Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP)Editorial by New Editor John Arnold, March 2004The March 2004 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP) is the first one which carries articles accepted under my editorship, which began on 1 January 2003. This therefore seems an appropriate time to take stock of the current situation and to offer on behalf of the editorial team some comments about the development of JOOP, and to inform actual and potential readers and authors about JOOP's expectations and aspirations. I am hugely indebted to my predecessor Paul Sparrow for his untiring and innovative work with JOOP. His unusual breadth of vision and expertise across areas of psychology, other 'pure' social science disciplines and management has been invaluable. So has his willingness to monitor the operation of the journal - for example, who and where submissions are coming from, what topics they cover, and the impact of articles published. Perhaps one testimony to Paul's editorship is the enthusiasm of JOOP's excellent associate editors to stay on in the role. So I am delighted that Kevin Daniels, Steve Jex, Dave Morrison and Sabine Sonnentag remain part of the team. I thank Jo Silvester (who has recently 'retired' as an associate editor) for her major contribution to JOOP and I am grateful to her for staying on as a consulting editor. I welcome new associate editors Sam Aryee (who has been in the role for some months now) and Natalie Allen (who joins us on 1 January 2004). I feel very privileged to be working with such a distinguished, diligent and constructive editorial team. More about editorial personnel and procedure appears below. The scope of JOOPWe see no reason to depart greatly from the existing general statement about the scope of JOOP, except to add a sentence at the end and one or two other minor wording changes. The statement now reads: The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology publishes empirical and conceptual papers which aim to increase understanding of people and organizations at work. Its domain is broad, covering industrial, organizational, engineering, vocational and personnel psychology, as well as behavioural and cognitive aspects of industrial relations, ergonomics, human factors and industrial sociology. Innovative or interdisciplinary approaches with a psychological emphasis are particularly welcome. So are papers which develop the links between occupational/organizational psychology and other areas of the discipline, such as social and cognitive psychology. This means that the varieties of paper we welcome include:
We have substantially changed the wording of this list. This is in order to (i) emphasize the need for a significant contribution; (ii) distinguish between surveys of a field and new theory, and (iii) explicitly include the practice of occupational and organizational psychology. I now want to expand a little on some issues which arise. The 'academic-practitioner divide' and what makes a good paperMuch concern has been expressed about the gulf perceived by many people between the research conducted by academic occupational and organizational psychologists and the needs of practitioner colleagues. Similar issues have surfaced in management research. Practitioners assert that too much research addresses problems derived from theory rather than practice, and often quite narrow and inconsequential theory at that. Academics, if they are provoked by such accusations, tend to argue that good practice relies on good theory, and that practitioners could find good guidance from theory-based research if only they would try harder to do so, and to free themselves from a tendency to accept their clients' often blinkered definition of problems. Solutions suggested have been given various terms such as 'scholarly consultancy' (Anderson, Herriot & Hodgkinson, 2001) or 'mode 3' (Huff & Huff, 2001). They involve collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders in identifying problems that need to be solved, and the adaptation of broader theory and methods to meet the local needs, with (hopefully) outcomes which succeed in both solving local problems and developing wider understanding. This bears more than a passing resemblance to what is often termed action research. It also chimes nicely with Rynes, McNatt and Bretz's (1999) analysis of the circumstances in which research by occupational and organizational psychologists appears to have a practical impact. The JOOP editorial team shares some of the concerns expressed on both sides of the academic-practitioner divide. We offer the following responses. First, there is the more explicit recognition, in the above list of 'varieties' of paper that some types of article about the practice of occupational and organizational psychology can appear in JOOP, and indeed will be welcome. Second, we propose periodically to ask a well-known practitioner to provide a short commentary on articles recently published in JOOP, in order to make more explicit their practical utility (or lack of it!). Our third response is perhaps of more general importance. Anderson et al. (2001) offer a four-fold typology of papers based on high or low methodological rigour, and high or low practical relevance. Their typology is reproduced in Table 1, but also expanded to embrace theoretical/conceptual content as a third dimension (we suspect that Anderson et al. included elements of this in their construal of methodological rigour, and Hodgkinson, Herriot & Anderson (2001) did so more explicitly). Our extended analysis does rather strain the available choice of words beginning with P but never mind. Our point is, for empirical papers (which are the vast majority of those submitted at present) to be published in JOOP, they must score well on at least two of the three dimensions. Non-empirical pieces must score well on both theoretical content and practical relevance. In other words, to be published in JOOP, a paper must be Potent, Proficient, Prescient or Pragmatic. Potent is so-named because it is likely to meet the criteria valued by all categories of JOOP reader. Prescient refers to research which succeeds in combining theory and practice in ways that seem useful and/or stimulating, and which reports data which are informative but collected with less methodological rigour than would have been ideal. Proficient research reports carefully collected data which connect with important theoretical issues, but which have limited immediate application to practice. Pragmatic research reports rigorously collected data which are stronger in application to practice than connection to theory (but must nevertheless show some such connection).
