In this visual era, your attention might have been caught first by the image of free-floating book covers that swarm around this website. What better way to introduce the Research Institute for Organizational Psychology than by the books which cross on a daily basis our hands, and on which we leave our finger-prints. As each of us chose a favorite book - not the favorite one as we are fond of many -, we are telling something of what captures our imagination, but also what sometimes forms an obligatory passage to work through. Books are not stacked in a neatly ordered way as in libraries or as we often try to do in our own bookshelves; rather they are brought in dialogue through creative association in an ever-unfolding connectivity. Even if Organizational Psychology, like any other discipline, tries to set boundaries on what are the obligatory, favorite and constitutive books of this field, we are eager to follow new connections, we are curious to pave new reading trajectories.
Through the books we read, review and occasionally try to write and publish, we can also tell something of the tumultuous history of the field of Psychology and Organizational Psychology. Psychology can be considered a successful discipline not in the least because of a widespread impact of its ideas, concepts and practices that have found entry in all parts of society, such as work, education, health care, sexuality, family, criminality, and security, an impact which can easily be reflected on Organizational Psychology and its widespread influence on the concepts and practices used in organizational life, whether we think of assessment, coaching, team building, or self-management.
With this increasing success, there was also a mounting scrutiny, analysis and critique. Psychology was questioned for its one-dimensional attachment to neo-positivist scientific models and its celebration of the methods and logics from the natural sciences, for lack of consideration and even reproduction of ideological and political differences and for its imperialist imposition of a heroic and phallocratic individualism on people and cultures across the world. Since the early nineteen-seventies, various strands of critique were developed in critical, social constructionist, and feminist psychological approaches. When OPSY was founded in 1979, Peter Dachler engaged fully in this critical reflection, and undertook in his 25 years as acting chair holder pioneering work in rethinking the foundational concepts of Organizational Psychology.
Such history triggers the ways we are giving substance and form to a contemporary Organizational Psychology, creating a bridge between psychological and social theory with problematizations from management and organizations. We aim for an (Organizational) Psychology oriented by a reflexive and creative foundationalism - as Brown and Stenner (2009) call this -; we are keen to critically reflect on the ways psychological concepts are used in contemporary life, we are eager to develop a thinking that affirms the creative possibilities of a Life, we want to enable interventions-with-a-difference in how organizations co-constitute and alter society. Thus, zoom in on the many engaged and creative projects that will tell you what a contemporary Organizational Psychology can mean, and discover the many books implied in these imaginative trajectories…