Industrial and organizational psychology, or I/O, can be opaque to outsiders. Many universities lack I/O graduate programs or courses, and students often stumble into the field by pure luck. The barriers to breaking in are especially high for students of color, who may not see many role models in the field who look like they do.
But now, a new program launched by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP, APA’s Division 14) is attempting to close the racial disparity gaps in I/O in an impactful, sustainable way—and it could serve as a model for other fields of psychology. Unlike previous attempts to support a diverse I/O workforce, SIOP takes a holistic, multi-institution approach that is designed to tackle pipeline problems from the early stages, focusing on alerting undergraduates of color to the opportunities available in I/O and preparing them for entry into paid doctoral programs.
Lars U. Johnson, PhD, an I/O psychologist and assistant professor of management at the University of Texas at Arlington, and chair of SIOP’s Diversifying I/O Psychology Program, has seen the field’s pipeline problems firsthand. Johnson, who is Black, had already earned a master’s in education when he first learned what I/O psychologists do—and was so intrigued he pursued his doctorate and switched fields. Now he is hoping to ensure more students know about the career path as undergraduates. Supporting diversity in the I/O workforce is putting into place what I/O psychologists already know about the importance of varied perspectives within organizations, Johnson said.
“People with different backgrounds bring things to the table we don’t always see when everyone is similar,” Johnson said. “We’re the folks who study these things. We also need to grab hold of these opportunities and make sure we’re benefiting.”
[Related: APA Task Force Report on Tenure and Promotion for Faculty of Color]
The need to diversify
The majority of SIOP members who report their race or ethnicity on surveys are White. Like many other fields of psychology, I/O has also long struggled with research samples that are not only WEIRD—an acronym for “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic”—but also POSH, wrote I/O psychologist Vivian Woo, PhD, of Culture Amp in a 2021 commentary (Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 1–2, 2021opens in new window). POSH refers to “professionals with official jobs in a formal economy, who enjoy relative safety from discrimination, living in high-income countries,” Woo and her team wrote. This segment is only a partial slice of any workforce.
Part of the path toward a more inclusive I/O field involves building a more inclusive I/O workforce. The relative lack of diversity within the field now can be a turnoff for new talent. Zytlaly Magaña, MS, who specializes in human resource recruitment, and is the cofounder of Latinos in I/O Psychology, left her first SIOP annual conference as an undergraduate in 2016 after one session. “I felt very small and out of place, almost like an impostor,” Magaña said.
Under its past president Steven Rogelberg, PhD, a professor of management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, SIOP launched an effort in 2021 to understand its biggest disparities and to focus on tangible, sustainable solutions. Members convened a task force to study membership data and concluded that the largest diversity gaps were in funded doctoral programs, and the groups most left behind were Black, Latinx, and Native American. These are not by any means the only populations that need support in I/O, Rogelberg said, but the division wanted to make sure to start with clearly actionable goals that they could deliver on.
“It’s just so easy to keep addressing these issues in superficial manners that don’t fundamentally change the system,” Rogelberg said. “That was really our motivation here, to change the landscape in robust, meaningful ways, and communicate to our membership that we’re willing to invest in this.”
The first two years of the program were supported through SIOP’s general funds, and the division is now reallocating money from its foundation to fund the program for the long term, said Larry Martinez, PhD, an I/O psychologist at Portland State University, and the past chair of the Diversifying I/O Psychology Program. “All of the members of the task force who envisioned how the program would operate are extensively trained in I/O concepts such as mentoring, emotional and instrumental support, career progression, [and] diversity and inclusion, so we leveraged our expertise in these areas to determine how the program would operate,” he said. SIOP is also hoping that other divisions at APA will look to this model to build their own programs, he added.
Sustainable efforts
The program consists of three phases. The first is a virtual 2-day conference every fall that aims to raise awareness of I/O as a field, particularly among undergraduate students who are Black, Latinx, and Native American. “We talk about what I/O psychology is as a field, how you get into it, how you prepare, how you write applications to programs, how you solicit letters of recommendation,” Martinez said. Several hundred students typically attend this event.
The next phase consists of expanding access to research experiences. To help non-White students get the experience they need to apply to doctoral programs, SIOP runs a 10-week mentorship program—with applications opening each January—that matches mentees with faculty mentors around the country. The program is geared toward undergraduates, though some master’s students can be considered if they are not already accepted or enrolled in a doctoral program. The target candidates are those who have some or no research experience and a demonstrated interest in I/O but lack copious opportunities to conduct research, said Jorge Lumbreras, PhD, an assistant professor of I/O psychology at Seattle Pacific University, who chairs the mentoring program.
The program matched 12 mentees with mentors in its first year and 15 in its second year. Mentorships happen remotely so that students at schools without I/O programs can participate in I/O research. For Joshua Duron, a nontraditional student in undergraduate psychology at the University of North Texas, the remote option was a huge benefit. His own school lacked research opportunities, Duron said, but he was able to work under Dorothy Carter, PhD, an I/O psychologist at Michigan State University, to do a research project on his passion: team cohesion in extreme environments such as space stations. Duron will graduate in fall 2023 and plans to attend a doctoral program in I/O psychology. His ultimate goal is to work as either an academic or a consultant in the space industry, where cohesion and conflict in life-threatening situations will be key to furthering human exploration. “I feel like I am on the cusp of this emerging industry,” Duron said.