It should be apparent from the above explanation that being strong on two of the three dimensions does not guarantee publication for an empirical paper. It cannot fail completely on the third dimension. But our stance here does allow the possibility of important albeit less than perfect papers making it into press. In particular, we want to heed Sutton and Staw's (1995) call for journals to be more tolerant of papers which offer stimulating theoretical perspectives whilst falling short of perfection in the testing of hypotheses. We also follow Sutton and Staw in asserting that theory means explaining why phenomena observed or inferred from data occur, and that hypotheses which are simply logical extensions of empirical findings in existing research do not in themselves constitute theoretically sophisticated research. We hope that our stance will encourage both academics and practitioners. One important message is that JOOP will not publish research characterized in Table 1 as Pedantic. We think that the main gripe of many practitioners is that too much research is of this ilk. Although there is always an element of 'in the eye of the beholder' about such judgements, we do aim to raise the hurdle for work of that kind, whilst lowering it somewhat for Proficient, Prescient and Pragmatic work. This last category in particular should help to meet some of the concerns of practitioner audiences. We suspect that a relatively high proportion of Pragmatic papers will be in the form of a short research note (see below), though of course they do not have to be. By practical relevance, we mean that a paper should address issues that at least some practitioners perceive as affecting how they might do their work and/or what work they might do. The term practitioners is not confined to psychologists. It embraces anyone whose work can potentially be informed and enriched by occupational and organizational psychology. The nature of the research data and the underlying philosophyThe previous editor (Sparrow, 1999) was clear in specifying that data, which are entirely cross-sectional and self-report, would be acceptable only when they addressed a particularly novel research question, or when there was no other practicable or appropriate kind of data available. We endorse the general thrust of that. We also remind readers that research based on student samples is not usually acceptable, unless students are the most relevant population with which to test the research question(s) (e.g. papers addressing issues of professional training of medical staff). However, a little further comment and qualification concerning the nature of the data is needed in order to clarify our stance, and also to draw attention to some exceptions. Our particular concern here is to discourage studies where causal hypotheses in well-researched areas are tested using entirely self-report survey data from a sample numbering perhaps in the low hundreds, the composition of which is characterized more by availability than special relevance to the research question(s). So, if a study used only cross-sectional self-report data but included some kind of experimental manipulation, other things being equal it could be publishable. So could a study reporting on the development of a much-needed new measure (though of course this type of paper often benefits greatly from longitudinal data testing validity). Also, studies that seek to shed light on how a phenomenon is experienced or taken into account by respondents often include detailed analyses of entirely cross-sectional self-report qualitative data. As long as the phenomenon is of significance and the insights valuable, this is another kind of paper which is in principle publishable. Here again though, longitudinal data and/or non self-report sources such as published documents will often strengthen the paper. Finally, cross-sectional self-report studies with exceptionally large, representative or multiple samples might potentially offer enough added value for publication. A major departure from cross-sectional self-report data may not always be required for a paper to be potentially publishable. So, depending on the research question, any of the following might be sufficient to help the paper make a significant contribution: A limited longitudinal element (e.g. a follow-up of some of the original respondents, or a follow up of all of them but only on a subset of the original variables). Some corroborating or comparison data from other people such as supervisor or spouse. Some data from archival sources such as personnel records or educational institutions. These might relate to units larger than individuals, such as branches of a firm, or workgroups. Other information about individuals e.g. psycho-physiological measures. Of course, we are not advocating merely a minimalist advance on self-report cross-sectional data - just making the point that in fields where such data have been the norm, it may not require a lot extra for a paper to stand out from the crowd. A more general, and very important, issue concerns the distinction between quantitative and qualitative data. JOOP explicitly encourages papers based on the latter, and has done so for quite some time. Criteria for evaluating qualitative papers have been drawn up by Cathy Cassell and appear on JOOP's website. Yet despite several JOOP editorial statements over the years encouraging qualitative work, few papers submitted to JOOP use mainly or entirely qualitative data, and very few are published. Why is this? Occupational and organizational psychology is dominated by positivist research conducted within a realist ontology. In other words, the research is conducted consistent with the tenets of traditional