Henri T. Maindidze and Dr. Jason G. Randall
As an urban-serving university, Portland State University (PSU)'s research mission goes beyond discovery – we strive to take the next step and bring findings into practice.
In many fields and industries, too often there can be a gap between the people working in that field and the people studying it. Researchers might find insights or new methods that can improve results for practitioners, but the practitioners may not always have access to that research or be aware of how to implement it.
The field of Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology is no exception, and that is why PSU researchers Henri T. Maindidze, Dr. Jason G. Randall, and undergraduate research assistant Jennifer Walavalkar teamed up with two practicing I-O Psychologists, Dr. Laura Brooks Dueland of Inclusion-Analytics and Dr. Aisha Taylor of Taylor-Made Strategies, to come up with a set of well-defined strategies for connecting small businesses to the latest research in the field.
Their paper, "Let me in: Building an I-O bridge that combats the subtle redlining of the scientist–practitioner gap," was published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology earlier this month. In the spirit of open-access research, the paper is available with no paywall. It focuses on making research findings broadly available.
"We need to do what we can to make research findings accessible, and not just to other practicing I-O psychologists, but to employees, managers, leaders—anybody who can Google," said Dr. Randall.
Organizational Psychology for Small Businesses: Communicating Research to Professionals
The journal Industrial and Organizational Psychology periodically publishes a focal article for readers to respond to with commentary. In summer 2024, the focal article was "Quantifying the scientist–practitioner gap: How do small business owners react to our academic articles?" The PSU paper was written in response to that question.
"A lot of the work that we do is almost inevitably geared more towards large businesses, or towards these large sample sets that you might find in larger businesses. As such, how do we take a step back from that to be able to authentically say that I-O Psychology thinks about improving the workplace, not just the workplace of large organizations? Approximately 46.4% of the U.S. workforce are employed by small businesses, so how do we get to almost half of the workforce?" Maindidze said.
Lead author Maindidze is an I-O PhD student in PSU's Psychology department, and Assistant Professor of I-O Psychology Dr. Randall is his advisor. Dr. Taylor, one of the two practitioner authors, is also an alum of the I-O PhD program. The two partner authors are not only practitioners, but also both own small businesses.
Their paper offers concrete strategies to increase professionals' access to evidence-based research in the I-O psychology field. It focuses on improving access, for small businesses in particular, to academic research on topics like how to improve workers' well-being and foster diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, as well as on the role I-O graduate programs can play in bridging the gap.
"Larger businesses tend to have more resources to be able to employ a psychologist, or people who do similar work. For example, they might have people whose specific job description includes something around pulling evidence-based recommendations. Comparatively, in a smaller organization, you might see employees who are wearing a lot of different hats. Those in small businesses are doing a lot of important work, and because of that, they might not have the capacity to do a dedicated Google scholar search, Proquest search, or something like that. So where do we reach them?" Maindidze said.
The researchers outlined several strategies for communicating research outcomes with busy professionals outside of their field, which include creating easily digestible summaries and doing outreach via social media. Those strategies are conveniently illustrated in this post Maindidze shared on LinkedIn, which includes an infographic breaking down the major insights from the study.
By developing practical strategies to make evidence-based findings accessible to small businesses, this work demonstrate how research can drive meaningful change, fostering inclusive and thriving workplaces while exemplifying PSU’s mission of bringing knowledge into action.