Aguinis and Glavas (2013) offer a new attempt to explain the consistently weak but consistently inconsistent findings regarding the relationship of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to financial performance. Like many others writing in the field, Aguinis and Glavas appear to believe that further efforts to categorize types of CSR will somehow identify CSR forms that are financially rewarding. In this response, I challenge four assumptions underlying the Aguinis and Glavas manuscript: (a) that CSR has received little attention in the micro literature; (b) that CSR can be meaningfully conceptualized and operationalized; (c) that a continued search for the “holy grail” of a CSR–financial performance link is likely to be fruitful; and (d) that the “peripheral–embedded” distinction is useful and appropriate.

Britt, Shen, Sinclair, Grossman, and Klieger (2016) discuss employee resilience trajectories, noting that only a few studies taking this approach have been conducted in the workplace. They recommend that with such an approach it is essential to assess baseline functioning, document adversity, and gather longitudinal data. They also point out the need to clarify what variables should be measured in the demonstration of resilience and suggest that resilience trajectories across different outcomes may or may not converge. We agree that trajectories are a promising approach to studying employee resilience. However, conceptualizing trajectories as profiles provides additional meaningful concepts for describing the demonstration of resilience. These concepts have the potential for moving theory and research beyond the work on trajectories described by Britt et al.

Resilience research has primarily focused on occupations that undergo a significant amount of stress, such as the military or trauma teams. In response, Britt, Shen, Sinclair, Grossman, and Klieger (2016) call for “future work on resilience to expand to include a wider cross section of workers and occupations” (p. 397). We suggest that viewing resilience through a personality strength lens will facilitate this expansion. Adopting a personality strength approach to resilience will more clearly (a) link the capacity for resilience to positive adaptation in the face of a broader range of stressors beyond objectively significant adversity and (b) open up new methods of investigating the demonstration of resilience.

The focal article (Guzzo, Fink, King, Tonidandel, & Landis, 2015) sought to “raise awareness and provide direction with regard to issues and complications uniquely associated with the advent of big data,” (p. 492), and we commend their success in offering Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) members a solid foundation and resources on which to draw. Our aim here is to extend their position, particularly to drive the conversation toward concrete recommendations for how industrial and organizational psychologists (I-Os) working in industry can apply the principles set forth in the focal article in our day-to-day work, specifically around the issue of avoiding ethical missteps in this new landscape.

Costanza and Finkelstein (2015) make a number of important observations in their exploration of how generation-based differences are understood by academics and practitioners. The absence of a unifying theory, the lack of a clear pattern of findings, and the conceptual ambiguity about generational membership have all limited the utility of generational membership to researchers, while the practice of describing large groups of individuals in generational terms has become enormously popular outside of academia. Certainly, there are several topics that are popular among the public and widely used by businesses despite being viewed negatively by academics; however, there is some danger in the widespread perception that group differences between individuals of different ages can be explained by generational membership. Although it might be tempting to consider these generational stereotypes as simply innocuous misperceptions supervisors may hold, they may, in fact, be quite harmful. The purpose of this article is to further expand on the potential for these stereotypes to be harmful for older and younger employees.

In 1985, the U.S. Army commissioned prominent psychologists to investigate the possibility of extending human capabilities using parapsychological techniques (Swets & Bjork, 1990). Influential members of the army were frustrated by the slow pace of advancements in human performance and believed that large gains could be made using methods outside of the mainstream. They believed that things like mental concentration and guided imagery could allow soldiers to walk through walls, view things remotely, and even kill adversaries by staring at them (Ronson, 2005). Not surprisingly, the panel of psychologists concluded that these ideas were without merit. In reviewing the psychologists’ work, Morrison (1988) observed, “Among the most difficult lessons in science is how not to deceive yourself” (p. 109).

Policing in United States has been under media and public scrutiny for a while now. The focal article “Baltimore Is Burning: Can I-O Psychologists Help Extinguish the Flames?” (Ruggs et al., 2016) is a critical piece of work that not only sheds light on how racial bias may impact police–citizen interactions but also outlines possible ways in which industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists can intervene to remedy the situation. Although the call to use evidence-based I-O interventions as levers to facilitate a more effective and unbiased police force is timely, it is critical to acknowledge that the charged environment and the controversial nature of this issue imply that some members of the police force might not accept the suggested interventions at face value. Many police officers are upstanding and hard-working individuals and may see the change interventions as an attack. Thus, before attempting to execute any strategies offered in the focal article, I-O psychologists will have to do significant groundwork from a change management perspective: The current crisis needs to be approached from a whole systems change perspective so that we can (a) understand the factors causing the “flames” and define the problem space comprehensively; (b) understand the type of change we need to effect in response to the crisis, stay closely attuned to the system's readiness for change, and also anticipate resistance to change from different levels of the system; and (c) chart a clear outline of what our role should entail as change agents in helping resolve this crisis. Thus, this commentary complements the focal article by juxtaposing authors’ recommendations against a whole systems change paradigm, questions their implicit assumptions, and recommends that I-O psychologists act as change agents to help police forces define the problem, find solutions, anticipate resistance, and execute interventions at different levels of the policing system.

The tragic failure of Penn State University to effectively respond to years of child sex abuse perpetrated by Jerry Sandusky was both a breakdown of leaders and of leadership systems. Numerous individual leaders at Penn State had the knowledge, power, and interpersonal influence to effectively intervene in support of Jerry Sandusky's victims. However, fully understanding how this tragedy occurred also requires an examination of the organizational system of leadership that enabled each leader to rationalize the cover up of the sexual abuse of children. Alderfer's (2011) laws of embedded intergroup relations are useful for understanding the organizational dysfunction at Penn State; especially when those laws are integrated with other theories of organizational psychology, including the social identity maintenance theory of groupthink, the romance of leadership, and authentic leadership. The integration of these theories suggests specific strategies and tactics for preventing similar lapses of ethical behavior in the future through the development of leaders and leadership systems.