Constraints on the Adoption of Psychology‐based Personnel Practices: Lessons From Organizational Innovation

Surveys of organizational personnel practices often indicate that techniques advocated by industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists are used with less frequency than might be expected given their technical merit. This article attempts to explain this phenomenon by viewing the adoption of I/O‐type personnel practices as organizational innovations that are subject to the mechanisms and processes described in the innovation‐diffusion literature. It is argued that the adoption of I/O‐type personnel practices constitutes administrative innovation and that such innovation is not strongly influenced by technical merit. Rather, imitation processes, environmental threat, government regulation, and political influence often dominate highly uncertain adoption processes. Recommendations are made for enhancing the adoption rate for psychology‐based personnel innovations.