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You Lost Me at Hello: Aren't We I-O Psychologists Still?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2015

Christopher J. L. Cunningham*
Affiliation:
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
*
E-mail: chris-cunningham@utc.edu, Address: Department of Psychology, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, #2803, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37343

Extract

My reaction to Ryan and Ford's (2010) tipping point discussion stems from the footnote assigned to the title of their article, “In keeping with recent trends in the field, we use ‘organizational psychology’ rather than industrial/organizational psychology throughout, except when directly quoting a source or providing a historical referent.” This one sentence vividly illustrates the identity crisis Ryan and Ford have aptly discussed; even among like-minded colleagues, we are unable to agree on what we should call ourselves and what that label might actually imply. I was especially confused by this choice of professional labeling when Ryan and Ford later concluded that, “[Our field's] distinctiveness is not well articulated for new entrants, affecting the extent to which organizational psychology becomes a deep-structure identity of individuals that will affect, over time, the viability of the collective identity.” What message are we sending to potential new entrants if we are not willing to retain the field's existing moniker because it is too cumbersome or difficult to explain to others? The typical student reaction I experience when discussing our professional name and identity is something along the lines of: “What do you mean SIOP wants to change its name? What's wrong with the one that it already has?”

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2010 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Brian J. O’Leary for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this response.

References

Campbell, J. P. (1971). Psychology in business schools. Professional Psychology, 2, 611.Google Scholar
Ryan, A. M., & Ford, J. K. (2010). Organizational psychology and the tipping point of professional identity. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 3, 241258.Google Scholar
Tetrick, L. (2008). Healthy organizations: How healthy is SIOP? The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 46(2), 1319.Google Scholar