Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, and Lindsey (2017) present an expansive overview of microaggressive behaviors, with specific emphasis on the work place. Their overview includes the dimensionality of microaggressions (subtlety, formality, and intentionality), the dynamic and cyclical nature of a microaggressive culture, and the multitude of perspectives from which to view microaggressions (target, perpetrator, bystander, and ally). For any empirical study, researchers are faced with the challenge that microaggressions are subtle forms of discrimination often motivated by unconscious biases. As a result of this lack of personal insight, perpetrators and bystanders are likely to attribute microaggressive behaviors to nondiscriminatory reasons (i.e., defensive rationalizations). Furthermore, even if perpetrators and bystanders have insights into their bigotry, they are most likely socially astute enough to deny their bigotry through defensive rationalizations. Jones et al. (2017) provided many examples of microaggression research but did not directly address the methodological challenges. The purpose of the current commentary is to argue that situational judgment tests (SJTs) have great potential for the study of microaggressions within the Jones et al. (2017) framework.

My mother, who lived her early years in the British Raj in India, assures me that POSH referred to the well-to-do European's wish to travel “Port Out, Starboard Home” on ships to and from India, which meant enjoying the predominantly shaded side of the ship, protected from the ravaging heat that “ordinary” folk had to endure. What an apt, provocative, and profound analogy Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) have given us in their description of the primary focus of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology on “Professional, Official, Secure, and High income” work.

We comment on the focal article (LCIOP Joint Task Force, 2017) from the perspective of practitioners and academics in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, who have been involved for some years in debates about the regulation of psychology in Australia.

In their focal article, Aguinis et al. (2017) provided a bibliometric analysis of our six industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology textbooks, noting among other things the sources, articles, and authors we collectively cited the most. Their analysis provides information about what we cited but not why. In this commentary on their article, our goal is to provide some insights into our process in deciding what sources to include and what not to include in our textbooks. Although each of us has our own way of deciding on the content of our books, there is enough commonality that we decided to write this commentary together.

Among many salient shifts in international development research over the last few decades has been growing legitimacy in recognition/documentation of the “rise of the South” as noted in the UNDP Human Development Report (2013). This has redirected both research and practice beyond just Northern (read “Western”) approaches, opened up new resource flows for “Southern” institutions, and initiated a whole new set of initiatives around “South–South” cooperation (Malik, 2014). To Mahbub ul Haq's original theme of “enlarging people's choices” were added new dimensions of looking beyond just western economies (and solely “economistic” analysis and prescriptions) for solutions to existential threats to sustainable development among the world's poorer nations (UNDP, 1990, p. 9). Fundamental shifts such as these, epitomized in Mahbub's well-known statement on human capacity, provide the basis for the focal article by Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) that builds skillfully on a framework, which of course also calls on Amartya Sen's work (so closely aligned with and influential in the Human Development Report series). The result is an original, carefully argued, and, perhaps some will agree, long overdue article synching the broad discipline of modern industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology into a more realistic awareness of how the majority of the world's populations sustain their livelihoods. However, there is a crucial “space” that I-O psychology seems to be still missing, and one barely touched on by this article, and that is the macropolicy environment that brings institutions in government and civil society together in more strategic approaches to developing human “resourcefulness.”

In their focal article, Aguinis et al. (2017) categorized the 6,654 unique citations, summed across the six introductory industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology texts, in various ways. They then suggested how such data could be used to (a) infer the “state” of the scientist–practitioner divide; (b) document the extent of the movement of I-O psychologists to management schools; (c) evaluate the future prospects of I-O psychology as a field; and (d) provide guidance in how to define, measure, and reward “scholarly impact” (quotation marks added). This crosses the line from interesting to very counterproductive.

We agree that the impact of subtle discrimination spawns from a dynamic process containing inherent cyclical elements, and we applaud the focal article's effort to provide clarity to a murky arena. More nefarious than the cycle, however, is the continued and typically unchecked presence of subtle discrimination in the workplace, which affords a clear path for prolonged and compounding negative effects. Although Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, and Lindsey (2017) touch on the potential for cumulative effects of subtle discrimination, we believe they missed an opportunity. The potential for cumulative effects of subtle discrimination to severely limit the career success of women and minorities is substantial and not well diagnosed (Agars, 2004). Building on their point, we wish to draw greater attention to this concern and articulate how the cumulative effects of subtle discrimination undermine the impact of performance management and limit the development and advancement of individuals from stigmatized groups.

