oa Balans van 25 jaar arbeids- en organisatiepsychologie: nieuwe thema's en methoden, maar praktische relevantie onder druk

Balance of 25 years of Work & Organizational Psychology: new themes and new methods, practical relevance under pressure

The aim of this article is – on the base of reviews and content analyses – to describe the developments in Work & Organizational Psychology during the last 25 years. Both the international as well as the national perspective will be considered. It is concluded that there were large differences between the US, the UK and continental European countries as far as priorities in research are concerned. In the Netherlands and Flanders three themes got most attention during the past ten years: (1) employee competencies, learning, and employability, (2) fair labour relations, psychological contracts, and job insecurity, and (3) work stress, fatigue, and burnout. Emerging research areas were job performance, productivity, and innovative behaviour, as well as mobbing, aggression and intimidation at the workplace. In these fields Dutch and Flemish authors played a substantive role. Research attention diminished for themes like employee participation, consultation, workplace democracy and organizational change. Meta-analyses and other more advanced techniques expanded enormously. On the other hand there were many scholars who strongly argued in favour of bridging the gap between academics and practitioners, to focus more on implementation and management of change, and to rely less on information of large companies only. The article concludes with presenting some research areas to help to narrow the academic-practice divide.