natural science, where it is assumed (or rather the research proceeds as if it was assumed) that the research and researcher do not affect the phenomena under investigation, and that the data obtained are treated as (albeit imperfect) indicators of an objectively verifiable, and usually quantifiable, reality. Sparrow (1999) noted that occupational and organizational psychology seems to have been almost oblivious to major debates in other areas of social sciences about the suitability of this paradigm, and indeed the partial abandonment of it by some. As Johnson and Cassell (2001) have pointed out, it is perfectly possible to use qualitative data in positivist research. However, most qualitative researchers subscribe to various branches of what is often termed social constructivism or interpretivism (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe & Lowe, 2002). This is because qualitative data are held to be better than quantitative data for accessing the subjective meanings and interpretations of phenomena by individuals, as well as their strategies for presenting certain coherent accounts of themselves and their actions. Whilst occupational and organizational psychology is awash with measures of subjective interpretations, these are normally based on the assumption that they reflect either an external reality (such as job characteristics) or an internal state (such as job satisfaction). Most qualitative researchers reject those assumptions, and also argue that in any case such measures do not adequately reflect individuals' lived experiences. So major are the disagreements that in this author's experience, qualitative researchers are deeply sceptical that JOOP, or indeed any other psychology-based applied journal, would wish to publish their work. They also think if their work was published there, it would receive little acclaim from their peers. We believe that for the foreseeable future most submissions to JOOP will continue to be quantitative positivist research, and we continue to offer a warm welcome to such papers. Yet the aims of JOOP are consistent with interpretivist and social constructivist research, as well as positivist work. JOOP is broad-minded enough to welcome submissions which display unconventional (for occupational and organizational psychology) methods and underpinning assumptions, as well as the more usual kinds of paper such as positivist empirically-based incremental developments of existing theory. Positivist research is an important way of developing our understanding of people and work organizations, but not the only way. The positioning and impact of JOOPRelative to most applied psychology journals, we think JOOP is broad-ranging in terms of the topic areas covered and the methodological approaches that are acceptable, though nevertheless arguably less so than some explicitly multi-disciplinary outlets. The broadness perhaps means that few issues of JOOP will contain articles that are all of interest to the majority of readers. However, conversely we also hope and intend that each issue should have at least one (and usually more than one) good quality article that will interest each potential reader. We want our readership to continue to include those who also frequently check out journals like Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Applied Psychology: An International Review, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. But we would also like it to include some people for whom journals like Human Relations, Organization, Work and Occupations, International Journal of Human Resource Management and Journal of Management Studies are amongst the most frequent ports of call. As should also be apparent from earlier in this article, we would also like to appeal more to practitioner audiences who perhaps do not regularly consult most academic journals, but without compromising high academic standards. Furthermore, we wish to ensure that JOOP is on the 'must check out' list of academics not only in psychology, but also in allied areas such as human resource management, organization studies, and ergonomics. We greatly value the international nature of JOOP. It is no coincidence that the editorial team is geographically well spread (two in the UK, and one each in USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and Germany). We have recently re-constituted our Board of Consulting Editors. We are delighted that so many eminent people from around the world agreed so readily to take on the role of reviewing up to six papers a year for JOOP. They start their duties on 1st January 2004, and their names appear on the inside front cover of this issue. We have also appointed three people to the new role of Special Adviser on research design and data analysis. These people will be called upon when referees disagree sharply about the appropriateness of what has been done in a piece of research, and/or the editor or associate editor wants to check specific points outside his or her own expertise and that of the referees. We thank the consulting editors and special advisers in advance for their work with us. These colleagues also reflect the international scope of JOOP. They work in a wide range of locations: UK (8), USA (7), Australia (4), Hong Kong (3), Netherlands (2), and one in each of Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, and Spain. Collectively, these people cover thirteen countries and five continents. At the time of writing this article (early November 2003), JOOP has received 137 submissions since the start of my editorship. The location of the corresponding author is most commonly USA (32%), UK (17%) and Australia (13%). At least three papers have come from each of Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Netherlands and United Arab Emirates. One or two papers have originated in each of the following places: Bangladesh, China (other than Hong Kong), Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Iran, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, and Turkey. This is a pleasing range of countries and suggests that JOOP is high in the consciousness of academics world-wide. However, it is notable that 62% of submissions have come from three countries with arguably quite similar cultures, resources and world views. Papers published in JOOP during 2002 and 2003 tell a fairly similar story, though the balance between UK, Australia and USA is different. Of 60 papers published, the corresponding author's address was in the UK for 19 (32%), and in the USA for 17 (28%). Other published papers came from Canada and the Netherlands (4 each), Australia and New Zealand (3 each), Belgium and Spain (2 each) and one each from Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and Turkey. Again, it is good that published papers have come from such a variety of locations, but the prominence of what might be termed the Anglo-American axis is perhaps greater than ideal for a truly international journal. Although UK, USA (and Australia) also figure prominently in the addresses of the JOOP editor, associate editors and board of consulting editors, we hope that the increased editorial representation of other parts of the world will help to shift the geographical origin of submissions and publications a little. World-wide coverage does not necessarily mean international excellence or a high impact factor. Arguably the most sure-fire way to maintain a high impact factor and a reputation as a top journal would be to put an especially strong emphasis on appealing to North American (i.e. USA and Canada) audiences, since they have a high incidence of publishing and consequently citation. Indeed, in some countries (especially English-speaking ones) there is a tendency to equate international excellence with North America. So in some ways it is tempting to try to be, as it were, an honorary North American journal. We certainly want to encourage North American authors to continue to submit papers to JOOP, and preferably their better ones which have not already done the rounds with North American journals and been turned down! This is a vital constituency for JOOP because so much good work at the frontiers of our field is conducted in the USA and Canada. It is gratifying to note that JOOP is taken very seriously by North American academics in occupational and organizational psychology (Zickar & Highhouse, 2001) but we would like JOOP to be higher in their pecking order than it currently appears to be. Furthermore, as a journal of The British Psychological Society (BPS), it is important that JOOP meets the needs of the BPS and particularly the UK academic and practitioner communities within it. However, we also consider it vital that JOOP's appeal is not confined to North America, the UK and Australasia. The most obvious other constituencies are mainland Europe and Asia, and it is pleasing to note (see above) that a good number of submissions come from those areas of the world, though the Asian ones are mostly from Hong Kong. It would be good to attract more submissions from Africa and South America. We will therefore seek to publicise JOOP more to academics in all parts of the world. We already make some allowance, where appropriate, for the fact that in some countries it is difficult to obtain access to the expert colleagues, literature and data analytic tools that are frequently taken for granted in more affluent parts of the world. This does not mean that weak papers will be accepted from some countries. What it does mean is that whilst we aim always to adopt a constructive approach to the review and editorial process (see below), we will be even more willing to work with authors to improve their papers to publishable standard if they have limited access to resources. The JOOP editorial processIn case the reader has jumped straight to this point in the paper, we urge you to read the preceding material, as this will tell you much of what you may want to know. In this section, we comment further on how the editorial and review process operates at JOOP, and offer some observations based on our experience since January 2003. All incoming papers are scrutinized by the editor. Since January 2003 about a quarter have been rejected by the editor without any further review. This is usually because the study design is too flawed and/or the data are too weak (in either quality or quantity) to have any chance of publication in JOOP. I assign papers that survive this initial hurdle either to myself or to one of the team of associate editors. Whoever is now the action editor decides whether the paper is strong enough to go out to referees (a few that survive the editor's scrutiny are rejected by an associate editor). He or she chooses referees and handles the whole process from then on, including reading the submission and the referees' comments, communication with authors and of course making a decision on the fate of the paper. Normally, at least one referee will be a member of the board of consulting editors, and wherever it is practicable, we will draw on referees from more than one continent. From the author's point of view, most communication comes via the BPS journals office, which facilitates and monitors the editorial process with excellent efficiency. We thank particularly Stephanie Brooks, Julie Neason and Claire Shinfield for their good work at keeping us in order. Instructions to authors submitting a paper to JOOP can be found in each