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Academics, practitioners and the journal of occupational and organizational psychology: reflecting on the issues.

Article Excerpt
Critical reflection is important to academics and practitioners alike both for personal development and to maintain a vibrant discipline. Gelade's (2006) thought-provoking paper contributes to both these objectives, and by raising some very important issues it encourages debate. I would like to engage with that debate in this commentary by addressing some assumptions underlying the main arguments presented in the paper, i.e.

* there is a problem with JOOP;

* the problem is that it is oriented to the interests of academics and insufficiently oriented to the interests of practitioners; and

* the solution is to encourage contributors to JOOP to orient their work more to practice.

Is there a 'problem' with JOOP?

In many ways, of course, JOOP is very successful. It is a widely cited and highly regarded publication that enjoys considerable status within the academic discipline of occupational psychology. One might argue, however, that its success in academic terms is the very thing that has given rise to the concerns expressed by Gelade. However, as with other successful 'products', we need to be careful that by changing it we do not then irretrievably damage what we had already. The prestige of JOOP encourages academics from across the world to submit their articles to it and to cite it in other publications. If this was undermined, JOOP's standing in academia would decrease. However, that does not mean to say that it can be oblivious to the need for reflection and re-orientation and Gelade's article is of immense help in this respect. The point is that we should be mindful of what is currently good about JOOP.

The source of the problem identified seems to be that authors are not writing or submitting articles to JOOP that are oriented to practice. This could well be true because it is possible that JOOP has an academic image (as above) and that academic authors respond to what they see as required, saving their more practically oriented articles for outlets like People Management. Assumptions about JOOP's content may attract more of the same (i.e. the more questionnaire validation studies are published, the less likely it is that...