The goal of focal articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice is to present new ideas or different takes on existing ideas and stimulate a conversation in the form of comment articles that extend the arguments in the focal article or that present new ideas stimulated by those articles. The two focal articles in this issue stimulated a wide range of reactions and a good deal of constructive input.

The goal of focal articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice is to present new ideas or different takes on existing ideas and stimulate a conversation in the form of comment articles that extend the arguments in the focal article or that present new ideas stimulated by those articles. The two focal articles in this issue stimulated a wide range of reactions and a good deal of constructive input.

The goal of focal articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice is to present new ideas or different takes on existing ideas and stimulate a conversation in the form of comment articles that extend the arguments in the focal article or that present new ideas stimulated by those articles. The two focal articles in this issue stimulated a wide range of reactions and a good deal of constructive input.

The goal of focal articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice is to present new ideas or different takes on existing ideas and stimulate a conversation in the form of comment articles that extend the arguments in the focal article or that present new ideas stimulated by those articles. The two focal articles in this issue stimulated a wide range of reactions and a good deal of constructive input.

The Licensure of Consulting and Industrial–Organizational (I-O) Psychologists (LCIOP) Joint Task Force has been examining the controversial issue of licensing I-O and consulting psychologists since 2014. We argue that constructive engagement with licensure is important for setting the future direction of the laws and regulations that govern professional psychology. We review relevant background information, current pressures on regulators, and recent developments in this area. We outline recommendations for jurisdictions’ regulators as well the I-O and consulting psychology communities to consider, discuss, and possibly act on. Others are invited to join the constructive, sometimes vigorous discussions we have enjoyed within the LCIOP Joint Task Force.

Most future industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology practitioners and researchers initially enroll in an introductory I-O psychology course during their junior or senior year of undergraduate studies, making introductory textbooks their first in-depth exposure to the field and an important knowledge base. We reviewed and analyzed the 6,654 unique items (e.g., journal articles, book chapters) published in 1,682 unique sources (e.g., scholarly journals, edited books, popular press publications) and authored by 8,603 unique individuals cited in six popular I-O psychology textbooks. Results showed that 39% of the top-cited sources are not traditional academic peer-reviewed journals, 77% of the top-cited articles were published in cross-disciplinary journals, and 58% of the top-cited authors are affiliated with business schools and not psychology departments. These results suggest that the science–practice divide in I-O psychology may develop later—perhaps after graduates obtain employment as either practitioners or researchers. Also, results suggest I-O psychology is closer to business and management than social psychology and psychology in general. We discuss additional implications for the science–practice divide, how to define and measure scholarly impact, and the future of I-O psychology as a field, including the movement of I-O psychologists to business schools and the sustainability of I-O psychology programs in psychology departments.

These are exciting and changing times in the world of business overall and for industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists in particular. To anticipate where human capital professionals may add the most value to organizations in the future, we asked 73 leading academics, consultants, association leaders, and senior human resources (HR) leaders to articulate what HR professionals need to know and do to be successful in the future. The responses create unique insights on challenges and opportunities for I-O psychologists who want to have impact from their work. We summarize these insights into 7 themes and discuss their implications for an emerging I-O mandate.

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology has begun to shed its reputation as a handmaiden to corporate and managerial interests, in part, through its engagement with humanitarian concerns. However, as highlighted by recent commentary, I-O psychology still has a decidedly POSH perspective on the world; that is, it has focused on Professionals who hold Official jobs in a formal economy and who enjoy relative Safety from discrimination while also living in High-income countries. This POSH perspective reflects an underlying bias away from people living in multidimensional poverty. We empirically illustrate some of the connections between a POSH perspective and poverty by reviewing 100 years of research in I-O psychology, and then we make a case for why a neglect of people living in poverty undermines the discipline's science, its practice, and its humanist charge. As moral justification for greater engagement with humanitarian concerns and as a guide to navigate the difficult ethical quandaries involved in doing so, we suggest that I-O psychologists should consider the capability approach. We discuss the concept of human capabilities, relate it to I-O psychology, and demonstrate its utility in the form of three hypothetical scenarios. Perhaps our most controversial claim is that there is a moral imperative for I-O psychology to overrepresent people living in the deepest forms of poverty in both its science and practice.

