Expect surprises: I-O and the global business environment

Abstract

Global business has expanded dramatically over the past decades, and it provides unique opportunities for research and practice by organizational psychologists. Organizational psychology doctoral programs provide little preparation for international practice or research, however. What is uncertain is how to internationalize, and indeed, whether to do so is a question that is just coming to the fore. Progress in organizational psychology can be accelerated if we learn to expect surprises. Internationalization of learning and teaching in organizational psychology will provide a consistently richer vein of surprises than would business-as-usual in our already overcrowded curricula. Global economic development provides the context for this chapter about how to stimulate the education and development of the next generation of organizational scientists. Beginning with an examination of culture, the chapter investigates language and communication, learning and habituation, and knowledge and comprehension of paradigm shifts as superordinate viewpoints, and then proceeds to consideration of some tactics for internationalization and some of the academic barriers we will encounter as we seek to broaden and deepen our curricula simultaneously.