Opinions have been divided regarding the relevance of the APA Ethics Code to non-mental health specialties and even whether the code should attempt to encompass all psychology specializations. However, these opinions have crystallized without the benefit of any appreciable empirical data, until now. This study investigates the applicability of the ethical principles and standards of the code to 398 first-person narratives of ethical incidents reported by industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists. On average, 2.8 (of the 5) principles enumerated in the code were deemed applicable to each incident, and each principle was applicable to more than half the incidents provided. Of the code’s 89 ethical standards, 75 (84.3%) were applicable to at least one incident. Among the 10 categories of standards, resolving ethical issues and human relations were the most frequently applicable, whereas therapy standards were virtually never applicable. However, for 42.7% of the incidents, trained judges identified a substantive deficiency or ambiguity for I-O psychologists in the code. These deficiencies were subsequently grouped into seven higher order categories (assessments in organizations; research practices; data management; professional interactions; business practices; student ethics; and proactive ethical behavior). Recommendations are offered for improving those putative deficiencies, and implications are discussed for I-O psychologists, the APA’s Ethics Code Task Force (ECTF), and other nonclinical domains of psychology.

Professional ethics has not been a major focus in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology—in comparison with our study of unethical behavior in organizations. Consequently, we know very little about ethical situations actually faced by I-O psychologists. This article presents and tests a structural perspective on understanding the nature of ethical dilemmas that can facilitate such study. A taxonomy of five paradigmatic forms of ethical dilemmas is defined and placed in a theoretical context. Narrative descriptions of 292 ethical situations were obtained from a sample of 228 professional members of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) in the United States and were used to empirically test the taxonomy. The narratives were content analyzed for form of dilemma, work domain of occurrence, relevance to human resource administration concerns, and favorability of the situation’s resolution. The work domains that were most problematic were academic research/publication activities, individual assessment/assessment centers, consulting issues regarding the client, and academic supervising/mentoring. There were no significant differences as a function of respondents’ sex, seniority, or professional membership status (member/fellow). This relatively “content free” structural aspect of ethical dilemmas enables comparisons across different domains (of professions, organizations, demographic groups, age cohorts, etc.) in which the overt idiosyncratic ethical problems experienced are not commensurable. Similarly, it can yield interpretable longitudinal comparisons despite changes in the manifestations of ethical problems encountered over time.

One day, a well-dressed, mature gentleman—one might be tempted to describe him as elderly, except he appears extremely vital and alert—walks into a psychotherapist's office for a first visit. After just a few brief exchanges, the therapist gets the impression that the gentleman is a socially adept, financially successful, educated professional, and a well-regarded member of the community. But all is not as it seems on the surface. This new patient “presents” with lingering complaints of vague malaise, and despite his apparent success, he reports having experienced long-term intermittent bouts of anxiety and fear stemming from threats that the therapist cannot be sure are real or imagined: Various people seem regularly aiming to put him out of business; family relatives are disrespectful, demeaning, and do not understand him. Moreover, there is an existential quality to his anxiety: As a younger, middle-aged man, although already successful, he changed his name legally because he felt it better suited his identity. In fact, he came close to changing his name twice again in recent years, but, after agonizing about it for a long time, could not make up his mind what to change it to; nothing seemed to “fit” well enough. The therapist surmised, however, that the patient was more concerned with the impression his name would make on potential business clients and competitors than with any genuine expression of his nature, and he seemed relatively unconcerned with maintaining his nominal family identification. It struck the therapist that his patient's insecurities were not in keeping with his considerable accomplishments in life. In fact, for an educated professional, the patient seemed to lack insight into his own character and values.

Bergman and Jean (2016) have contributed an important essay to the continuing self-reflection and maturation of the field of industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology—or as it is known in much of the world outside the United States, work psychology.1 They clearly and adequately document that the field has relatively neglected to study the world of (largely lower-level) workers who are not managers, executives, professionals, or students and that this has affected adversely the validity of our science and the relevance of our professional practice in a number of not-so-intuitively obvious ways. But as critical as those observations are, I believe the most important aspect of their piece has to do with the inferences they offer as to why our published literature is so skewed. They suggest six potential, not mutually exclusive, explanations, including the possibility of personal biases among I-O psychologists. However, before focusing on those explanations, it should be informative to place the Bergman/Jean thesis in context. There is a growing, recent body of critical evidence and/or commentary concerning this and similar issues—although less consideration generally has been given to their likely causes.

It's important to place the issues expressed by Ryan and Ford (2010) in historical perspective. Although they acknowledge some earlier expressions of concern, especially with respect to professional training (Naylor, 1971), I think it's fair to characterize the overall tenor of their essay as one of sounding the alarm: a new and unique impending identity crisis. However, as previously noted, “industrial-organizational psychology seems to be subject to recurring identity threats” (Lefkowitz, 2005, p. 18).

Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. By Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. 381 pages.