Lord and Dinh (2014) raise a number of important points that need to be considered in development of leadership research and practice. There are three main issues that we wish to address to support and develop their statements.

There has been no more fundamental concept in the field of industrial and organizational (I–O) psychology than “employability,” whereby individuals seek to gain and retain jobs with organizations, and organizations desire to attract and keep quality employees. Indeed, theory, research, and practice in the field continually have sought to identify the best predictors of performance and career success. Expansion of the predictor and criterion domains has been a focus of scholarly and practical concern for at least the past couple of decades, as we have realized that the fundamental nature of work, jobs, and organization have changed considerably in U.S. organizations.

It is encouraging to see the diversity of sources cited in the top introductory textbooks in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. It is not surprising that the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) and Personnel Psychology are off the charts in terms of the two most-cited sources in these six textbooks. However, I would not have expected that in these books, “77% of the top-cited articles were published in cross-disciplinary journals” (Aguinis et al., 2017, p. 507). I wish to build on Aguinis et al. (2017), with a focus on the relationship between I-O psychology and human resource development (HRD). I am the author of an HRD textbook (Werner, 2017a). The journal I co-edit, Human Resource Development Quarterly, is one of those “cross-disciplinary journals” on Aguinis et al.’s list of most-cited sources (56th out of 110, 40th in academic journals), with 16 citations. Finally, my article on legal issues in performance appraisal was cited in five of the six textbooks (Werner & Bolino, 1997).

Hugo Munsterberg, the father of our field, created the structure of our applied psychology theory in his Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913). His three research questions were (a) “How we can find the men whose mental qualities make them best fitted for work which they do?” (b) “Under what psychological conditions we can secure the greatest and most satisfactory output of work from every man?” (c) “How we can produce most completely the influences of human minds which are desired in the interest of business?”

Adler et al. (2016) effectively discuss the shortcomings of performance ratings as well as performance management solutions. However, they leave out one important performance management solution from their review and discussion, the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES; Pritchard, 1990; Pritchard, Harrell, DiazGranados, & Guzman, 2008; Scaduto, Hunt, & Schmerling, 2015). We intend to respond to Adler et al. by explaining how ProMES could make up for some of the shortcomings described in performance ratings and performance management, as well as challenge the field to further consider this well-researched and established evidence based solution as a viable alternative.