With an eye toward promoting applications of organizational justice, I respond to commentaries on my focal article (Greenberg, 2009a). Specifically, I challenge questionable claims regarding (a) characterization of applied research, (b) why we don't conduct more applied justice research, (c) moral versus instrumental rationales for promoting justice, (d) the validity of intervention studies, and (e) interpretations of Lewin's classic observation about the practical value of theory. I also identify and comment upon two suggestions for promoting applied justice research: (a) promoting cooperation between researchers and practitioners and (b) conducting comprehensive, integrative interventions.

The 12 papers commenting on K. R. Murphy (2009a) raise a number of important issues, most of which can be subsumed in one of four themes. First, papers examining content-oriented validation strategies are still necessary and useful, in part because of the frequent use of these strategies in the practice of industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology. Second, the term “content validity” means many different things both within and beyond the field of I–O psychology, and it is useful to understand what sorts of inferences examinations of test content do and do not support. Third, these 12 papers present very little evidence that content validation, as typically carried out by I–O psychologists, actually provides information about the likelihood that people who do well on the test will do well on the job. Finally, I believe that the best use of content-related evidence in validating selection tests is in developing hypotheses about relationships between test scores and criteria rather than in testing these hypotheses.

It is not often that one gets the opportunity to engage other scholars in lively written dialogue on a topic close to his/her professional heart. So I felt honored to provide the target article on work motivation (Kanfer, 2009), and I looked forward to reading my colleagues’ commentaries. As I had hoped, each commentary was quite stimulating. Some commentaries were also provocative, whereas others were more instructive. Regardless of orientation and issue, however, each commentary reflected a positive, forward-looking tone. That is, from a Reichenbach (1951) perspective, the commentaries seem to emphasize discovery (e.g., building new perspectives and approaches) over justification (e.g., extending, refining, and reconciling extant theories that dominated much of the late 20th century). Although paradigmatic work remains important, its role is cast more in the service of new advances rather than the other way around. As the commentaries also demonstrate, many new ideas and research directions are emerging. Their traction and utility for work motivation scientists and organizational personnel raise exciting, empirical questions.