Preface

Organizations are complex social systems that sometimes perform well and sometimes fail miserably. The fields of organizational psychology and organizational behavior seek to facilitate a greater understanding of social processes in organizations. Organizational researchers and practitioners in both fields also seek to use these insights to enhance the effectiveness of organizations-a goal that certainly benefits organizations, but also their employees and the communities in which they operate.

This book is designed to provide students with a thorough overview of both the science and practice of organizational psychology and its closely related field of organizational behavior. The first three editions were written to serve as the primary text for graduate and undergraduate courses in organizational psychology, but we also recognized (and hoped) that the book could also serve as the primary text for graduate and undergraduate organizational behavior courses. As we expected, the book has been frequently used in organizational psychology courses, but less frequently in organizational behavior. One of our goals in the Fourth Edition is to make the book more appealing to our colleagues teaching organizational behavior courses, while at the same time retaining features of the book that many of you have enjoyed since the first edition of the book came out in 2002.

Because this book is typically used at the graduate or upper-level undergraduate levels, we've invested considerable effort to provide a solid research base in all of the chapters. Since the last edition of the book came out in 2014, the amount of research on organizations has increased considerably. To share this new research, we put a lot of effort into both updating the citations and highlighting new theories and areas of research. In this fourth edition, we have included more material on the practical implications of those theories and research. We did this to make the book more appealing to a wider audience, but also based on a sincere belief that the theories and research in organizational psychology and organizational behavior have a great deal of practical value to organizations.

NEW TO THE FOURTH EDITION

The most visible change to the fourth edition is the change in title from Organizational Psychology: A Scientist-Practitioner Approach to Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior: Evidence-Based Lessons for Creating Sustainable Organizations. We'll address the first part of the new title, then the second part. We believe that the fields of organizational psychology and organizational behavior have become so closely aligned, and a significant portion of the research we cite in the book is conducted by researchers with training in organizational behavior, that it made sense to use both in the title of the book. The second part of the new title reflects our belief that the main goals of organizational research and of organizational researchers (a term we use throughout the book in lieu of organizational psychology or organizational behavior researchers) are to make organizations more effective and, at the same time, enhance employee well-being by using evidence based on peer-reviewed, rigorous research. In addition, we felt that the term "Sustainable Organizations" captures the essence of these two interrelated goals, and we hope to show that these are compatible goals. We also chose to include the term Sustainable in the title for another reason, namely that many organizations in recent years have engaged in efforts to address environmental crises and have found such efforts to be compatible with the goals of making a profit.

As with past editions, we tried to strike a balance between covering what we consider to be fundamental topics in organizational research and, at the same time, keeping up with important changes in organizational research and important trends in studying organizations. To that end, we introduce two completely new chapters in this edition. The first is titled "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" (Chapter 4). As most readers know, the demographic composition of many organizations has changed considerably in the past 20?years, and in this chapter, we examine the implications of those demographic changes. The other new chapter is "Creating Sustainable Organizations in Warming World" (Chapter 14). As stated above, more and more organizations have implemented environmental sustainability initiatives and, through these initiatives are making significant strides in combating many of the most pressing environmental challenges we face today. Cynthia Thompson, our new co-author for this edition, has written both of these chapters, and they are excellent!

In addition to adding the two new chapters, we have also made some more subtle but no less important changes to the structure of the book. For example, we have focused Chapter 2 entirely on research methods and moved the material on statistical analysis to an appendix (Appendix A), since we have found that many course instructors do not cover statistics in their courses. We have also changed the title of Chapter 3 from "Recruitment and Socialization" to "Recruitment, Attraction, Socialization, and Retention" to recognize that there are many sub-facets to the recruitment process, and given recent changes in the labor market, we felt that retention needed to be covered as a separate topic. We have also changed the title of Chapter 5 from "The Work-Non Work Interface" to "Managing the Work-Life Interface: Individual and Organizational Strategies" in recognition of the fact that even though individuals do play an important role in balancing work with other aspects of their lives, managerial behaviors and organizational policies are equally if not more important. Finally, Chapter 7 from the third edition has been changed from "Occupational Stress and Employee Health and Well-Being" to Employee Health, Safety, and Well-Being" in recognition of the fact that much more emphasis has been placed on promoting employee health and well-being, as opposed to simply mitigating stressors.

In addition to re-titling some chapters, we decided to consolidate some. For example, the chapters on productive and counterproductive behavior have been condensed into one productive and counterproductive behavior in organizations (Chapter 6), and we now have only one chapter on work motivation (Chapter 9). Both of these chapter consolidations were done not only to manage the length of the book but also to allow us to bring in new topics into this edition. As with the past three editions, we do not have a separate chapter on cross-cultural issues but have made a conscious effort to incorporate cross-cultural findings in each chapter because organizations are growing increasingly global in nature, and therefore it is vital to examine the generalizability of our knowledge base beyond U.S. borders.

In terms of content, the major changes involved updating the substantive material in the chapters. Since the third edition was published, many new conceptual and theoretical developments have occurred in organizational research, and a great deal of new research has been conducted. We have worked hard to convey these new developments and summarize important new research findings and how those findings can be used to make organizations more effective. We have also continued the feature "People Behind the Research" in the fourth edition, where we feature prominent researchers to describe how they became interested in a particular topic. We began this feature in the second edition because we thought it would be interesting to students, and more importantly, put a "human face" on some of the names that are cited in the text. Because we received a great deal of positive feedback about this feature in the third edition, we have continued it in the fourth edition, although most of the individuals featured have changed. We have also added a similar feature in each chapter titled "Practitioner Spotlight," where we have practitioners describe their work related to a particular chapter topic. As with the "People Behind the Research" features in past editions, we gave them free reign to describe their training, what their jobs are, and really anything else they wanted to include.

Finally, the fourth edition now includes two new features in each chapter: "Implications for Managers" and "Translating the Science." In the Implications for Managers feature, we discuss the practical implications of a particular theory or set of research findings; in the Translating the Science feature, we select a piece of research and describe it in non-technical language. The purpose of these additions is to highlight the considerable practical value of organizational theory and research.

A NOTE ON COVID-19

While most of the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic are thankfully behind us, we do believe that the pandemic had a transformative effect on the workplace. Remote work has become a regular feature of many jobs and workplaces, and many employees left the workforce during the pandemic and never returned, and some stayed but made the decision to do their jobs at a minimal level (e.g., so-called "Quiet Quitters").

Given these and other effects of the pandemic, we mention them throughout the book. We do, however,...