Generalizing from Laboratory to Field Settings: Research Findings from Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management.

If you believe that college sophomores are not real people arid that laboratory results don't generalize to the real world, this book may change your mind. However, if you have persisted in this belief despite previous arguments by Weick (1965), Fromkin and Streufert (1976), Berkowitz and Donnerstein (1982), and Mook (1983), an empirical, inductive approach to the laboratory/field issue may not convince you either. That's the approach that Ed Locke has taken in putting together this collection of eleven studies from the fields of organizational behavior, industrial/organizational psychology, and human resource management. Locke sets the stage in the introduction by asking the question, How do we know that we cannot generalize from laboratory to field settings? He suggests that it is an empirical question, one that cannot be argued deductively, but, rather, one that must be approached inductively.