In their focal article, Lapierre et al. (2018) draw attention to several key unanswered concerns academics face in establishing, developing, and maintaining research partnerships with organizations. Though mentioned briefly in the article's introduction, one potential concern that would benefit from further attention is selling a potential research topic to organizations. Many academics find themselves with research interests that organizations would prefer to avoid shedding light on (e.g., workplace mistreatment, sexual harassment, hiring practices, diversity and inclusion practices, etc.). In these instances, it may be particularly difficult to convince key stakeholders within organizations to partner on research projects, especially in situations that might raise organizational fears of negative publicity. In their introduction, Lapierre et al. (2018) state that “middle or frontline managers may be reluctant to facilitate a study out of fear of what the research could reveal in terms of problems in their units, particularly if such problems might be perceived as reflecting poorly upon them (e.g., poor leadership skills)” (p. 545). Further, “managers may fear raising employees’ expectations or highlighting particular problems by involving them in research projects” (Lapierre et al., 2018, p. 544). In the following several paragraphs, I address how academics may proactively address and minimize these potential concerns. Although not meant to be an exhaustive set of recommendations, the goal is to provide several potential avenues for “selling” industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology research to potential organizational stakeholders.

Field-based research allows the domain of organizational research to remain true to its applied roots and conduct research on topics that are timely and relevant within actual organizations. However, anyone who has conducted field research knows that conducting such work is challenging and can be viewed as more of a dance between the scholar and the practitioner, requiring well-timed and coordinated moves. As Lapierre et al. (2018) allude to in the focal article, such projects can turn into a balancing act for researchers as they attempt to conduct publishable research with robust practices and designs while also appeasing the needs and expectations of organizational members and leaders.

The focal article (Lapierre et al., 2018) highlights many good suggestions but only briefly mentions partnering with an academically trained internal industrial and organizational (I-O) practitioner. We believe beginning a partnership with a similarly trained ally well-versed through training in academic language and through experience in “business speak” will yield a stronger end result. The appreciation for an internal I-O practitioner should not go overlooked; when an academic partners with the right practitioner in the right environment, the partnership can be mutually beneficial and more rewarding than other options. For instance, recently we collaborated to set up a partnership for scientific discovery and mutual interest that involved 12 teams representing 14 different institutions spanning academe and practice to conduct a machine learning competition. This partnership enabled many academics and practitioners access to a complex organizational dataset in order to contribute to both an organization and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) community (see Putka et al., 2018).

Much organisational decision-making is embedded in hierarchical structures and leadership, even though hierarchies are limited in how they deal with increasingly complex issues. This paper explores links between identity formation, and the subsequent development of shared leadership. It explores how a programme to develop shared leadership changed a public science organisation, from one dependent on hierarchical leadership, to one that also used shared leadership to better address the complex public context. Using Day and Harrison’s levels of leadership identity framework, this study first examines the processes of a development programme at individual, relational, and collective levels. Results reveal cascading growth in leadership identities through processes such as job crafting and contagion. Despite the resulting positive processes, inherent paradoxes of power, goals, and attitude underlying shared leadership development are also identified. Within these paradoxes, tensions between vertical hierarchy versus dispersed networks, task performance versus job crafting, fatigue versus revitalisation, and cynicism versus evangelism were found.

The focal article (Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, and the Jeanneret Symposium Participants, 2018) reviewed and discussed the challenges, practices, and opportunities for the assessment and development for senior leaders. They summarized a set of accepted wisdom for assessing senior leaders in the areas of assessment criteria, contexts, and implementation, and meanwhile, pointed out what should be explored and done in the future. One of the central premises of the focal article seems to be built on the assumption that organizations may have sufficient resources to follow the accepted wisdom to ensure the quality and effectiveness of assessment and development for senior leaders. In addition, most, if not all, of the research findings summarized and discussed in the focal article may be based on the studies under the context of established companies. Hence, whether the implications and suggestions from the focal article can generalize to small enterprises remain an open question. For example, a typical small enterprise in the United States is a company capitalized with about $25,000 (Shane, 2009). Most of these enterprises are highly centralized, have negative cash flow, and have troubles in securing cash and in obtaining customer acceptance (Rutherford & Buller, 2007). Thus, these companies may not be able to follow the accepted wisdom as recommended in the focal article. We realize that some small businesses and start-ups are extremely well funded, so our following comments apply only to those small enterprises with scarce resources.