issue of JOOP, and in more detail in our Notes for Contributors. Papers should not normally exceed 6,000 words including the abstract and any footnotes, but excluding the reference list, tables, figures, title page and any appendices. We ask authors to bear in mind that this is a maximum, not a target, and that pressure on journal space is high. JOOP also has a short research note category, where the word limit is 2,000. Broad-ranging guidance about the kinds of paper JOOP is looking for appears in earlier sections of this article. Three more specific points are also worth mentioning here. First, we agree with Rousseau and Fried's (2001) compelling arguments in their editorial roles at Journal of Organizational Behavior that it is important to include relevant contextual information such as the recent history of an organization, country or area of activity (such as industrial relations), current labour market conditions etc. Second, it is also important for authors to bear in mind that JOOP's audience is world-wide, so the meaning of terms that might not be familiar outside a particular country (e.g. exempt vs. non-exempt, mid-west, research assessment exercise) should be explained. Third, and following on from the previous two observations, JOOP is delighted to receive papers which explicitly address the role of context. These could take the form of (i) cross-cultural comparisons, or (ii) constructive replications, where either of these is required to test the generalizability (or not) of previously published theory or empirical findings. JOOP has successfully though sparingly used occasional special issues to give an airing to important and timely issues. This will continue, though we expect the emphasis will switch to special sections within issues. An example is a special section on diary studies which will appear in 2005. The use of special sections rather than special issues is intended to ensure that the quality of articles on the theme remains high, and that regular articles do not have to wait longer than necessary for publication. Editors and themes for special sections and issues are sometimes sought proactively by the editorial team, but we also welcome proposals. These should be sent to the editor via the Society's Journals Department. We may occasionally commission single articles on a topic of great interest from an appropriate author, and also seek short peer commentaries on such articles. Regular articles which appear to have unusually wide scope and/or potential controversy may also be subject to short commentaries, but this will not happen without the author's permission, and the author will have the opportunity to make a short rejoinder. Where papers go out for review, we aim to bring an initial decision and feedback from the referees and editor/associate editor within 60 days of receiving the paper. Achievement of this target requires an absence of significant delays at any stage of the process. This means in turn that the Journals Department, the Editor, associate editors, and referees must all be on their toes. Consulting editors are clear about JOOP's expectations of them, but we recognise that there are often only limited rewards available for ad hoc referees (apart of course from that good warm feeling of having contributed generously to the advancement of knowledge!). In one issue each year, we publicly thank our entire list of ad hoc referees. We also intend to convey personally and privately our thanks to those who produce especially helpful and timely reviews. We appreciate very much that this often requires a significant investment of time and brainpower. We will try not to punish them for this collegial behaviour by sending them more papers too frequently! For papers that are rejected without review, we aim to bring that news and the reasons for it to the author within 21 days of receiving his or her paper. Also, we aim to ensure that a paper appears in print not more than nine months after final acceptance. We will periodically monitor how the journal is doing against these targets and report on what we find. Finally, we aim to meet standards of quality as well as rapidity in our editorial process. Our expectations here are similar to the 'bill of rights for manuscript authors’ articulated by David Harrison (2002) in his editorial for Academy of Management Journal:
If, as an author, you feel that these guidelines have been violated, please contact the editor or associate editor concerned in the first instance via the Society's Journals Department. If this does not resolve the matter, please contact the editor, or alternatively (especially if you think the editor was the culprit) address your concerns to the Chair of the Journals Committee, again via the Journals Department. ConclusionOn behalf of the JOOP editorial team, I thank you for reading this editorial. We hope it offers food for thought as well as guidance about JOOP's policies and aspirations. We look forward to your continued attention to JOOP, and to receiving your submissions. ReferencesAnderson, N., Herriot, P., & Hodgkinson, G. P. (2001). The practitioner-researcher divide in industrial, work and organizational (IWO) psychology: Where are we now and where do we go from here? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 391-411.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Journals Home | Accessibility | Text Only | Site Map | Contact Us | BPS Website
© Copyright 2000-2008 The British Psychological Society
The British Psychological Society is a charity registered in England and Wales, Registration Number : 229642 and a charity registered in Scotland, Registration Number : SC039452 - VAT Registration Number : 240 3937 76
End Page
How to Subscribe