Servants of power redux

Abstract

Mumby's (2019) focal article provides an alternative perspective to industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists, claiming that we often unconsciously adopt many of the assumptions shared by elites in our current socio-political-economic system. He is correct in that as a discipline we tend to be beholden to management interests, we are generally resistant to critical approaches, and many of us rely wholeheartedly on the neoliberal assumptions of market capitalism. In this commentary, I describe in brief detail a previous similar effort to label I-O psychologists as servants of power, as well as detail some counterexamples of progressive I-O psychologists who addressed issues in common (at least in spirit) with Mumby's critique, and then finally I lay out some suggestions for I-O psychologists who wish to build a more progressive I-O psychology-one that addresses several of his critiques. Loren Baritz and servants of power In 1960, historian Loren Baritz published a scathing popular history text, Servants of Power: A History of the Use of Social Science in America, that detailed abuses that social scientists used to thwart labor unions during the heyday of the labor-management wars of the 1930s and 1940s. Baritz argued that industrial psychologists used personality tests to help managers screen out applicants likely to join labor unions, directly flaunting the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which was designed to protect employees' right to unionize (see Zickar, 2001). Baritz also claimed psychologists worked with management to promote conformity and used attitudinal measures and projective testing to help sway employee opinions to fit managerial ideals. Essentially, Baritz documented Mumby's (2019) evidence-less assertion of I-O psychologists' collaboration with managers, nearly 60 years earlier. Although this book has been cited more than 1,000 times, most of the citations are from critical management studies; the book should be required reading for all aspiring doctoral students in I-O psychology.