In their focal article, Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, and the Jeanneret Symposium Participants (2018) stress the importance of context in leadership assessment. For instance, they argue that senior executives work in a different context compared to lower-level managers and that this should be taken into account. A simple example is that the competency of strategic thinking is critical for executive performance but much less so, if at all, for front-line supervisors. The claim that context matters in leadership and in the assessment of leaders is easy to grasp but difficult to apply in practice.

The role of corporations in the U.S. political process has received increased scrutiny in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, leading to calls for greater regulation. In this paper, we analyze whether policies mandating greater disclosure and shareholder approval of political contributions reduce risk and increase firm value, as proponents of such rules claim. Specifically, we examine the Neill Committee Report (NCR), which led to the passage of the United Kingdom's Political Parties, Elections, and Referendums Act 2000 mandating new disclosure and shareholder approval rules. We find that politically active firms did not benefit from the NCR in the days after its release and suffered a decline in value in the months and years that followed. Politically active firms also suffered an increase in risk, as proxied by stock return volatility, following the release of the NCR. We theorize that these findings are due to the reduced flexibility these rules impose on corporate strategy as well as the potential for these rules to facilitate political activism against corporations.

A critical evaluation of the state of assessment and development for senior leaders raises several important questions and identifies knowledge gaps that can be used as a framework for establishing future research programs. Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, and the Jeanneret Symposium participants (2018) present a great starting point for questioning the practices in executive assessment, particularly surrounding the use and impact of executive assessment for selection and/or development. Our commentary is focused on expanding the dialogue on executive assessment and development, providing insight into this question based on our executive assessment experience within a variety of organizations, ranging from financial services to healthcare to retail.

The focal article (LaPierre et al., 2018) proposes several steps in developing a research partnership with organizations. We commend LaPierre and colleagues for bringing to light these recommendations. We agree that research partnerships may prove valuable for the science of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. For I-O psychology to grow as a science, more appropriate sampling and more relevant data sources are necessary (Landers & Behrend, 2015). Although I-O psychology master's and PhD programs continue to grow and produce more I-O psychology graduates that enter the applied marketplace, there remains a paucity of applied research partnerships between academics and organizations. Research partnerships are often established in other disciplines (i.e., computer science, public health, biochemistry) and have resulted in fruitful relationships for both parties (D'Este & Iammarino, 2010; Israel, Schulz, Parker, & Becker, 1998; Santoro & Betts, 2002), but similar partnerships have not become the norm in I-O psychology. Despite a growing number of I-O psychology graduates and programs (Shellenbarger, 2010), I-O psychology academics have not leveraged those relationships to create research partnerships between universities and business. We would argue that this lack of research partnerships is due to the difficulty of navigating and negotiating with the multiple stakeholders involved in the process of developing a research partnership.

Recent discussions have focused on the special circumstances surrounding assessment and development for senior leadership (Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, and the Jeanneret Symposium Participants, 2018). The fundamental assertion is that different challenges are inherent in working with senior leadership, as compared to lower levels of leadership. We suggest that, although the focal article presents a useful synthesis of research and practice, many of the points made are applicable to leaders at all levels. In other words, by looking at senior leaders, we gain an increased appreciation for issues that are in fact relevant to all leaders.

Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, and the Jeanneret Symposium Participants (2018) present outcomes of the 2-day Jeanneret Symposium describing the state of the science and practice related to the assessment and development of senior leaders. They call for cross-disciplinary and/or organization-level research that examines “how organizations mature their assessment and development practices toward an integrated system embedded in a development culture” (p. 646). The purpose of this commentary is to answer this call and add to their work by proposing a systems thinking framework of organizational development where a corporate university plays a pivotal role.