One day, a well-dressed, mature gentleman—one might be tempted to describe him as elderly, except he appears extremely vital and alert—walks into a psychotherapist's office for a first visit. After just a few brief exchanges, the therapist gets the impression that the gentleman is a socially adept, financially successful, educated professional, and a well-regarded member of the community. But all is not as it seems on the surface. This new patient “presents” with lingering complaints of vague malaise, and despite his apparent success, he reports having experienced long-term intermittent bouts of anxiety and fear stemming from threats that the therapist cannot be sure are real or imagined: Various people seem regularly aiming to put him out of business; family relatives are disrespectful, demeaning, and do not understand him. Moreover, there is an existential quality to his anxiety: As a younger, middle-aged man, although already successful, he changed his name legally because he felt it better suited his identity. In fact, he came close to changing his name twice again in recent years, but, after agonizing about it for a long time, could not make up his mind what to change it to; nothing seemed to “fit” well enough. The therapist surmised, however, that the patient was more concerned with the impression his name would make on potential business clients and competitors than with any genuine expression of his nature, and he seemed relatively unconcerned with maintaining his nominal family identification. It struck the therapist that his patient's insecurities were not in keeping with his considerable accomplishments in life. In fact, for an educated professional, the patient seemed to lack insight into his own character and values.

Aguinis et al. (2017) contribute interesting analyses of cited sources in contemporary undergraduate industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology textbooks and continue their ongoing investigation into the long-term viability of I-O psychology as a unique discipline (see Aguinis, Bradley, & Brodersen, 2014). These analyses, conducted by authors who are members of business schools, attempt to answer questions related to the nature of work conducted by I-O psychologists, comparing the quality and importance of work conducted by faculty in business schools with that conducted by faculty in psychology departments. One of their general themes is that members of business schools are conducting important research that is influencing the future of I-O psychology by overtaking undergraduate textbooks. As such, the article has the feel of a conquering hero taunting its vanquished foe.

A hotel concierge notices that her White female coworker earns higher tips from guests and wonders whether this disparity is attributable to race. A financial service specialist working at a bank considers whether his age is the reason why customers in need of consultation approach his younger coworkers more often. As these examples indicate, Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, and Lindsey's (2017) multidimensional framework extends to customer service contexts. In the sections that follow, we contextualize and extend many of Jones et al.’s arguments to the customer service industry, providing implications for both research and practice.

One of the typical roles of industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists working as practitioners is administering employee surveys measuring job satisfaction/engagement. Traditionally, this work has involved developing (or choosing) the items for the survey, administering the items to employees, analyzing the data, and providing stakeholders with summary results (e.g., percentages of positive responses, item means). In recent years, I-O psychologists moved into uncharted territory via the use of survey key driver analysis (SKDA), which aims to identify the most critical items in a survey for action planning purposes. Typically, this analysis involves correlating (or regressing) a self-report criterion item (e.g., “considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job”) with (or on) each of the remaining survey items in an attempt to identify which items are “driving” job satisfaction/engagement. It is also possible to use an index score (i.e., a scale score formed from several items) as the criterion instead of a single item. That the criterion measure (regardless of being a single item or an index) is internal to the survey from which predictors are drawn distinguishes this practice from linkage research. This methodology is not widely covered in survey methodology coursework, and there are few peer-reviewed articles on it. Yet, a number of practitioners are marketing this service to their clients. In this focal article, a group of practitioners with extensive applied survey research experience uncovers several methodological issues with SKDA. Data from a large multiorganizational survey are used to back up claims about these issues. One issue is that SKDA ignores the psychometric reality that item standard deviations impact which items are chosen as drivers. Another issue is that the analysis ignores the factor structure of survey item responses. Furthermore, conducting this analysis each time a survey is administered conflicts with the lack of situational and temporal specificity. Additionally, it is problematic to imply causal relationships from the correlational data seen in most surveys. Most surprisingly, randomly choosing items out of a hat yields validities similar to those from conducting the analysis. Thus, we recommend that survey providers stop conducting SKDA until they can produce science that backs up this practice. These issues, in concert with the lack of literature examining the practice, make rigorous evaluations of SKDA a timely inquiry.

Although I wholeheartedly agree with Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) that a focus on those living in the deepest forms of poverty is sorely needed in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, the real issue is not so much who we serve but how we serve, and specifically how we continue to neglect the systemic failures of capitalism at the root of poverty. Ultimately, it is this global market system that determines not only the distribution of wealth but also how wealth is often achieved at the expense of another's poverty. Moreover, it is this system that constrains and undermines capabilities. For these reasons, I am skeptical of the authors’ proposal for mitigating the pervasive POSH bias in our field, especially because this bias seems premised on a pervasive neglect of capitalism the authors fail to fully address.

