Ask the expert: Building a No. 1 organizational science journal

From leadership and employee engagement to artificial intelligence in the workplace, organizations face complex questions about what helps people perform at their best.

Over the past 15 years, Frederick Morgeson, Eli Broad Professor of Management at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business, has helped answer these types of questions as founding editor of the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, or AROPOB.

Under his leadership, the journal has turned into the most highly cited management and applied psychology journal in the world and its impact is clear. Currently ranked No. 23 globally for most highly cited journal across 22,643 journals, AROPOB ranks ahead of Science (No. 40) and only slightly behind Nature (No. 21).

Morgeson’s own research and organizational work focus on helping organizations and the people within them succeed in an increasingly complex world. His work ranges from the future of work to the leadership needed for teams and organizations to thrive, to selecting employees and developing the human resources needed to manage them, to understanding the events that shape and change how organizations operate.

In this Q&A, Morgeson discusses why he launched AROPOB, how he turned a new journal into the world’s leading management and applied psychology journal in little more than a decade, how organizational psychology and organizational behavior improves workplaces, what are 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?

In the late 2000s, I noticed there wasn’t an academic journal devoted exclusively to what’s known as the ‘micro’ domains. On the management side, that includes the domains of human resource management and organizational behavior. On the applied psychology side, it includes industrial and organizational psychology. In addition to this gap, I realized that there was an opportunity to do something a bit different from existing journals, with the ultimate aim of making a greater impact in the field and ultimately on the world. As a native Michigander, I am motivated by MSU’s core values of advancing knowledge and transforming lives.

When creating this journal with the aim of achieving broader impact, was there a particular turning point that clarified its main purpose?

The moment associated with creating AROPOB represented an intersection of preparation and opportunity. By the early 2010s I had become a full professor, had great success in my own research, teaching, and consulting activities, and had taken on increasingly significant editorial roles. These experiences pushed me to consider how I could have a bigger impact on the academic community as well as the organizational communities that are the subject of our research. Because my research revolved around a problem-solving focus working directly with organizations, I have spent my career thinking about how to translate academic research into insights for organizations and workers that can be implemented in real-world settings. I have done this in my own educational and consulting activities and was interested in expanding this focus more directly into the academic community.

This is a virtuous cycle that I practiced and wanted to further reinforce in the field: You conduct original research, you consult with organizations, you share your insights in the classroom, and you use the feedback to repeat the cycle. This is a mutually reinforcing cycle, all with the goal of improving organizational functioning and enhancing the lives of people who spend so much of their time at work.

What is organizational psychology and organizational behavior and how do these disciplines help organizations improve workplace effectiveness?

Organizational psychology and organizational behavior are the fields focused on the study of people at work. Organizational psychology captures research conducted under the auspices of the industrial/organizational psychology paradigm whereas organizational behavior captures research conducted under the human resource management and organizational behavior paradigms.

Organizational psychology and organizational behavior help organizations understand how to create conditions that support worker and organizational success. For example, if an organization wants to encourage innovation, these fields 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, including those outside of academia. Of course, our articles are written with other scientists and colleagues within our domain, as well as those outside of it who might be interested in the topics. We have a significant impact on graduate students, as many of our articles are read in doctoral seminars and master’s programs. But we are also trying to reach people working in organizations: managers, leaders and workers. In every article, we try to include elements that appeal to all these groups. Our articles not only focus on the scientific implications of research, but also the practical implications. These practical implications seek to explain what the science says works and what organizations, leaders and workers can specifically do with that information. A person who’s working 60 to 70 hours a week might not read a full article, but they might see the title, download the article, flip through it and find the table that summarizes its recommendations. Even a quick review provides them with a bit of insight, and since it is evidence-based knowledge, it will benefit them to read it. This broad appeal is one of the reasons our articles are routinely downloaded over a million times a year.

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 highly technical. Because of this, they are only accessible or understandable to a small segment of the population. AROPOB, however, focuses on organizations, and anyone alive has extensive experience with all sorts of organizations. Organizations are a part of everyone’s life — whether that’s through schools, clubs, sports teams, volunteer groups, governments or the workplace — and these organizations have a significant impact on our lives. There’s relevance for everyone because of that subject matter; it matters to everyone, so it’s an inherently applied field.

What we do is give readers scientifically rigorous answers to important questions that confront a worker or a leader. The knowledge generated by thousands of scientists working in their own domains is summarized, producing meaningful insight that can be directly and immediately used. Everyone benefits when organizations are run more effectively and are better able to achieve their goals. Science tells us what works, and organizations and all their stakeholders benefit when the science is leveraged and used in a positive way.

What are AROPOB’s most important research topics from the past five years, and why does open access matter for sharing this work?

In every volume, we publish reviews on core topics, as well as those that are more timely given what is occurring in the workplace. In recent years, we have published articles on topics such as people’s engagement in the workplace, the science of meetings and what science tells us about how to make meetings run well, and well-being at work. Articles on artificial intelligence–related topics have been an important theme in our articles recently, particularly as it relates to their deployment in organizations and the implications of AI for workers. Other key topics addressed include providing feedback and the need for it in organizations, the various facets of leadership, which is a perennially interesting and well-read topic for us. Another is work-family conflict and remote work, which has taken on increased relevance given the new world of working from home.

AROPOB is an exceptional resource created by an MSU professor that provides insights into everyday organizational behavior. The fact that the journal is open access means that the insight and knowledge generated by our articles is available to everyone. This democratizes the knowledge we generate, making it useful to the MSU community and beyond, helping all enhance their understanding of the topic.

What does it mean to lead this top-ranked journal and what keeps the AROPOB team motivated to maintain that standard?

I am extremely proud that I was able to take this idea of a focused review journal, shepherd it into reality and then lead it for 15 years to the top of the field. There is considerable competition and it was initially challenging to convince others that this was an important and valuable endeavor.

My continuing motivation revolves around my conviction that we have an obligation to make an impact on the academic community, the organizational community, and the world at large. We publish articles on topics that people care about, and being able to build and continue that legacy is tremendously gratifying.