I–O) psychology has a central role to play and a duty to contribute to organizational greening initiatives. In making our case, we first describe how economic activities, organizations, and workplaces of today are in the midst of unprecedented change in terms of their impacts on and relations with the natural environment. To ensure conceptual clarity, we then delineate environmental sustainability constructs that are relevant in work settings and distinguish them from related concepts (e.g., social responsibility). We also provide an overview of psychological contributions to environmental sustainability and note that so far there is limited I–O psychological research and application. We conclude by describing ways in which I–O psychologists can contribute.

The focus of this article is on implicit beliefs that inhibit adoption of selection decision aids (e.g., paper-and-pencil tests, structured interviews, mechanical combination of predictors). Understanding these beliefs is just as important as understanding organizational constraints to the adoption of selection technologies and may be more useful for informing the design of successful interventions. One of these is the implicit belief that it is theoretically possible to achieve near-perfect precision in predicting performance on the job. That is, people have an inherent resistance to analytical approaches to selection because they fail to view selection as probabilistic and subject to error. Another is the implicit belief that prediction of human behavior is improved through experience. This myth of expertise results in an overreliance on intuition and a reluctance to undermine one’s own credibility by using a selection decision aid.

Past research purporting to study employee resilience suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity about both the resilience construct and the methodological designs that examine resilience without ensuring the occurrence of significant adversity. The overall goal of this article is to address our contemporary understanding of employee resilience and identify pathways for the future advancement of resilience research in the workplace. We first address conceptual definitions of resilience both inside and outside of industrial and organizational psychology and make the case that researchers have generally failed to document the experience of significant adversity when studying resilience in working populations. Next, we discuss methods used to examine resilience, with an emphasis on distinguishing the capacity for resilience and the demonstration of resilience. Representative research is then reviewed by examining self-reports of resilience or resilience-related traits along with research on resilient and nonresilient trajectories following significant adversity. We then briefly address the issues involved in selecting resilient employees and building resilience in employees. The article concludes with recommendations for future research studying resilience in the workplace, including documenting significant adversity among employees, assessing multiple outcomes, using longitudinal designs with theoretically supported time lags, broadening the study of resilience to people in occupations outside the military who may face significant adversity, and addressing the potential dark side of an emphasis on resilience.

Pandemics have historically shaped the world of work in various ways. With COVID-19 presenting as a global pandemic, there is much speculation about the implications of this crisis for the future of work and for people working in organizations. In this article, we discuss 10 of the most relevant research and practice topics in the field of industrial and organizational psychology that will likely be strongly influenced by COVID-19. For each of these topics, the pandemic crisis is creating new work-related challenges, but it is also presenting various opportunities. The topics discussed herein include occupational health and safety, work–family issues, telecommuting, virtual teamwork, job insecurity, precarious work, leadership, human resources policy, the aging workforce, and careers. This article sets the stage for further discussion of various ways in which I-O psychology research and practice can address the issues that COVID-19 creates for work and organizational processes that are affecting workers now and will shape the future of work and organizations in both the short and long term. This article concludes by inviting I-O psychology researchers and practitioners to address the challenges and opportunities of COVID-19 head-on by proactively adapting the work that we do in support of workers, organizations, and society as a whole.

There has been much confusion and controversy concerning the concept of emotional intelligence (EI). Three issues have been particularly bothersome. The first concerns the many conflicting definitions and models of EI. To address this issue, I propose that we distinguish between definitions and models and then adopt a single definition on which the major theorists already seem to agree. I further propose that we more clearly distinguish between EI and the related concept of emotional and social competence (ESC). The second issue that has generated concern is the question of how valid existing measures are. After reviewing the research on the psychometric properties of several popular tests, I conclude that although there is some support for many of them, they all have inherent limitations. We need to rely more on alternative measurement strategies that have been available for some time and also develop new measures that are more sensitive to context. The third area of contention concerns the significance of EI for outcomes such as job performance or leadership effectiveness. Recent research, not available to earlier critics, suggests that EI is positively associated with performance. However, certain ESCs are likely to be stronger predictors of performance than EI in many situations. Also, EI is likely to be more important in certain kinds of situations, such as those involving social interaction or significant levels of stress. Context makes a difference.

In the past, there was a fairly strong alignment between what teams experienced, the topics that team researchers were studying, and the practices that organizations used to manage their teams. However, the nature of teams and the environment in which they operate has changed, and as a result, new needs have emerged. Although there have been some innovative advancements, research and practice have not always adjusted to remain aligned with emerging needs. We highlight 3 significant change themes that are affecting teams: (a) dynamic composition, (b) technology and distance, and (c) empowerment and delayering. For each theme, we share our observations, review the related science and identify future research needs, and specify challenges and recommendations for employing effective team-based practices in applied settings. We conclude with thoughts about the future and suggest that new theories, research methods, and analyses may be needed to study the new team dynamics.

We introduce the notion of “we” or collectivistic leadership. A general collectivistic approach to leadership is developed and contrasted with traditional and contemporary approaches to leadership. An overview of five collectivistic leadership approaches—team, network, shared, complexity, and collective leadership—is then presented. Key notions, constructs, and levels of analysis; the role of a focal leader; operationalizations and empirical results; and implications for leadership development, assessment, and practice of each approach are summarized. Common themes across, and our perspective on, the approaches and future directions for collectivistic leadership science and practice are discussed.