For Jasmine Edun, who completed her undergraduate degree in psychology at Towson University in Maryland in spring 2023, a single class in I/O psychology sparked an interest—and a path to the new SIOP mentorship program. Edun’s professor in that course told her about Blacks in I/O Psychology, an independent organization founded by Shavonne Holman, MPS, IPMA-SCP, and Macy Cheeks, MS, SHRM-CP. Edun became involved in that organization’s mentee program, and her mentor pointed her to SIOP. Edun applied for the Diversifying I/O Psychology mentorship program and got accepted to work with Katina Sawyer, PhD, an I/O psychologist and associate professor of management and organizations at the University of Arizona. Sawyer, in turn, set Edun on a project looking at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the museum world. After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, many museums put out statements about DEI, Edun said, and Sawyer and her colleagues wanted to understand how these institutions were grappling with issues of diversity and their own past problems with inclusion and equity. Edun found that only about a quarter of the top art museums in the United States had made strong public DEI statements, while 45.8% had no DEI messaging at all.
Edun’s work, along with that of a previous mentee, will be the basis for ongoing research, Sawyer said. “Both of the mentees I’ve had are super motivated and interested in carving their place in the field,” she said. “I’ve had a great time getting to know them. That’s been important for me, getting to know talented, up-and-coming people who I think are going to make a big impact.”
Vicki Magley, PhD, the director of the I/O doctoral program in psychological sciences at University of Connecticut, said the program was also an exciting opportunity for her as a mentor because there are generally few resources for structured mentorship in I/O. Magley’s mentee conducted a project analyzing data on whether employee well-being influences employees’ capacity for participating in organizational trainings. For example, she said, “You could have a really burned-out employee who is being asked to participate in some kind of training effort, and they just might not be able to.”
Magley’s mentee now has multiple offers to graduate programs. “He put a lot of time and energy into his work with that project,” she said. “Just phenomenal.”
Networking support
Mentees in the Diversifying I/O Psychology Program are funded to attend SIOP’s annual conferenceopens in new window in April as the third phase of the program. There is an opening reception and a poster session for mentees, as well as ribbons to identify them so that fellow attendees can make them feel at home. “We’re trying to put together a really welcoming experience for them at the conference,” Martinez said.
The advantage of running the program through SIOP is having the opportunity to create large networks, said Enrica Ruggs, PhD, an I/O psychologist and associate professor of management at the University of Houston, who chaired the initial program task force. “We’re hoping to be able to build out the community,” Ruggs said. “They’ll be able to meet and network with faculty who may be taking students in the future, across a number of different institutions.”
And SIOP is not the only place where I/O psychologists of color are working to support one another. Blacks in I/O Psychology started as a local LinkedIn and Meetup group in the Washington, DC, area. When the pandemic shut down those in-person meetings, Holman and Cheeks took them virtual—and expanded their community around the United States and internationally. In 2021, they converted Blacks in I/O into a nonprofit, which runs a scholarship program, a mentorship program, and a career week to connect Black I/O psychologists to potential employers. Members can get their résumés reviewed, participate in mock interviews, or peruse jobs on the Blacks in I/O job board. The organization also puts out a monthly newsletter to 1,800 subscribers. “We have a slogan,” Holman said: “Opening doors that didn’t exist and keeping them open for generations to come.”
While SIOP’s leadership is focusing on the large diversity gap within doctoral programs for now, Holman and Cheeks are dedicated to supporting colleagues with master’s degrees. “Folks sometimes get discouraged when they think they cannot pursue I/O psychology because they don’t want to be an academic or can’t financially pursue a PhD program, so they fall off,” Holman said. “We’re really striving to change that narrative and let people know they can be a successful I/O practitioner with a master’s degree.”
Asians in I/O Psychology, cofounded by Shannon Cheng, PhD, and Alexander Hsu, MA, also runs a mentorship program and professional development panels and workshops and puts out a bimonthly newsletter for current and aspiring Asian I/O psychologists. The organization Latinos in I/O Psychology, cofounded by Magaña and Alexandra Ochoa, MS, who works for a landscaping firm, is piloting a mentorship program and hosts networking events in person and virtually. The group runs meetings at SIOP so that Latinx I/O students and psychologists will not feel as disconnected as Magaña did at her first meeting, and they host the Southern California I/O Psychology Annual Conference.
Several individual I/O programs also have their own initiatives. At Portland State, for example, Martinez runs a weeklong summer research program, the DEI Summer Research Institute, for undergraduates planning to apply to I/O graduate programs. Participants are trained in research topics related to diversity, inclusion, and allyship in the workplace. At UNC Charlotte, the Organizational Science Summer Institute aims to bring in historically underrepresented undergraduate students for a weeklong research education experience. The institute takes students from business, communications, and sociology, as well as psychology.
Over time, SIOP leadership hopes to expand its efforts into supporting aspiring I/O psychologists from other minoritized backgrounds and with other forms of diversity, such as disability or neurodivergence, and to close gaps beyond doctoral programs. But if these efforts are to make an impact, the crucial ingredient is persistence.
“It’s important to build programs that provide the structural change and to sustain them,” Ruggs said. “If we want to see increased diversity, we really have to put some teeth to it.”
