SIOP Week: Eduardo Salas on I-O Psychology and Evaluation: Where Do They Meet?

Hello, I’m Eduardo Salas, professor at the University of Central Florida and President of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). I am pleased to introduce you to SIOP and the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology as well as explain how evaluation and I-O intersect.

SIOP is the premier membership organization for those practicing and teaching I-O psychology. While an independent organization with its own governance, SIOP is also a division within the American Psychological Association and an organizational affiliate of the Association for Psychological Science. To view our mission statement, click here.

I-O psychology is a dynamic and growing field that encompasses workplace issues at the individual and organizational levels. I-O psychologists apply research that improves the well-being and performance of people and the organizations that employ them. This involves everything from workforce planning, employee selection and leader development to studying job attitudes and job motivation, implementing work teams, and facilitating organizational change.

As this week’s posts by SIOP members will show, evaluation is an important concept to the field of I-O psychology and vice versa. SIOP members involved in the evaluation field will discuss applications for evaluation in I-O as well as the necessity of evaluation in the field. Some of what you can look forward to from this week’s posts include:

  • E. Jane Davidson, Real Evaluation Ltd., will discuss personnel evaluation, covering assessment for selection, succession planning, and promotion as well as performance appraisal. Davidson will discuss how there is an enormous need for the development of cutting-edge approaches to evaluating organizational change.
  • Billie Blair, President/CEO of the international management consulting firm, Change Strategists, Inc, will discuss the uncertainties of change in the workplace and how successful organizations utilize strategy and evaluation processes to a great advantage.
  • Dale S. Rose, President of 3D Group, will discuss the lack within the I-O field of a cohesive theory about how to successfully create change.  He will explain how the organizational development tool box is full of great methods, and how he believes I-O professionals could benefit from logic models in much the same way evaluators have.
  • Stephen Axelrad, Human Capital consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, will highlight several things evaluation and I-O have to offer each other in relation to human resource initiatives and individual-level evaluation.
  • Elizabeth Rupprecht, an I-O graduate student at Saint Louis University, will take a more practical perspective by discussing a unique approach to quickly collecting evaluation data via the mTurk platform.

This week, I hope you are able to develop a better understanding of how I-O psychology and evaluation intersect, as well as what these two fields are able to offer each other!

The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Week with our SIOP colleagues. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SIOP members and you may wish to consider subscribing to our weekly headlines and resources listwhere we’ll be highlighting SIOP resources. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice.

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