Blackwell Reference Online

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There has been growing concern, expressed by several authors internationally in Industrial, Work, and Organizational (IWO) psychology, of an increasing divide between research and practice in personnel selection. While many would recognize that selection psychology has flourished as a research-based professional practice, there have been unambiguous signs that the practitioner and scientific wings of the discipline have been moving away from each other over the past decade or so (e.g., Anderson, Herriot, & Hodgkinson, 2001 ; Dunnette, 1990 ; Hodgkinson, Herriot, & Anderson, 2001 ; Sackett, 1994 ). Indeed, the unhealthy development of a “practitioner–researcher divide” has been claimed, the effects of which are undoubtedly deleterious to the synergistic functioning of the combined profession of selection psychology within IWO psychology more generally ( Anderson et al., 2001 ). The aims of this chapter are fourfold: 1.  to establish the field of the science–practice interface in selection as a “ process domain ” topic area worthy of research in its own right; 2.  to argue that the most pragmatic way forwards is where a “ natural distance ” between research and practice exists combined with sufficient and appropriate channels for exchange between the two; 3.  to describe a typographical model of four types of research generated in selection psychology; and 4.  to present ... log in or subscribe to read full text