The literature highlights two main approaches to designing an effective complaint management system: the mechanistic and the organic. The mechanistic approach emphasizes the establishment of guidelines for the correct processing, attention and resolution of complaints received. In contrast, the organic approach relies on creating a supportive internal environment for correct customer attention, made possible through training and empowering employees responsible for complaint management and by promoting extra-role behaviour among them. The present research aims to study the antecedents of adopting these two approaches. From a strategic perspective, we analyse the influence of organizational culture variables (the extent to which the firm is customer and innovation oriented) and the nature of the objectives pursued by complaint handling (defensive vs. improvement objectives). The proposed model is tested on a sample of 140 manufacturing firms. Findings indicate these antecedents shape the complaint management system in a diverse and significant manner.

We develop an intertemporal asset pricing model where cash-flow news, discount-rate news, and their second moments are priced by the market. This model generalizes the market-return decomposition framework, showing that intertemporal considerations imply a decomposition of squared market returns (coskewness risk). Our model accounts for 68% of the return variation across portfolios sorted by size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, investment, and profitability for a modern U.S. sample period. Further, our findings highlight the importance of covariation risk, that is, the risk of simultaneous unfavorable shocks to cash flows and discount rates, in understanding equity risk premia.

As a case study in the proliferation of global rankings, we examine the initiation, construction of, and response to the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks pharmaceutical companies according to their respective contribution to access to medicine for developing countries. Since it has served as the model for constructing global rankings in the fields of nutrition, seeds, mining, possibly in the future, oil, seafood, mobile internet, and agricultural commodities, and it serves as a blueprint for the development of corporate sustainability benchmarks in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, its significance goes well beyond public health. From an economic-sociological perspective we argue, first, that rankings can be conceived as symbolic classifications that serve predominantly as market-based coordination devices. To understand the proliferation of global rankings, we argue, secondly, that they are an integral part of the changing balance of power in the domain of global public health consisting of a historical shift from international organizations as the central mode of governance and coordination to a more decentralized and diversified global field structure. This global field is formed by an increasing number and variety of actors, but lacks a central decision-making body. The case of the Access to Medicine Index suggests that a historical-sociological field perspective has analytical advantages over both the micro-analysis of socio-technical devices and macro-level approaches to issues of governance in contemporary capitalism.

We estimate conditional multifactor models over a large cross section of stock returns matching 25 CAPM anomalies. Using conditioning information associated with different instruments improves the performance of the Hou, Xue, and Zhang (HXZ) (2015) and Fama and French (FF) (2015), (2016) models. The largest increase in performance holds for momentum, investment, and intangibles-based anomalies. Yet, there are significant differences in the performance of scaled models: HXZ clearly dominates FF in explaining momentum and profitability anomalies, while the converse holds for value–growth anomalies. Thus, the asset pricing implications of alternative investment and profitability factors (in a conditional setting) differ in a nontrivial way.

This study extends previous research on organizational resilience by focusing on its relational resilience dimension and integrating with its operational resilience dimension. Our main goal is to understand relational resilience construct and complement it with operational resilience construct to have a complete and balanced picture of organizational resilience. We analyze complementary contributions of relational and operational resilience on organizational resilience in survival and sustainability dimensions. A multiple-case study has been conducted on two manufacturing and two service organizations. This study has conceptualized relational resilience beyond its survival dimension and extended it in sustainability dimension. This understanding enables congruence with the recent conceptualization of organizational and operational resilience in survival and sustainability aspects.

This paper addresses longstanding questions about how promise and obligation, two of the key conceptual building blocks for psychological contract research, are conceptualized and operationalized: How do employees understand these concepts? Would their understandings be congruent with the researchers’ and how would this knowledge inform future psychological contract research? Drawing on interviews with 61 Chinese workers from diverse backgrounds, our results suggest the concepts have distinct meanings for participants in terms of three criteria (defining characteristics, key features and manifestations in employment). We argue that promise and obligation are likely to serve different functions in employment relationship and have different meanings for researchers versus participants, and accordingly we highlight the challenges of using them to conceptualize and operationalize psychological contracts in China and beyond.