Aguinis et al. (2017) highlighted the gender disparity in authorship of publications within the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. We agree with the authors that this is a troubling finding and think that this gender disparity within our field is the most critical implication of the focal article. I-O psychologists are specifically trained to address employment issues, including gender disparities at work. To see such disconcerting findings in our area of expertise is akin to a sports team losing to a competitor when they have the home court advantage. Namely, we are left feeling deflated and asking ourselves, “What went wrong?”

The focal article (Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, & Oesterich, 2017) highlights the neglect of individual and societal well-being concerns in I-O psychology theory and practice. A similar concern is currently being articulated within the interdisciplinary field of services (i.e., service management, services marketing, and service science) with the identification of critical underrepresented issues including economic disparities in healthcare, food deserts in poor urban locations, racial-ethnic discrimination in retail, discriminatory practices in lending, lack of access to basic quality-of-life services among poor “base of the pyramid” populations, and the underemphasis of employee and consumer health in service design and delivery (e.g., Fisk et al., 2016; Rosenbaum et al., 2011). Originating in a call for improving consumer well-being through academic research (Mick, 2006), transformative service research (TSR) is now recognized as a key research priority in services (Ostrom, Parasuraman, Bowen, Patricio, & Voss, 2015). Indicators of the scholarly interest in this topic include but are not limited to the following: (a) a seminal article in this research stream (Anderson et al., 2013) has been cited an average of 40 times each year since its publication, (b) multiple special issues have appeared in service-related journals (Journal of Business Research and Journal of Service Research), and (c) special conferences have been organized to examine transformative issues. It can be argued that a humanitarian or POSH agenda in I-O psychology can be informed by TSR while deriving its sustenance from our time tested scientist–practitioner traditions. Some of the key lessons that can be learned from the current trajectory of TSR evolution are discussed in this article.

We think that before reading our reactions to the focal article, readers should be aware of the history of the Licensure of Consulting and I-O Psychologists (LCIOP) Joint Task Force. The Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) initiated the LCIOP, and the objectives of the task force were developed without input from Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). In June 2013, Don Crowder informed Mark Nagy (SIOP Chair of State Affairs) that the ASPPB approved the establishment of a joint task force related to licensure of consulting and industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists. The membership composition of the task force was determined by ASPPB, and SIOP was allotted one member. By including a member of SIOP, ASPPB can describe the task force as a cooperative effort and SIOP ostensibly has the opportunity to help shape recommendations made with regard to the licensure of I-O psychologists. Don Crowder now serves as the president of ASPPB. In Crowder's October 2016 ASPPB meeting address, he encouraged jurisdictions to review their statutes, and, if permitted, require licensure for both health service providers (HSPs) and general applied psychologists (GAPs).

The central question posed by Schiemann and Ulrich (2017) focuses on what human resources (HR) leaders need to know or do to deliver business results in the new work environment. Although understanding the knowledge and capabilities that successful HR professionals need is critical, the focal article places an overemphasis on the characteristics of individual HR leaders alone, without fully exploring the environmental inhibitors of their strategic effectiveness. In this commentary, we argue that competencies and the environment must be given equal attention to maximize impact on business and talent outcomes. We first describe the strategic competency gap among HR professionals and discuss four key organizational barriers that impede the strategic impact of HR on the business. We then offer recommendations for how industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists and HR leaders can help remove these barriers to maximize strategic effectiveness.

The focal article by Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) makes a very convincing case that industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology as a profession needs to consider a realignment—from one focused primarily on professional workers in Western companies to the wider world of workers, especially those in poverty.

The focal article by Aguinis et al. (2017) offers a rich brew of data and explication regarding the devilishly complicated concept of impact of sources (both science-based and practice-based), of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology articles, and of authors of articles in the discipline of I-O psychology. The criteria developed to assess the impact of these are simple frequency counts indexing the number of times items within each domain are cited by leading introductory I-O psychology textbooks, which in turn leads to ranked lists. These are then used as a basis for answering numerous highly significant questions about the discipline of I-O psychology, including its scholarly and practice-based underpinnings, and the future prospects of the field.

