On the Social Utility of Reading and Academic Writing in Work and Organizational Psychology

In this paper, we wish to reflect on the social utility of reading and writing academic texts in work and organizational psychology (WOP). On the surface, academic texts represent the cumulative body of perspectives and evidence-based knowledge of WOP. All the very forms of academic texts (e.g., research articles, and reviews) are meant to provide services to the WOP community and benefit the broader society. Implicitly, writers of academic texts in WOP produce papers to communicate to a broader range of readers and to circulate ideas about the psychology of work and organization, which can ultimately contribute to the social wellbeing. However, pressures on writing academic texts, the organization of the university system, the privileging of certain perspectives and methods (e.g., mainstream models) and the instrumentalization of papers demystify such a view of academic texts. In our experience as writers and readers in the field of WOP, we can do nothing but acknowledge the variety of experiences that we have had with difficulties in writing and reading academic texts. In this paper, we use an unconventional writing style to take into account all these experiences with the wish to reflect on the social utility of writing and reading academic texts in WOP. This unconventional approach allows us to realize a scientific discussion about ethical, ontological, epistemological and socio-political aspects of research and practice in WOP. Moreover, this unconventional approach to writing allows us to imagine possible alternatives that can contribute to developing the social utility of WOP.