Exclusion by design: Methodological sophistication and elitism as gatekeeping mechanisms in industrial-organizational psychology

Industrial-organizational psychology, despite its applied mission, remains methodologically narrow and epistemically exclusionary. One of the main reasons is that the field is dominated by positivist, quantitative approaches, largely developed and validated in WEIRD contexts, thereby marginalizing alternative methods and silencing voices from the global majority of workers. This paper argues that methodological orthodoxy functions as a form of epistemic gatekeeping, reinforcing structural inequalities and detaching the field from the lived realities of labor. Drawing on Fraser’s framework of justice, we call for methodological pluralism grounded in epistemic justice, one that recognizes diverse ways of knowing and reclaims the field’s social relevance. Unless I-O psychology undergoes such a transformation, the field may remain elegant and sophisticated in its methods while becoming increasingly inert and indifferent to the structural injustices and societal challenges that shape the workplace and are simultaneously reproduced, intensified, and contested within it, despite growing concern and urgency, and the field’s stated commitment to addressing them.