Much ink has been spilled on the scientist–practitioner gap, that is, the apparent divide between knowledge published in academic peer-reviewed journals and the actual business practices employed in modern organizations. Most prior papers have advanced meaningful theories on why the gap exists, ranging from poor communication skills on the part of academics to paywalls and other obstacles preventing the public from accessing research in industrial-organizational psychology (I-O). However, very few papers on the scientist–practitioner gap have taken an empirical approach to better understand why the gap exists and what can be done about it. In our focal article, we specifically discuss the gap as it pertains to small businesses and present empirical data on the topic. Drawing from our experiences working with and in small businesses before entering a PhD program, we suggest that a primary reason for the existence of this gap is the differences between large and small businesses, and we advance two theory-driven reasons for why this is the case. Next, we compiled abstracts and practical implications sections from articles published in top I-O journals in the past 5 years, then we collected ratings and open-ended text responses from subject matter experts (i.e., small business owners and managers) in reaction to reading these sections. We close by recommending several potential perspectives, both for and against our arguments, that peer commentators can take in their responses to our focal article.

Big data is becoming a buzzword in today's corporate language and lay discussions. From individually targeting advertising based on previous consumer behavior or Internet searches to debates by Congress concerning National Security Agency (NSA) access to phone metadata, the era of big data has arrived. Thus, the Guzzo, Fink, King, Tonidandel, and Landis (2015) discussion of the challenges (e.g., confidentiality, informed consent) that big data projects present to industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists is timely. If the hype associated with these techniques is warranted, then our field has a clear imperative to debate the ethics and best practices surrounding use of these techniques. We believe that Guzzo et al. have done our field a service by starting this discussion.

Gardner, Ryan, and Snoeyink (2018) provided an excellent and much-needed analysis of the status of women in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Although others have produced overall assessments of the status of women in psychology (Eagly & Riger, 2014; Kite et al., 2001), these are not sufficient to identify conditions within the subfields of psychology. As shown by statistics on the divisions of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/division/officers/services/profiles.aspx), the subfields differ greatly in their gender balance, with some being male dominated (e.g., experimental and cognitive science), others female dominated (e.g., developmental psychology), and still others representing women and men more equally (e.g., social and personality psychology). I-O psychology is among the more gender-balanced fields, with an increasing proportion of women over time. It would seem that I-O's gradual inclusion of more women should have changed aspects of research and discourse in this field. In this comment, we argue that these women have produced impressive changes.

The focal article (Johnson et al., 2010) provides a highly upbeat assessment regarding the potential for job component validation (JCV) and J-coefficient methods to “substantially advance the science and practice of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology through synthetic validity” (emphasis added). It follows on the heels of earlier, similarly enthusiastic endorsements (Jeanneret, 1992; Jeanneret & Strong, 2003; LaPolice, Carter, & Johnson, 2008). For example, LaPolice et al. claimed that the JCV Rs they obtained “are all very close to the maximum correlation for each dependent variable, suggesting that our models are approaching the best possible prediction” (p. 435, emphasis added).

More than any other man, Mr. Paterno is Penn State – the man who brought the institution national recognition, the man who built a football program based on honor for 46 years, the winningest football coach in Division I history…Paterno is at the core of the university's sense of identity. (Guarino, 2011, November 10)

We believe that Alderfer's (2013) intergroup analysis of the Penn State scandal can be enriched by focusing on the special role that Joe Paterno played in the events leading up to the 2010 grand jury that brought the scandal to light outside the university community. On the basis of the social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001), we argue that the community afforded Paterno the trust that he appears to have abused to suppress the scandal because he embodied the norms, values, and goals of Penn State in a way that made him prototypical of the university. By making the broader group category salient, Paterno was able to shape the behavior of representatives of many sub-groups described by Alderfer within the administration, athletics, and community. Coupled with a high degree of institutional ambiguity, Paterno's prototypicality likely enabled him to suppress the “constructive diversity” (p. 123) of checks and balances that should have operated at Penn State. This disruption to effective intergroup processes prohibited necessary oversight over the PSU athletic program and the Second Mile that otherwise might have uncovered Jerry Sandusky's crimes much earlier.

The focal article by Jones and Stout (2015) has revealed just how much there is for industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists to try to unpack in the implications of nepotism for organizations and employees, particularly in relation to selection and development practices. In this brief commentary, we try to make two contributions to this state of affairs. First, we discuss the importance of disentangling different types of nepotistic and social connection preference (SCP) effects in context because these differences may in turn implicate distinct processes and effects that shape employee outcomes. We do this in part by drawing on findings from some of our own data on nepotistic hiring within a Caribbean coast guard organization (Rajpaul-Baptiste & Calvard, 2012). Second, we argue that for nepotism and SCP to be considered more fully and fruitfully as topics for I-O research and practice, these topics need to be integrated and consolidated more thoroughly along with existing work on diversity management, cross-cultural psychology, organizational discourses, organizational contexts, institutional logics, and social network approaches. We believe this is likely to produce more theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical coherence across emerging I-O research in this area, without leading researchers and practitioners to reinvent the wheel or misguidedly rely on cultural stereotypes about nepotism and cronyism.

In their focal article, Pulakos, Mueller Hanson, Arad, and Moye (2015) have presented a helpful five-step plan for improving the use of performance management (PM) within organizations. As they have pointed out, it is important that an organization's PM system match the organization's values and culture. At the same time, one cannot forget that an organization's PM system should also align with the organization's other human resource (HR) practices. Thus, I suggest that taking time to make sure this alignment happens should be included as a substep under the first step (i.e., plan change) of the model.