Category: Thoughts on Research and Practice

In both industry and academia terms like silo and ivory tower are commonly used to describe work that is isolated within a community, department, discipline, or function. Even though this type of set-up can be very efficient and productive, too much work in isolation further exacerbates the misalignment between science and practice.

Having spent a majority of my professional career thus far in an academic setting I’ve seen first hand that different disciplines operate in their own silos and often develop theories and ideas alongside each other rather than with each other. The idea that these silos exist in industry as well, even within the same organization, is relatively new to me. I’m not surprised that they exist but I am curious about why they exist, whether the silos within industry and academia operate in the same way, and what this means for the science-to-practice conversation.

So what’s the point? This post seems a little dry…

I mentioned already that I’ve been working in Organization Management and Development, which is part of HR for a large organization. The team I work on is commonly referred to in the field as a Center of Excellence or Center of Expertise (COE). This week I had the pleasure of meeting a new co-worker for the first time. He was excited to join the COE after working internally with the HR Generalists and Business Partners. I was curious to hear about his experiences working in both realms of HR and why he was eager to be part of the COE again. Based on our conversation, the major benefit of working in the COE is the level of creativity and freedom you are allowed in your work. He used the phrase, “Your time is your own,” which, ironically, is what I hear from many people touting the benefits of a career in academia versus industry.

Here is where the silos come in. In our conversation, my co-worker brought up the potential risk of the COE becoming too isolated and ultimately less valuable to the larger organization. Over the past decade or so HR functions have been undergoing transformations on how to address inefficiencies and a general lack of strategic focus in HR and perhaps these transformations could provide insights into a the broader science-to-practice conversation. Seeing how transformations play out over time could be an interesting experiment on what happens when one of the silos is completely overhauled.

It’s relatively easy for an organization to initiate a change (compared to science trying to initiate a change in industry or vice versa) especially if they have reason to believe it will improve their bottom line. But these silos exist for a reason. There is comfort in being part of a tight-knit community of colleagues. When comparing yourself to others in your silo it’s easier to see where you stand and/or demonstrate your value. What happens when these silos are broken down? Do you risk that someone else is doing something similar to you? Are they doing it more efficiently?

Words like streamline and centralization can be nerve-wracking for people who are worried about becoming obsolete. Perhaps this is part of the science-to-practice problem. People generally agree that collaboration and cross-disciplinary research is desperately needed but we are reluctant to change. If academia rethinks the way research is rewarded and published are they risking the integrity of their science? Would reworking these silos derail careers?

 

Where do I start?

What do I bring to the table?

Will anyone care?

I wrote these questions at the beginning of a document on my personal computer called StartABlog.doc. So, for the sake of humoring myself and finally launching this blog, I’ll start by answering them below.

Where do I start?

I suppose I should start by introducing myself. My name is Andrea and I’m a doctoral student in Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology. For those of you who aren’t quite sure what that means, I/O psychologists study the behavior of people at work and how work influences other aspects of life, including stress and family relationships. Our research focuses on topics relevant to society as a whole and also provides us with unique opportunities to recommend interventions or changes on a manageable scale that have the potential make real change for individual employees and their families.

What do I bring to the table?

For the past 6 months, I’ve been working in Organization Management and Development, part of the human resources (HR) department at a large organization. I’m fortunate to work at a company that not only understands the value that I/O research brings to HR, but also has the resources to employ entire teams of I/O psychologists. Even with these resources, it remains difficult to fully capitalize on every research opportunity that could inform decisions that impact our employees.

While the limitations of applying I/O research to a real world setting can be frustrating, I can’t help but think of the vast majority of organizations that don’t have these resources and the graduate students and professors in academia struggling to find real-world venues to collect data. Partnerships between academia and organizations exist today, but the relatively few I’ve experienced personally have suffered from competing priorities and a lack of alignment between the academic and the industry agendas. We can do better. We can find a way to rethink these partnerships and realign science and practice to achieve a true science-to-practice model at any scale.

Will anyone care?

Through this blog I plan to explore different ways of engaging people in a larger science-to-practice conversation – a conversation that is much larger than I/O Psychology or the even the HR field. While my personal view and experiences are grounded in I/O, I want to have a much more philosophical conversation about research and how a new generation of scientists can rethink the science-to-practice relationship. So will anyone care? I am excited to find out.