SIOP 28th Annual Conference, HOUSTON- 2013

SIOP Conference 2013 in Houston

Article by a Student Author

A WOP student’s experience at the SIOP conference

By Andy Ross

As part of my Erasmus Mundus Master in Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology degree, I am completing my internship period at Organization & Management Solutions (OMS) in Guelph, Canada.  Being situated in North America, it was an obvious decision that the SIOP Conference held from April 11-13, represented a great opportunity to familiarize myself with the I/O Psychology state of art in North America. Decision taken, flight booked and off I went to Houston, USA to attend the conference.

After a car ride to the USA, a short stay at the USA border control and two rescheduled flights because of weather issues, I finally arrived in the warm Houston, Texas. Once there, I found myself to be staying in an enormous, luxurious hotel with other conference attendees. With the registration completed in the evening before the conference started and having had chosen the symposiums, panel discussion, round table discussions and posters I wanted to attend at the conference, I was ready to start the conference and enjoy the luxurious facilities and services offered by the hotel.

First day, I managed to attend various panel discussions and to have a look at the fantastic posters presented by various scholars and researchers.  After having been emerged in the field head to toe for the last two years, it was amazing to discover how many aspects, areas and directions of I/O psychology I was still unaware of.  During the breaks in-between the sessions, I managed to make great connections and learned a lot more about the implications of I/O psychology in North America. In addition I had the pleasure to engage with very interesting people, from University professors, to graduate students and practitioners and learn about their areas of involvement. My highlight of the first day was a panel discussion on Humanitarian Work Psychology’s role in the future of I/O psychology, I found this talk to be particularly interesting and very thought provoking.

After an interesting first day, I was now ready to newly immerse myself into the theories and practical experiences shared on the second day. Today I had the pleasure to go to a round table discussion about Cross-cultural work design, during which we discussed how work could be designed to better accommodate different cultures. Yet again this day was very fruitful for networking, during which I had the pleasure to meet some of the few European I/O psychology practitioners present and meet some other known European faces. Later on in the evening various receptions were held, which again presented a good opportunity to network and have some great food and drinks.

Third day and last day, a very interesting experience is about to go to an end. Today I went to a very interesting session on training cross-cultural competences, which I found to be of high importance in the field of I/O psychology. Furthermore I managed to get some more information about incivility in the workplace that proved to be very insightful for a training on the same topic, I was working on for my internship. Later on, I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion about “Internationalizing I/O programs”, during which various international I/O programs were presented inter alia the Erasmus Mundus WOP-P program. Following this, it slowly came to the time to say goodbye and get back to the internship in Canada.

Overall I had a great experience at the SIOP conference and I am looking forward to hopefully attend SIOP 2014 in Hawaii.  I would recommend to anyone working or interested in the field to attend the conference and get an insight in what is going on in the field out there. For any more information, have a look at www.siop.com where you can find all information including the program of this year.

SIOP Conference 2013 in Houston

Article by a Student Author

A WOP student’s experience at the SIOP conference

It all started with an e-mail. "EM students consider attending to SIOP conference", said the subject title. In the body of the message, Gloria Gonzalez-Morales, our coordinator at the University of Guelph (UoG), has explained that this is a good way to create contacts and explore the Northern American trends in I/O psychology (that's how they call WOP psychology there). Even though it seemed like a good idea, the costs were quite high. Nevertheless, I wanted to know more. So at the 6th WOP-P Winterschool dedicated to Bernhard Wilpert, I talked with Thomas Sasso, Ashlyn Patterson and Dan Van Der Werf, visiting students from UoG and asked them about the conference. What they told me is that every SIOP conference is a wonderful experience for students to broaden their view of the latest developments of the theory and practice of our profession and that there's a lot of parties going on. I liked what they said and three days later I paid the conference registration fee and booked the flight along with Justine and Andy (two of my colleagues with whom I were to spend my last semester at the University of Guelph).