In the focal article, Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, and Lindsey (2017) provide a review and a conceptual framework for examining subtle discrimination in the workplace. The focal article, however, mainly focuses on subtle discrimination that occurs among coworkers and only mentions customers once. The current commentary delves deeper into this notion and extends their framework by focusing on customer-based subtle discrimination. We mainly focus on research from the service industry, in part because the service industry is the largest industry in the United States, employing more than half of all employees in the United States (Lopez, 2010), and because the service industry involves frequent customer interactions. Whether it is a server in a restaurant, a front-desk clerk at a hotel, a flight attendant on a plane, or an attendant in a retail store, stigmatized service employees often face subtle discrimination. Consistent with the focal article, we argue that the subtle discrimination faced by service employees can be both interpersonal (e.g., rudeness directed toward a stigmatized service employee) and formal (e.g., a lower tip for a stigmatized service employee). The purpose of this commentary is to highlight the research on subtle discrimination by customers, focusing on a discussion of the reasons why stigmatized service employees are particularly vulnerable to subtle discrimination from customers during service encounters.

Cucina, Walmsley, Gast, Martin, and Curtin (2017) provide several valid criticisms of survey key driver analysis (SKDA), which is an approach used to identify causes of important employee and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction or employee engagement.

The case for making human capabilities the business of I-O psychology is at first glance persuasive. It is indisputable that I-O psychology and its associated fields still suffer from a strong bias favoring POSH (Professionals, Official work in formal economy, Safe from discrimination, and High-income countries) and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies. Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) also provide ample evidence of human development indices being low among countries that are underrepresented or unrepresented in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology studies. Moreover, it cannot be denied that many of the evidence-based recommendations that we now make with confidence will not hold water in these poverty-stricken areas of the world. However, when one juxtaposes the case for building human capabilities with the extant approaches of restoring equity in society, one is confronted with the grim possibility that the idea of human capabilities may not only fail to make significant positive differences in the lives of poor people in the world, but may also worsen the quality of life of everyone on this earth. In this short essay, I discuss two major problems with the human capabilities approach and propose a modification to the approach that can potentially help solve the problem of poverty.

Aguinis et al.’s (2017) analysis of the “most frequently cited sources, articles, and authors in industrial-organizational psychology textbooks” is a commendable piece of scholarship. Certainly, they have applied themselves to an important question and articulated a meaningful set of answers. We have no doubt too that for many readers the insights and answers they provide will be informative, compelling, and even reassuring—if only because they reinforce a view of the world with which they are familiar and by which they are comforted, even if that familiarity and comfort are framed in terms of a set of knotty professional concerns (Morton, Haslam, Postmes, & Ryan, 2006).

A fair reading of Cucina, Walmsley, Gast, Martin, and Curtin's (2017) astute analysis of survey key driver analysis (SKDA) presents a good case that such analyses are driving down the wrong road and should slow down or come to a halt. In large part, the SKDA they describe seems to be a misleading set of exercises.

The article on subtle discrimination by Jones and colleagues (K. P. Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, & Lindsey, 2017) describes in detail and enriches the knowledge on this undesirable yet quite common phenomenon in organizations. In this comment, we argue that subtle discrimination behaviors are natural and predictable in view of organizational actions taken to increase diversity on one hand and prevent overt discrimination on the other hand. Also, practical ways to reduce the phenomenon are suggested.

Rejecting situational specificity (SS) in meta-analysis requires assuming that residual variance in observed correlations is due to uncorrected artifacts (e.g., calculation errors). To test that assumption, 741 aggregations from 24 meta-analytic articles representing seven industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology domains (e.g., cognitive ability, job interviews) were coded for moderator subgroup specificity. In support of SS, increasing subgroup specificity yields lower mean residual variance per domain, averaging a 73.1% drop. Precision in mean rho (i.e., low SD(rho)) adequate to permit generalizability is typically reached at SS levels high enough to challenge generalizability inferences (hence, the “myth of generalizability”). Further, and somewhat paradoxically, decreasing K with increasing precision undermines certainty in mean r and Var(r) as meta-analytic starting points. In support of the noted concerns, only 4.6% of the 741 aggregations met defensibly rigorous generalizability standards. Four key questions guiding generalizability inferences are identified in advancing meta-analysis as a knowledge source.

Aguinis et al. (2017) address an issue of upmost importance for the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology: recruitment. The ability to attract and retain talented individuals is a principle determinant of success in a knowledge-driven economy (Yu & Cable, 2012). The focal article notes that future practitioners and researchers are commonly exposed to the field of I-O psychology for the first time via introductory courses taken during their undergraduate education. A study by Rose et al. (2014) likewise suggests that introductory courses are among the most popular channels through which business and human resource professionals learn about I-O psychology. Consequently, the information communicated in these courses not only shapes the beliefs and behaviors of those who might one day produce/provide the goods/services of I-O psychology, but also those who might consume them. Introductory courses are, therefore, both an important recruitment source as well as an important marketing channel. Aguinis et al. provide a much-needed content analysis of the information communicated to students through introductory textbooks and offer insight into the ways in which this information may affect the future of I-O psychology. Building from their analysis of content, this commentary offers an approach to program evaluation that utilizes the principles of brand management to better understand how the messages communicated to students impact their beliefs about the field. Moving from analysis to evaluation is a logical next step in making a desired future for I-O psychology.