From leadership and employee engagement to artificial intelligence in the workplace, organizations face complex questions about what helps people perform at their best.
For the past 15 years, Frederick Morgeson, Eli Broad Professor of Management in Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business, has helped answer those questions as founding editor of the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, or AROPOB. The journal is consistently ranked among the top in its field.
Morgeson’s research examines leadership, work design, employee selection and organizational behavior to better understand how people and organizations succeed.
In this Q&A, Morgeson discusses why he launched the journal, how industrial-organizational psychology improves workplaces, the research topics shaping the field today and why making evidence-based knowledge accessible beyond academia is central to the journal's mission.
What inspired the launch of the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior?
I noticed there wasn’t an academic journal devoted exclusively to what’s known as the ‘micro’ side of management. On the management side, that includes human resource management and organizational behavior. On the applied psychology side, it includes industrial and organizational psychology. There was also an opportunity to do something a bit different and make a greater impact in the field and ultimately on the world.
When creating this journal with the aim of achieving broader impact, was there a particular turning point that clarified its main purpose?
While serving as an associate editor for Personnel Psychology, I was also invited to serve on the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Psychology. That’s when the idea came of focusing on specific psychology domains, like institutional/organizational psychology, and putting them in their own dedicated journal. I was asked to help conceptualize the journal and then usher it through the approval process. Ultimately, I was asked to be editor of the journal, and I’ve now been an editor for 15 years.
This moment represented an intersection of preparation and opportunity, prompting me to consider how I could have a greater impact on the world through my work. My institutional/organizational psychology research directly informs my teaching, which includes courses designed for working professionals. The focus of my approach is translating scientific insights into practical applications for audiences who can implement them in real-world settings. Also, my research has always emphasized applied work, engaging directly with organizations to address tangible challenges. It is this virtuous cycle: you do research, you teach your findings, you consult with organizations, and it’s mutually reinforcing, all with the main purpose of improving.
What is industrial-organizational psychology?
Industrial-organizational, or I-O, psychology is the branch of psychology that studies the science of working people. It focuses on understanding human behavior in the workplace and the motivations behind it. People behave differently at work depending on their roles, personalities and motivations. Some are driven by internal satisfaction, others by pay, a sense of responsibility or a passion for their work. The organizational side of I-O psychology examines workplace behavior and why people act the way they do, while the industrial side focuses on hiring, recruitment and performance management.
How does industrial-organizational psychology help organizations improve workplace effectiveness?
Industrial-organizational psychology helps organizations understand how to create conditions that support employee and organizational success. For example, if an organization wants to encourage innovation, I-O psychology can help identify the types of people to hire, how to structure roles and teams to foster creativity, and which performance management, reward and motivation strategies are most effective. By applying research on human behavior, organizations can make better decisions about recruiting, leadership, work design and employee development to achieve their goals.
Who are the key audiences for AROPOB?
We have broad ambitions and are trying to reach a wide range of people. We are trying to reach other scientists and colleagues within our domain, as well as those outside of it who are interested in some of the topics. We have a significant impact on graduate students, as many of our articles are read in doctoral seminars and master’s programs. The last group we would be trying to reach would be people working in organizations: practitioners, managers and leaders. In every article, we try to include elements that appeal to all these groups. A person who’s working 60 to 70 hours a week might not read a full article, but they might open it, see the title, flip through it, and find the table that summarizes it. Giving it a skim provides them with even a small bit of insight, and since it is evidence-based knowledge, it will benefit them to read it.
What is the importance of this journal’s practical, applicable knowledge over purely theoretical or academic studies?
Our mission is to address both, which is unique to our field. Other scientific domains like biology, physics, and chemistry are super technical, and they have very narrow audiences; but for us, we’re dealing with organizations. Organizations are a part of everyone’s life, whether that’s schools, clubs, sports teams, volunteer groups and governments — they all have a significant impact on our lives. There’s relevance for everyone because of that subject matter; it matters to everyone, so it’s inherently an applied field.
What we do is give readers scientifically rigorous answers to important questions that confront a worker or a leader who has behavioral questions about their role. We have knowledge generated by thousands of scientists working in their own narrow areas, and we have produced this insight, which is straightforward, usable and should be used. We want our organizations to run more effectively and achieve their goals. The way to do that is to do what we know works, which is proved by science.
What are AROPOB’s most important research topics from the past five years, and why does open access matter for sharing this work?
In recent years, key topics we have published include articles on people’s engagement in the workplace, the science of meetings and what the science tells us about how to make meetings run well, and artificial intelligence–related topics have been a very prevalent theme in a lot of our articles recently, discussing the future of organizational management. Other key topics addressed include providing feedback and the need for it in organizations, leadership, and the various facets of leadership, which is a perennially interesting and well-read topic for us. Another is family conflict, which has been a large topic, especially with the new world of working from home.
The AROPOB is a great resource created by a professor at MSU that provides insights into your everyday organizational behavior. The open access piece is so important because it democratizes the knowledge we generate, making it useful to the community and enhancing their understanding of the topic.
What does it mean to lead a top-ranked journal in organizational psychology, and what keeps the AROPOB team motivated to maintain that standard?
I am extremely proud of taking an idea and shepherding it into reality, against all the competition in this field and having to convince people that it’s valuable. My motivation is that we have an impact on the academic community and the organizational community. The articles are on topics that people care about; they’re written by experts in those domains and just being able to continue that is tremendously gratifying.
