Broad professor’s leadership powers a global research resource

In a time when workplace trends are shifting faster than ever, having access to credible, research-backed insights is critical for leaders across industries. The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior (AROPOB) stands out for making that expertise widely available through an open-access model, allowing anyone, anywhere, to engage with cutting-edge research on leadership, team dynamics, employee well-being, and more.

Frederick Morgeson, the Eli Broad Professor of Management

Founded in 2011 by Frederick Morgeson, the Eli Broad Professor of Management at the Broad College of Business, the journal published its first volume in 2014 and recently released its 12th volume. AROPOB publishes research-based literature reviews from leading global scientists in the fields of human resource management, industrial and organizational psychology, and organizational behavior, with each article offering practical implications for managers, organizations, and workers.

Ranked the #1 most highly cited journal in the world by Clarivate and Scopus, including first in Clarivate’s Management category out of 422 journals, AROPOB is both influential and widely used, with over 1 million article downloads in the past year alone. It exemplifies how faculty at universities like MSU are creating research that reaches beyond academia and shapes real-world decision-making, positioning the Broad College of Business and its faculty as thought leaders in producing accessible, actionable knowledge.

To learn more about how the journal came to be, what sets it apart, and where it’s headed next, we spoke with Morgeson about his role as founding editor and the broader impact of AROPOB.

I recognized that although there were a variety of different resources in the field, there was no single review-oriented journal that specialized in the domain of industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology, human resource management (HRM), and organizational behavior (OB). I thought there was a gap to be filled that would address an important need by developing a journal devoted exclusively to these topics, especially for reviews conducted by leading experts in a given topic.

My original vision for AROPOB was to provide distinctive reviews of important topics across the range of I/O, HRM, and OB domains. Although these are reviews of the academic research literature, the journal’s intended audience is broader than just professors and other academic researchers in our field. Of course we would like to reach immediate colleagues within a domain, but also other disciplinary colleagues updating their knowledge, graduate students entering the discipline, adjacent scientists looking into our field, undergraduates exploring the domain, teachers keeping up with the latest developments, and practitioners working in organizations. We have maintained this focus, but as our influence and impact has increased, I have sought to particularly emphasize the practical and global implications of a given research domain. My vision is that we should leverage our science to help organizations and their leaders and workers make data-based decisions as they lead their organizations and make important career-related decisions.

As the Eli Broad Professor of Management, I have spent my career conducting impactful research, educating our students (especially those in leadership roles or those who aspire to leadership roles), working with organizations to help solve a variety of difficult real-world problems they are facing, and contributing to the academic community through different leadership and editorial capacities. I bring this diversity of perspective to my role as editor in at least four ways. First, I have a broad knowledge of the field and have used that to identify topics that should be included in the journal. Each volume of the journal is curated by myself and my editorial committee, and we are very careful about choosing the mix of topics in each volume. Second, as an active scholar myself, I understand what it takes to write an engaging and impactful review. Having developed this skill during my more than 30-year career, I find it helpful in providing useful feedback to authors. Third, I have considerable editorial leadership experience having previously served as the editor of Personnel Psychology and currently serving as an editorial board member of numerous journals. This has given me a perspective on the field that is very helpful in creating and editing AROPOB. Fourth, throughout my career I have sought to always work with organizations and apply my research to the critical issues facing organizations. This has led me to be very aware of the importance of taking our rigorous academic research and using it constructively to help organizations and the people within them.

Because I have a strong belief that all our research should always have some implications for organizations generally and leaders or workers specifically, I have encouraged our authors to explicitly include implications for practice, including providing clear and detailed advice for how to use the knowledge that has been generated in a domain in their everyday work lives. Sometimes this is challenging, but the field is applied in nature and thus, absent implications for practice, we do a disservice to our primary organizational constituency. In addition, as editor I try to use my work with organizations and what I am hearing from my students to select topics that organizations care about and are currently dealing with.

AROPOB quickly became one of the top journals in the world and was always one of the most highly downloaded journals, but our transition to open access has certainly expanded our reach and influence. Because we publish reviews that are of great interest to a variety of different groups, making the journal more accessible has accelerated our impact. We have opened up the journal to those working in organizations who may not be affiliated with an academic institution, as well as being more available globally to those who might not have had the resources for institutional or individual subscriptions. This democratization and evangelization of the field’s knowledge is an important goal, is a social good, and ultimately will help organizations and individuals have better work places and careers.

Some of our most impactful articles focus on topics that have wide applicability across specific research areas. This includes reviews of influential psychological theories like Conservation of Resources, Self-Determination Theory, and Job Demands-Resources Theory. These theories are particulalry useful as explanations of human behavior and thus apply across numerous important domains. Other impactful articles focus on topics that have interest to both scholars and practitioners, including topics such as psychological safety, employee voice, and positive psychological capital. These topics are very important in organizations and thus receive considerable attention from a variety of AROPOB’s multiple stakeholders.

As I look toward our second decade, I remain interested in publishing reviews across the full range of topics across I/O Psychology, HRM, and OB domains. In addition, I am interested in publishing articles dealing with the broader work environment and important innovations in research methodology and statistical techniques. There are timely topics that have engaged scholars and perplexed organizations that I am excited to review. This includes such things as the changing nature of the work environment, increasing challenges in the relationship between workers and organizations, and the proliferation of more autonomous technologies such as artificial intelligence. Although we have accomplished much in the last 12 volumes, I am even more excited about the next 12 and how we can continue to serve as an important resource to scholars and practitioners alike.

The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior continues to play a vital role in connecting rigorous academic research with real-world application. To explore recent volumes and learn more about the journal’s contributions, visit annualreviews.org/orgpsych.