Psychology is a Science: Following Up

Background

Some background: Frank Z. commented on my previous post. Frank and I go a long way back; we knew each other when we were undergrads fighting it out in the Student Government Association (my own personal Wonder Years). Since then he has kept me on my toes, serving as a devil’s advocate for just about any position I take, even when I agree with him. Given the length and quality of his comment, I will respond to him as a blog post, rather than a comment.

Responding to Frank Z

I think Frank Z needs a blog! Seriously, I would read it. As always, you have a very keen understanding of the issues underlying my chain of thought. You are right that a vast gulf exists between the organizational science (as a science) and its practice within living, breathing organizations. The reasons for this are complex and bordering in the intractable. Here are my thoughts on why this might be case (by these opinions are not science, or even fact; these are personal observations along with whatever biases I may find comforting).

1.       People trained in the scientist/practitioner model are uncommon, even within the I/O ranks. I know most academic institutions adopt the scientist/practitioner model in theory, but the delivery tends to be skewed in one direction over the other. If a psychologist’s training emphasis is on practice, then they will have insufficient knowledge of the science behind the theories and best practices. They will also be poorly armed to distinguish between true scientific research and pop-psychology (which tends to not be psychology at all). By the same token, if their emphasis is on science, they will find it difficult to address the real need of an organization, or even speak a language organizations understand.

2.       People making decisions in organizations tend not to be psychologists, they are not trained in psychology, nor are they particularly interested in learning it. They are as interested in learning about true organizational science as I am interested in learning about Sarbanes-Oxley (sorry accounting people… who am I kidding no one in accounting is reading this).

3.       For any scientifically-derived organizational intervention to work, it must be crafted such that novitiates can execute it. I know how elitist this sounds, but it happens in every profession. You are an IT guy; when you explain something to a “user” you use a different language then you would otherwise. The same can be said for doctors, lawyers and any other professional speaking to people outside of it.

In short, even the best crafted, scientifically driven organizational interventions will be delivered in a “watered-down” form. There is no way around it that I can think of, short of each organization employing a cadre of I/O psychologists. Seriously, you don’t want to see that.

Does this mean we should stop trying? I would suggest that is worse. Like all psychologists, I/O psychologists operate in a world of probabilities. If we cannot find a way of controlling 95% of the variability in organizational effectiveness, does that mean we should stop trying to influence the 35% that we can control? A utility analysis can answer that question; if we optimize the antecedents we can control it tends to yield a significant cost-savings (or revenue growth) for organizations.

Dehumanizing the Workforce.

Here I can offer an emphatic “no way”. The “dehumanizing” argument is frequently employed against all scientific endeavors. The reductionist nature of science is essential to understanding complex systems (like the human mind, or a bunch of human minds working in the same place). I think all psychologists understand the majesty to be found in the complexity of the human mind. I am frequently awed by it; not a mean feat as anyone that knows how jaded I am can attest to. However, acknowledging this complexity does not mean we should surrender to it. We should strive to understand the complexity where we can and given the limitations of our cognitive hardware (geek-speak for noggin), this means reducing it into chunks we can handle.

Yes, we try to help organizations succeed. This is not a zero-sum game. When organizations prosper, employees can prosper too. I know these entities don’t always prosper proportionally, but that is a topic for another day. Certainly when organizations suffer, employees suffer too (by no longer being employees). More to the point, I/O psychology has provided the insights to impact both the organization and the person within it in positive ways. We are a long ways off from the days of scientific management, when we sought to find the specific combination of motions that yielded the most coal per shovel load.