Our neoliberal fantasies? A preliminary test of research trends in leading journals in work and organizational psychology

Abstract

Prior to engaging in a substantive discussion on the supposed influence of neoliberalism on research in Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP), it is important to verify the empirical basis of the trends advanced by Bal and Doci (2018). To this end, we content analyzed 745 abstracts of empirical studies published in leading WOP journals during the years 2006-2007 and 2016-2017. Results of our content analysis do not support the hypothesized trends towards more instrumentality and individualism in WOP research, suggesting that Bal and Doci's (2018) portrayal of the WOP literature does not provide a solid basis for discussion. On the basis of our findings, we conclude with recommendations to broaden the scope of WOP research to also include macrolevel, societal issues.

Critical positions: Situating critical perspectives in work and organizational psychology

“…The primary unit of analysis in W-O psychology is the individual and, despite a trend toward multi-level research, higher-order phenomena are often explored through aggregating individual-level data (Mathieu & Chen, 2011). Using the individual as the unit of theorizing and analysis is a core feature of psychology more generally, one that distinguishes it from other disciplines, making it unsurprising and largely accepted in the context of W-O psychology (Anseel et al, 2018;Troth & Guest, 2020). Yet the situatedness of W-O psychology within workplace contexts, i.e.…”

Effects of person–occupation political orientation misfit on occupational identification: An experimental study

“…However, we did not answer the important questions of what constitutes an ideological bias and how it may emerge, and we did not empirically test whether such a bias exists. Our exploratory results on perceptions of political values represented by the field (see Table S1) and previous research (Anseel et al, 2018) suggest that the field of I-O psychology is not strongly biased by one political ideology. Instead, the field appears more pluralistic than recent position papers suggest (e.g.…”