In their focal article, Schiemann and Ulrich (2017) provide a broad overview of thoughts and insights by 73 of today's human resources/industrial–organizational (HR/I-O) leaders. It was both interesting and valuable to hear from those “in the trenches” every day and to learn what they considered to be the key recommendations, cautions, and needs central to the HR/I-O practice of today—and tomorrow. That said, we were surprised that, considering the zeitgeist of the current workscape, work–family considerations did not make more of an appearance in these reports of leaders’ values and priorities for their organizations and for the field as a whole.

Over the last 5 years, there has been a surge of interest and activity among large groups of practitioners and scientists in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, who have joined together with a broad range of agencies and organizations, in small to very large collaborative teams, to examine some of the grand challenges and problems facing our field. For example, a consortium of university professors and their counterparts in five Fortune 100 firms, two global human resources (HR) consultancies, and NASA have been working together to examine the practical and scientific challenges in determining how to optimize the selection and on-boarding of a new generation of workers charged with building the first colony on Mars. One I-O practitioner involved with this initiative said, “Our project represents one of the most seamless and productive integration efforts involving the practice and scientific community, perhaps in the history of our profession.”

There are at least four interrelated reasons why the practice of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology should not require a license that is mandated by the state or province where the I-O psychologist resides. First, there is no subject matter domain unique to the practice of I-O psychology. Second, because there is no subject matter domain unique to I-O psychology, the subject matter is extensively practiced by other unregulated professions. Hence, a law mandating a license to practice I-O psychology, restricted to graduates from a doctoral program in a psychology department, is unlikely to be enforceable. It simply would not stand up to a legal challenge. Third, the espoused benefit of a mandated license, namely, to protect the public, is specious. Finally, a mandated license for the practice of I-O psychology by I-O psychologists could lead to the death of I-O psychology programs. Each of these four concerns is explained below.

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) present a compelling argument (or rallying call) for there being a “moral imperative for I-O psychology to overrepresent people living in the deepest forms of poverty in both science and practice” (p. 330). We agree. Our research has been dominated by a POSH perspective, and it is incumbent upon us to ensure that our science benefits those who are most affected by poverty. We believe the interest in engaging in humanitarian work psychology is growing among industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists, yet many of us may not feel prepared to conduct such research and/or we may feel that we lack the skills to do so. Further, as Gloss et al. (2017) note, to the extent that we are unprepared to engage in research that benefits those living in poverty, in particular, we run the added risk of harming the very populations we are wanting to help. As such, the interest is there, but we may be daunted by the method. We argue that in order to heed that rallying call, without harm, we need to develop our own capabilities to engage in this important work.

Abraham Lincoln was fond of saying “killing the dog does not cure the bite” when referring to problems and their persnickety pervasiveness. When thinking about the problems facing the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology profession, there is no greater source of frustration than the gap between a scientist's findings and the application of those findings to practice. In recent years, organizations such as the White House Behavioral Sciences unit, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation in partnership with The Economist Intelligence Unit, and many others have explored the gap between research and practice and have highlighted every major derailer, from delays associated with peer-reviewed publication cycles to a lacking infrastructure for bringing science to practitioners. In 2014, the SHRM Foundation even went so far as to implement a strategy based on driving research directly to practitioners through executive round table forums. Despite the best efforts to identify strategies for closing the gap, many organizations have failed to find the optimal means for bringing I-O psychology research to the masses of human resource (HR) practitioners and, in many cases, even I-O psychology practitioners dealing with significant organizational issues.