If one has been involved in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) since its inception, as we have, one will have had several opportunities to reflect on the issue of licensing to regulate the practice of industrial and organizational psychology (IOP). Some find value in licensure, but the vast majority of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists do not. As the target article written by the Licensure of Consulting and Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychologists (LCIOP) Joint Task Force (2017) documents, there have been several policy statements made by SIOP leadership over the years. The essence of SIOP's policy is quite clear and consistent. Although SIOP does not support and will not promote the licensure of I-O psychologists, it does support a pathway to licensure for those who desire it, and is supportive of efforts to reduce the many barriers to licensure for those who desire it. It is our understanding that SIOP's participation in the LCIOP Joint Task Force was predicated on this long-standing policy.

Due to rising pressure to appear egalitarian, subtle discrimination pervades today's workplace. Although its ambiguous nature may make it seem innocuous on the surface, an abundance of empirical evidence suggests subtle discrimination undermines employee and organizational functioning, perhaps even more so than its overt counterpart. In the following article, we argue for a multidimensional and continuous, rather than categorical, framework for discrimination. In doing so, we propose that there exist several related but distinct continuums on which instances of discrimination vary, including subtlety, formality, and intentionality. Next, we argue for organizational scholarship to migrate toward a more developmental, dynamic perspective of subtle discrimination in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of its antecedents, underlying mechanisms, and outcomes. We further contend that everyone plays a part in the process of subtle discrimination at work and, as a result, bears some responsibility in addressing and remediating it. We conclude with a brief overview of research on subtle discrimination in the workplace from each of four stakeholder perspectives—targets, perpetrators, bystanders, and allies—and review promising strategies that can be implemented by each of these stakeholders to remediate subtle discrimination in the workplace.

Many industrial and organizational (I-O) and consulting psychologists who engage in practice of their profession, for example as “management consultants,” compete against consultants with a wide array of backgrounds and disciplinary degrees. Indeed, in consulting work, one of us has competed against practitioners with backgrounds in fields ranging from accounting (CPAs) to sociology, communication, anthropology, business administration, and even those with degrees in divinity.

It is encouraging to see the diversity of sources cited in the top introductory textbooks in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. It is not surprising that the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) and Personnel Psychology are off the charts in terms of the two most-cited sources in these six textbooks. However, I would not have expected that in these books, “77% of the top-cited articles were published in cross-disciplinary journals” (Aguinis et al., 2017, p. 507). I wish to build on Aguinis et al. (2017), with a focus on the relationship between I-O psychology and human resource development (HRD). I am the author of an HRD textbook (Werner, 2017a). The journal I co-edit, Human Resource Development Quarterly, is one of those “cross-disciplinary journals” on Aguinis et al.’s list of most-cited sources (56th out of 110, 40th in academic journals), with 16 citations. Finally, my article on legal issues in performance appraisal was cited in five of the six textbooks (Werner & Bolino, 1997).

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) neglected the “how-to” component of their proposal for increasing humanitarian efforts in the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Implementing change at an earlier point in the education process, through social justice awareness and applied service learning, is likely to lead to a more robust and fruitful shift away from a POSH bias compared to an attempt at persuading those currently in the field to adopt this change after their training (although I would never argue that the latter is utterly irrelevant). I hold an unwavering conviction that a natural route toward change would be to ensure that I-O psychology educators are explicitly focusing on the humanitarian workplace movement within our courses and that I-O professionals in organizations aid this cause by encouraging a humanitarian perspective as they train their newly hired, fresh-faced I-O graduates. The purposeful threading of humanitarian goals into I-O psychology education, in large part through service learning or civic education, is the key to our effectiveness. Without such a focus in the beginning stratum of I-O psychologists’ training, our other well-intentioned attempts at shifting the field's focus toward humanitarian concerns may be in vain. Below, I offer suggestions to reach this goal.

Although intentionality may be a valuable spectrum on which to categorically distinguish instances of discrimination, we consider whether or not differences on this construct actually reveal differing impacts for targets. Specifically, we wonder whether intentionality is very relevant to the experiences of targets of discrimination or whether the negative consequences stemming from the discriminatory interactions occur regardless of the perpetrator's intent. Further, we explore the potential consequences related to a target attempting to confront discrimination of ambiguous intent. Finally, we discuss discrimination of ambiguous intent from the perspective of the perpetrator, outlining theories related to intentional versus unintentional subtle discrimination.

