The Future of Work and Organizational Psychology: An Interactive Debating Session Addressing the Need to Reconceptualize our Own Academic Future

The field of Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) has important objectives for the 21 century. While the EAWOP conference in Dublin will be taking place 10 years after the onset of the global economic crisis, the effects are still widely visible across Europe. It is therefore crucial for researchers to contribute to contemporary debates about how work can be organized in the 21 century. However, it is not self-evident that research in the field of WOP achieves these aims. Moreover, ethics in research is becoming increasingly important—both in the choice of research topics and in how we do research—and thus the field finds itself at a crossroad, where choices should be made about what the future of WOP will look like. The purpose of this session therefore is to discuss the role of work psychology within its broader context and to consider potential
alternatives for how the field identifies itself. We want to discuss some of 1) the interrelations and interdependencies between the field and the larger context(s) it is embedded in, 2) the imprints these relations leave on how we do research in WOP and what we do with the research we have done, and 3) the alternatives for the status quo of WOP to postulate a future-oriented idea for how the field can contribute to knowledge. The session aims to identify some ways the field gets affected by its cultural, political, organizational and academic context, and the way the field shapes (or intends to shape) its context. We hope to unravel some of the shortcomings that result from the field’s alignment with certain academic,
political, economic and organizational narratives. Finally, together with the participants, we want to reflect on what other available perspectives are out there that could allow for more critical, humanistic and profound ways of doing research in work psychology, and for leaving a positive impact on the world of work. A recent editorial of EJWOP (Daniels, 2016) addressed the importance
of the journal in addressing societal concerns, and the aim of this symposium is to contribute to this by debating how researchers can conduct research that is relevant for both research and the world outside academia.