Despite the growing popularity and marketing of pulse surveys, there is little research concerning this practice. To this end, this practice forum reports the results of a four-wave pulse survey that was conducted in a health care organization. Pulse surveys provided reliable estimates of overall engagement, but scores remained stable across 8 months. Practically no differences in group scores or trends could be found despite high participation (≍ 50%). Item responses displayed little differences between groups, ICC(1) ranging from .03 to .18, and poor discriminant validity. Based on these results, pulse surveys may be adequate for estimating overall employee sentiment but not useful for detecting change over time or differences between groups. These limitations should be considered when designing or implementing pulse surveys.

To date, empirical investigations into whether nepotism, specifically, or social connection preference (SCP), generally, is positive or negative within the realm of organizational scholarship has been limited. Indeed, most of the early discussions in this field on the subject have focused on previous work done outside the organizational area (i.e., Bellow, 2003). A recent Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Organizational Frontier Series book on the subject has brought some initial attention to the subject by approaching it from multiple domains within the organizational literature (Jones, 2012). Jones and Stout (2015) have highlighted the possible advantages and disadvantages of SCPs and have taken the stand that SCPs might in fact provide more benefits than drawbacks, particularly given that formalized policies may lead to unfair discrimination.

Since 2007, my work has involved helping companies to maximize the value of a technology system that supports strategic human resource processes, including performance management (PM). This technology is largely agnostic when it comes to PM process design. It can be configured for PM processes that make extensive ratings or avoid ratings entirely, encourage elaborate goal cascading or completely forego the use of goals, focus on once a year PM events or encourage ongoing employee–manager check-ins, and so forth. In sum, the system can be configured in any number of ways.

Hyland, Lee, and Mills (2015) have provided a thorough and much needed overview of the construct of mindfulness within the context of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology and have offered several reasons why mindfulness programs should be considered in the workplace. In this commentary, we focus on their suggestion that mindfulness may improve the development of high potentials through enhanced self-awareness. We agree that mindfulness is likely an effective tool to help high potentials succeed in an increasingly complex world. We come to this conclusion after conducting a rigorous review of the literature and talking to experts (Ruderman, Clerkin, & Connolly, 2014), learning various forms of mindfulness including completing the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, and our experiences conducting applied leadership research at the Center for Creative Leadership—a 45-year-old organization devoted exclusively to leadership development.

Craig Russell has done us all a service in his review of current turnover research (2013), but I think he is too severe in his judgment of the validities and relevance of our field's research, and he encourages us to go down some questionable research paths in the future. Despite his expertise in the field, there are several points where I believe other views are more attractive.

We can recognize the usefulness of assessing so many studies and meta-analyses done in recent decades, as summarized in his Table 1 (drawn from Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000). But let us also note that Russell would have done readers a bigger favor if the results were presented in some logical order. Right now, not even an alphabetic order among the variables is evident. This is a flaw that obscures key understandings. Looking at the data another way can make one more optimistic about its predictive validity and relevance.

Bergman and Jean (2016) skillfully summarize how the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology literature generally overrepresents salaried, core, managerial, professional, and executive employees. We concur that that the underrepresentation of traditional workers (i.e., wage earners, laborers, first-line personnel, freelancers, contract workers, and other workers outside managerial, professional, and executive positions) can negatively affect our science. In our commentary we extend the arguments of Bergman and Jean by (a) discussing the appropriate use of samples, which are determined by study goals and hypotheses, and (b) further examining samples in occupational health psychology (OHP) and related journals, which generally require worker samples.

Aguinis et al. (2017) contribute interesting analyses of cited sources in contemporary undergraduate industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology textbooks and continue their ongoing investigation into the long-term viability of I-O psychology as a unique discipline (see Aguinis, Bradley, & Brodersen, 2014). These analyses, conducted by authors who are members of business schools, attempt to answer questions related to the nature of work conducted by I-O psychologists, comparing the quality and importance of work conducted by faculty in business schools with that conducted by faculty in psychology departments. One of their general themes is that members of business schools are conducting important research that is influencing the future of I-O psychology by overtaking undergraduate textbooks. As such, the article has the feel of a conquering hero taunting its vanquished foe.

Situational judgment tests (SJTs) occasionally fail to predict job performance in criterion-related validation studies, often despite much effort to follow scholarly recipes for their development. This commentary provides some plausible explanations for why this may occur as well as some tips for SJT development. In most cases, we frame the issue from an implicit trait policy (ITP) perspective (Motowidlo, Hooper, & Jackson, 2006a, 2006b) and the measurement of general domain knowledge. In other instances, we believe that the issue does not have a direct tie to the ITP concept, but our experience suggests that the issue is of sufficient importance to include in this response. The first two issues involve challenges gathering validity evidence to support the use of SJTs, and the remaining issues deal more directly with SJT design considerations.