It appears that although Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) have considered many of the arenas where industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology intersects with impoverished or atypical populations, an oft-overlooked domain is that of I-O psychologists working in military settings. Arguably the largest humanitarian aid and development organization in the world, national militaries offer a rich opportunity for I-O psychologists to study not only the more “POSH” aspects of work, but also the difficulties surrounding employees who must address impoverished citizens, lack of resources, bureaucracy far removed from the front lines, discrimination, threats to safety, and all kinds of cross-cultural interactions. As such, this humanistic, humanitarian movement could do well from studying the ways military units have successfully and not-so-successfully approached a timely and difficult subject.

In their focal article, Aguinis et al. (2017) conducted an empirical analysis of the most frequently cited sources, articles, and authors in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology textbooks. The authors conclude that their “results are encouraging regarding the scientist–practitioner model” (p. 545). We disagree. Although we applaud the effort that went into this research, we are concerned that the method used in the article, focusing on textbook citations, creates yet another “researcher-centric” index that will do nothing to address the research–practice gap. The problematic “researcher-centric” perspective manifests itself in several ways in the focal article, which we elaborate below.

The focal article on subtle discrimination provided by Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, and Lindsey (2017) examines questions about the difference between overt and subtle discrimination and the conditions under which discrimination might vary by subtlety, formality, and intentionality. The authors suggest that a dynamic perspective of subtle discrimination would provide a more comprehensive understanding of its correlates. This article addresses two concerns regarding the authors’ proposition to move toward a dynamic model of subtle discrimination. The first concerns definitional issues and overlapping continuums that need to be more clearly distinguished in the model. The second addresses the lack of a theoretically derived process model.

At first blush, licensing industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists seems like a worthy pursuit. The work we do is important, can affect many lives for better or worse, and (we believe) requires a high level of education, training, and competence. Given a deeper look, however, we believe that the Licensure of Consulting and I-O Psychologists (LCIOP) Joint Task Force (2017) review overestimated the benefits of licensure, which are substantially outweighed by the practical challenges associated with a licensure program. Our response to the LCIOP represents two perspectives that can inform the feasibility of such an undertaking: a view from the inside of a federation of regulatory boards and a view from the world of certification as an alternative approach for ensuring quality in a diverse, complex profession.

Gross, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich's (2017) article argues that industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology has a limited perspective that rarely goes beyond the specific professional populations in formal economies of high-income countries—a perspective they refer to as a POSH perspective. This valuable criticism should also eschew the notion that workers in nonindustrialized countries are necessarily different.

In their target article, Jones, Arena, Nittrouer, Alonso, and Lindsey (2017) make a compelling argument that discrimination may be best conceptualized continuously rather than categorically with respect to dimensions of subtlety, formality, and intentionality. We agree that such a framework can help capture the multifaceted nature of discrimination. The authors note that subtle and interpersonal discrimination, in particular, are difficult to address through formal organizational policy. In the workplace, subtle and often interpersonal discrimination can be overlooked or attributed to misunderstanding and, thus, may go unpunished (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004).

The issue of registration/licensure as it is currently being discussed in North America is one that is near and dear to many of us involved with industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology in Canada. The consequences of any potential regulatory changes could be profound, and Canadian regulatory authorities, like any others, may be cued by other jurisdictions, including those within the United States, concerning standards and requirements.

Academics sometimes forget that the purpose of a university is to educate: our students, our local communities, each other, and the world. Although each university is unique in its constituency, all share the charge to generate knowledge for the protection and benefit of the public good. The goal of an academic should be to beneficially impact society, broadly defined, with scholarly activity. As editor and columnist for The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, one publication highlighted by the focal article, we applaud the efforts of Aguinis et al. (2017) to put forth alternative approaches to defining impact. Like them, we are concerned that many of the measures of “impact” we currently use do not capture this charge.