Building the future of work and organizational psychology: Developing a practical toolkit

The past decade, psychology appears to be going through a crisis that affects all of its subdisciplines, including Work and Organizational Psychology. Many academics have become increasingly critical about the theoretical landscape in psychology (Ellemers, 2013), the lack of research replicability (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), the prevalence of Questionable Research Practices (Butler, Delaney, & Spoelstra, 2017), the practical and societal relevance of our research (Briner & Rousseau, 2011), the rise of mental health problems in academia (Levecque, Anseel, De Beuckelaer, Van der Heyden, & Gisle, 2017), the problems relating to inequalities at universities (Burkinshaw & White, 2017), and the methodological isomorphism that favours predominantly quantitative, positivistic epistemologies (Edwards & Berry, 2010).While the above mentioned issues have become generally agreed upon and are well documented, many scholars still feel puzzled by how to implement meaningful changes. Many of these problems appear to be systemic and interconnected. For example, the way that the academic publishing system is organized and the incentive structures used in academia (e.g., focus on quantity of publications, on impact factors of journals, or on numbers of citations) carries perverse effects that threaten the wellbeing of researchers and the quality of scientific research (Chambers, 2019). Tackling one of these issues may appear difficult or even impossible as it may require simultaneously tackling other related issues as well. Nonetheless, many solutions to the above mentioned issues have already been suggested. For example, preregistration of research and registered reports can help to address issues related to Questionable Research Practices such as Hypothesizing After the Results are Known (HARKing) (Munafò et al., 2017). However, the existence of these solutions is not always well known in the broader WOP community or the adoption of such practices can appear daunting.