In this speech, I will offer a detour between two dilemmatic, controversial, and potentially opposite elements of the work of Work and Organizational (W-O) psychologists, i.e., consultancy and activism. W-O psychology has the implicit mandate of being a discipline oriented toward practice. As an applied science, W-O psychology scholars aim to realize applied research that can benefit practitioners and organizations by offering indications on how to realize behavioral and job design interventions to improve well-being and organizational performance.
While this mandate can purely be intentional in contributing to the greater good of society, there is still a certain degree of criticality. This is because W-O psychology actualizes as a managerial discipline in which applied research and W-O psychologists' consultancy result as a tool for maintaining power, hierarchies, and controlling the people in the workplace.
Critical perspectives of W-O psychology have widely informed about the complicity of W-O psychologists in capitalism and violent forms of repression in the organization. Frequently, advocates for a responsible W-O psychology expand the interest in work and organizations to create a space for social and political change to protect, sustain, and maintain the dignity of all human and non-human beings in the workplace.
As such, Critical W-O psychology appears as a form of activism as scholars and practitioners in this branch recognize that their work is a world-making activity that implies the recognition of socio-political contexts of work for understanding and contributing to the human experience at work and in organizations. Based on this dilemma, controversy, and potential opposition, I will try to enrich this tension by presenting nonviolent public-a(c)tions in W-O psychology. Bound in the ethics of grievability, nonviolent public-a(c)tions in W-O psychology refers to a series of research and 'applied' actions that subvert and expand our work as W-O psychologists.