The Challenge of Profound Transformation for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists: Are We Meeting the Challenge?

I have had the opportunity to do my homework on organizational transformation quite a few times. One of the inevitable conclusions is that all successful transformations start with a clear definition of what customers want and need. From a I-O practitioner's perspective, the customers of I-O psychology are the people who will use the knowledge it creates and hire the people educated in I-O psychology programmes in order to create competitive advantage for work organizations. And that is the CEOs of companies and the human resources executives of major work organizations in the public and private sector. Fortunately for us, David Ulrich of the University of Michigan has already done the work of defining what these people expect (Ulrich, 1997). There are four capabilities which people in organizations expect human resource professionals to have: 1) Knowledge and practice of basic human resources management functions; 2) Leadership in the management of change in organizations; 3) General business knowledge, and; 4) Personal credibility. In my view, research and teaching in I-O psychology should be contributing to building these four capabilities, because that is what it takes to make a difference to organizations. Finally, Theresa Kline and Patricia Rowe discuss graduate training in I-O psychology. This article is central to the issue because of the strong influence of graduate education on the profession. The article is insightful and shows that, unlike much of the research in I-O psychology, the academic community seems to be acutely aware of the changes required to training in I-O psychology. As one of the principal authors of the Guidelines for Graduate Training and Education in Industrial and Organizational psychology in Canada (Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1989), I concur with Kline and Rowe's conclusion that the document focussed too much on content areas and was very weak in terms of other competencies required to succeed in either the academic or applied environments. The article identifies some of the skills required to be a successful faculty member and some of the ones required for a consulting career. Just in case you misinterpret, I think I-O psychologists should stop doing research on selection, performance appraisal and job analysis and Should start addressing issues of team performance, managing change, employee engagement and the effectiveness of human resource strategies in producing organizational results.