In their research, Zhou et al. (Reference Zhou, Campbell and Fyffe2024) highlight small businesses to quantify the scientist–practitioner gap to the point that they suggest that the lack of attention to small businesses is a primary reason for its existence. Although we should acknowledge the presence and importance of the scientist–practitioner gap and the lack of research on small businesses, the conflation of the two problems is not ideal for understanding and addressing either one.
To illustrate this, we can make a parallel argument about the lack of I-O research in nonindustrialized countries and the relative absence of I-O research on “workers.” Existing I-O research is rarely generalized beyond the specific professional populations in formal economies of high-income countries, and few studies exist that even attempt research of this kind (Gloss et al., Reference Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru and Oesterich2017). Arguably, and similar to small businesses, this concerns a significant part of the world and perhaps even a majority of its work settings. It has also been argued that samples in the I-O psychology literature do not reflect the labor market, and that the majority of workers are not represented (Bergman & Jean, Reference Bergman and Jean2016). Again, the small percentage that is represented in the literature reflects the reduced effect of I-O research on understanding the workplace more generally. In both of the above studies, the literature of I-O psychology does not broadly apply to the existing workplace environments in the world. The lack of research on small businesses both overlaps with and adds to this bias.
The general bias in I-O research also affects research on small businesses. Identifying a specific but ubiquitous context that received relatively little attention helps to address biases in I-O research in a different way. A scientist–practitioner gap is served by addressing certain contexts as well as general biases, and depending on the researcher, one may be more attainable than the other.
A study of the scientist–practitioner gap more generally requires a different approach where studies that do focus on a particular business or context, whether it is a small business or a larger organization, can be evaluated for their practical relevance for that type of industry. In addition, but separate from such a study, one should continue to criticize I-O researchers for using convenience samples that are predominantly taken from large organizations, located in the industrialized world, and that exclude the majority of the workers in the labor market.
