To prosper, organizational psychology should… bridge application and scholarship

Academics and practitioners differ on so many dimensions that researchers have described them as living in different “thought worlds.” That gap persists, and there are important explanations for it, but a confluence of economic and organizational forces is driving academics and practitioners toward each other. To date, much of the effort by academics to reach out to practitioners has focused on the diffusion of scientific knowledge, not its creation. This paper explores several promising strategies for improving both the bidirectional diffusion of knowledge as well as its creation. It argues that for genuine change to occur, it is necessary to modify academic reward systems and to promote much closer collaboration between academics and practitioners.