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The Practice and Science Connection: Let's Not Obsess Over Minding the Gap

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2017

Bruce J. Avolio
Bruce J. Avolio*
Affiliation:
Center for Leadership & Strategic Thinking, Foster School of Business, University of Washington
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bruce J. Avolio, University of Washington, Paccar Hall, 4925 E. Stevens Way NE, Room 514 Box 353226, Seattle, WA 98195-3226. E-mail: bavolio@uw.edu
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Extract

Over the last 5 years, there has been a surge of interest and activity among large groups of practitioners and scientists in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, who have joined together with a broad range of agencies and organizations, in small to very large collaborative teams, to examine some of the grand challenges and problems facing our field. For example, a consortium of university professors and their counterparts in five Fortune 100 firms, two global human resources (HR) consultancies, and NASA have been working together to examine the practical and scientific challenges in determining how to optimize the selection and on-boarding of a new generation of workers charged with building the first colony on Mars. One I-O practitioner involved with this initiative said, “Our project represents one of the most seamless and productive integration efforts involving the practice and scientific community, perhaps in the history of our profession.”

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 558 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2017 

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