We propose a new conceptualization to make sense of the vast and diverse body of work regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR): (a) embedded CSR and (b) peripheral CSR. This distinction relies on psychological foundations originating primarily in industrial–organizational psychology and related fields (i.e., organizational behavior, human resource management) and allows for a better understanding of when and why CSR is likely to lead to positive outcomes for employees, organizations, and society. Embedded CSR involves an organization's core competencies and integrates CSR within a firm's strategy, routines, and operations, and therefore affects all employees. In contrast, peripheral CSR focuses on activities that are not integrated into an organization's strategy, routines, and operations (e.g., philanthropy, volunteering). We use our conceptualization to explain the success of CSR initiatives at GE, IBM, and Intel, and to reinterpret the scholarly CSR literature in the fields of marketing, corporate governance and legal studies, and economics. We also describe how our conceptualization can help bridge the much lamented micro–macro and science–practice gaps and helps guide future CSR research as well as organizational interventions.

In recent years the concept of mindfulness has become increasingly popular, and with good reason. A growing body of research indicates that mindfulness provides a number of physical, psychological, and even performance benefits. As a result, some organizations have started offering mindfulness programs to their employees. But despite growing interest, mindfulness has received little attention from the industrial–organizational community. In this article, we provide an overview of what mindfulness is, where the concept came from, how it has been utilized and studied to date, and what its application in the work setting is. We also propose new directions for researchers and practitioners.

One of the “truisms” of personnel selection is that overqualified applicants are likely to be a poor fit and thus experience low job satisfaction and performance and higher turnover. Recently, the issue of overqualification has come to the forefront because of the economic downturn, especially in some European Union countries where unemployment rates are extremely high. However, empirical research on overqualification in the industrial–organizational/organizational behavior literature is limited. In this article, we argue that although there may be drawbacks to overqualification for both organizations and employees, overqualification may also provide a number of positive outcomes for workers and employers alike. We review the limited research on overqualification, noting the positive and negative consequences of overqualification and the conditions under which overqualified employees may be a boon to organizations. We conclude by recommending some possible research streams to better understand the overqualification phenomenon and by making recommendations for organizational practices.

Although work–family research has mushroomed over the past several decades, an implementation gap persists in putting work–family research into practice. Because of this, work–family researchers have not made a significant impact in improving the lives of employees relative to the amount of research that has been conducted. The goal of this article is to clarify areas where implementation gaps between work–family research and practice are prevalent, discuss the importance of reducing these gaps, and make the case that both better and different research should be conducted. We recommend several alternative but complementary actions for the work–family researcher: (a) work with organizations to study their policy and practice implementation efforts, (b) focus on the impact of rapid technological advances that are blurring work–family boundaries, (c) conduct research to empower the individual to self-manage the work–family interface, and (d) engage in advocacy and collaborative policy research to change institutional contexts and break down silos. Increased partnerships between industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology practitioners and researchers from many industries and disciplines could break down silos that we see as limiting development of the field.

Stereotypes about generational differences in the workplace abound, and interventions for helping organizations and managers to deal with these supposed differences are increasing. In addition to popular press articles describing the differences and extolling the practices and strategies to deal with them, there are a growing number of researchers who are attempting to establish that there are such differences. Overall, however, there is little solid empirical evidence supporting generationally based differences and almost no theory behind why such differences should even exist. The purposes of this focal article are to explore the myths surrounding generations, to review the risks in using generations in organizational decisions, and to make recommendations for practitioners and researchers on how to proceed in this area.

Employability is defined as the capacity to gain and retain formal employment, or find new employment if necessary. Reasons for unemployment are often attributed to economic factors, but psychological factors associated with employability also contribute to the problem. Consequently, industrial-organizational psychologists should be uniquely suited to contribute to policy solutions for enhancing employability. This review begins by surveying the most common research approach to employability—the study of career success—which psychologists believe is determined by cognitive abilities, personality, and educational achievement. Next, we review the literature concerning what employers actually want. This section highlights the importance of social skills (being rewarding to deal with) as a key determinant of employability. We conclude by proposing a model for understanding the psychological determinants of employability and for bridging the gap between what psychologists prescribe and what employers want.

Organizations today are increasingly focused on talent as a strategic asset and a competitive advantage for achieving business success. As a result, most major organizations have recognized the need for and outlined a formal process to identify and assess high-potential talent. There is, however, little agreement within or between organizations on the definition and components of the concept of potential. The existing definitions and models of potential are often narrowly focused on only a few select factors and give little attention to the broad spectrum of potential talent in an organization. This article introduces a new integrated model of potential that incorporates previous literature and current assessment practice regarding high potentials, provides a coherent structure of potential, and is reflective of a variety of different talent pools. The model provides a useful method for answering the key question—Potential for what? Three key components of potential are described by the model: (a) foundational dimensions, (b) growth dimensions, and (c) career dimensions. Implications for assisting organizations in more effectively managing their high potential talent for strategic business objectives are discussed.

In this essay we argue for a more person-centric direction for research in industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology. We argue that the prevailing paradigm within I–O treats workers as objects and in so doing limits the ability to develop a deep and continued understanding of the important ways in which humans relate to work. In response, we think there is a need for a more coherent focus on the worker and on the subjective experience of working. After describing the current paradigm we suggest an alternative—a person-centric work psychology that takes the worker as its focus and worker experience as a topic of study.