I have written on this subject in the past (Locke, 2009; Locke, Mode, & Binswanger, 1980), but here I will both reiterate and expand on what I have said before.

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) present compelling arguments on a moral/humanistic need for I-O psychologists to consider workers that are living and working in deep poverty. Their case nicely shifts focus to large percentages of global workers who heretofore have only been represented minimally in the scholarly discourse in our field. I would like to accomplish two goals in this commentary. First, I would like to present a brief historical perspective on why industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology's focus has been on POSH workers. Second, I will provide conceptual extensions to Gloss et al.’s (2017) focal article by presenting some insights into the world of informal workers.

For years now, the call for human resources’ (HR's) head has been ringing through the halls of academic institutions and organizations throughout the globe. Whether it is Buckingham and Goodall (2015) calling for the total overhaul of performance management or Ram Charan (2014) asking us to split HR into the sum of its responsibilities, people have opinions of HR and the way it is practiced today and how it should be practiced in the future. The cavalcade of thought leaders, futurists, and soothsayers calling for the rethinking of HR seems longer than the procession at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is indeed moving forward in its involvement in humanitarian concerns (Berry et al., 2011), but as Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) point out, I-O psychologists tend to focus less on those of low income and the informal economy and more on working professionals in the formal economy (POSH). We propose (a) additional reasons for why the POSH bias may undermine science, (b) more solutions to benefit the impoverished, and (c) a broader conceptualization of humanitarian work psychology (HWP).

I will be making some highly personalized comments on the Aguinis et al. (2017) focal article concerning rigor versus relevance, renaming/rebranding industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, and I-O psychology versus business school organizational behavior (OB). Before commenting, however, I feel compelled to briefly frame my remarks from the perspective of my 50-year academic career. For example, I think it is important to note that I go back to the early 1960s at the University of Iowa, College of Business. I was studying for my PhD in the just emerging field of management and organizations (nothing was offered called organizational behavior or strategic management). However, and very unusual for the times for management majors, I also took a minor in the psychology department concentrating on social and I-O psychology. Also, after receiving my PhD in 1965, for my 2-year military obligation, after infantry officer training I was assigned to West Point and taught cadets the required psychology course and military leadership. This background had a formative and lasting impact on my thinking about OB and I-O psychology.

Schiemann and Ulrich's (2017) discussion of opportunities for industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology speaks directly to the growing movement of companies eliminating their performance ratings. One of the main issues that the focal article highlights is the need for strong analytics and measurement. A core domain of industrial psychology historically has been employee performance measurement. However, by some accounts, as of September 2015, at least 51 large companies were in the process of eliminating their performance ratings (Rock & Jones, 2015). Whether eliminating performance ratings is a good idea is a subject of debate in the I-O psychology community. In addition to a focal article in the summer of 2016 edition of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Adler, Campion, et al., 2016), several sessions addressed this topic at the 2016 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology convention (e.g., Adler, Colquitt, et al., 2016; Hettal, Garza, Levy, & Cleveland, 2016; Hunt et al., 2016; Roch & Gorman, 2016). The I-O psychology community appears to be divided on the value of performance ratings. In my opinion, the recent drive to abandon rigorous performance measurement appears to be a step backward rather than a step forward.

The focal article (LCIOP Joint Task Force, 2017) is a painstakingly thorough discussion of licensing issues regarding I-O psychology as they have evolved over the last 40–50 years. There is also a very large literature produced by Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) members, and cited in the focal article, that discusses many of these issues in some detail (e.g., Campbell, Levy, Murphy, Schmitt, & Weiss, 2009). The focal article makes a very useful distinction between health service providers (HSP) and general applied psychologists (GAP). The position of SIOP for some time has been that licensure should be required for the former, but not for the latter, although a path to licensure should be provided for those who need it. I would certainly agree. Also, the Society of Consulting Psychology (SCP) is much more infused with applied clinical psychology than is SIOP. Consequently, the licensing needs of most SIOP members and most SCP members are most likely not quite the same.