And so it happened that in the evening of 10th of april, five psychology students were riding in a cab from Bush International Airport to the downtown of Houston, Texas. Out of those five, one had unclear information about the location of his hotel. After having crushed the driver's hand with the back door of the vehicle, he thought it was a good idea to ask him questions about his religious orientation and about how we should all be tolerant when it comes to the questions of faith. When the cab driver asked him why did he come to Houston, he said that there is this journal called SIOP and that it has a conference there. Having heard this, the other four students (I was one of them) started discussing the importance of putting garlic into the tomato pasta sauce. Apparently there were more things about which the open-minded student was confused. But this is not his story.

This story is about 4000 HR and I/O psychology students, professors, researchers and practitioners that gathered in the Hilton Americas Hotel for the annual conference of SIOP (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) from the 11th til 13th of April 2013. And boy, was there was a lot going on. Twenty-one conference rooms were almost constantly packed with poster presentations (which were more or less interactive), panel discussions, communities of interests and other events. The idea of bridging the gap between science and practice permeated the atmosphere, all the participants did their best to find out how this can be done in their particular cases.

Indeed, many things were happening. To provide the visitors of the conference with at least a short description of every talk, the complete program was distributed to all of them. It had an appearance of a big book (imagine a paper issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, but double the height; for those of you who haven't seen one, let's just say that you wouldn't want to drop one on your foot).  If you didn't like a talk that you attended, there were lot of others you could go to. But if you did like it, you had the chance to talk to the panelists after the discussion, introduce yourself, state your research interests (and even if you are not clear about them yet, it's ok as well!), share ideas and exchange e-mail addresses. Scientist and practitioners obviously wanted to talk to each other here.

And I wanted to talk to Gloria in the corridor of the Hilton venue about an ongoing project that was part of my internship at the UoG. I asked her for help and because she is amazing and never misses the opportunity to learn or teach something, she sat down with me, listened to me whining like a little girl for about ten minutes and then provided me with some sound advice. As we were finishing our dialogue, a slim, grey-haired man with bright blue eyes walked past us. Gloria paused and nodded her head in his direction. "That's Michael Leiter.", she said. I gawked at her in surprise. "THAT Michael Leiter?", I replied. "Yes. Go and talk to him.", she suggested, matter-of-factly. For those of you who don't know this, Michael Leiter is one of the first people to publish work on burnout, which was the subject of my position paper (he published a lot with Christina Maslach, the author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, former assistant of Philip Zimbardo that made him stop the Stanford prison experiment and then married him; but this is not their story, either). I was undecided for a while, but then I ran after him. I introduced myself and couldn't find anything smart to say. In the end I just blurted out "It's nice to see there's a face behind he name on all of those articles I've read.". He smiled and replied politely that he's glad to hear that. In that moment, Gloria joined us and we discussed their new research that they do together. This is when I learned that the world of I/O (and WOP) psychologist is indeed a very small one.

This means that because you can connect to so many people in the field, even if you are not decided about your research interests and/or future career, SIOP is a great opportunity to gain some insight.
And not only that. For me it was a chance to reconnect with my roots. At this point I would like to give you a bit of my background: I come from a small country from central Europe, called Slovakia. I left my homeland to study work and organizational psychology in Italy in 2007 and I have lived abroad ever since. However, by acquiring the knowledge in the field of WOP psychology, I had difficulties in immagining myself working in this profession in the national culture in which I was raised, since a great part of the WOP theories come from the world that evolved on the other side of the Iron Curtain. And this is why I greatly appreciated when I attended the panel discussion on the internationalization of the training in I/O psychology and saw prof. Barbara Kozusznik, professor from the University of Katowice in Poland and member of the International Association of Applied Psychology, voicing the concerns of the countries that once were part of the Soviet Union. After the discussion we had a wonderful chat about the state of I/O psychology in this region and she even gave me some references on some accomplished professionals in Bratislava.

However, that particular discussion also was very special for an another reason. One of the panelists was professor José María Peiró. Those of you who have not met him will certainly have the opportunity to do so in the near future: he is the person who had the idea of an international master in psychology applied to work settings, gathered support for it from other professors from those european universities that all of you know very well and made it happen. He told the story of the WOP-P master, the continuous fight against red tape, provincialist mentality, and the frequent european resistance to using English language. The fight for an integrated curriculum aimed at teaching skills that will be useful for the students' careers and that will give them the opportunity to improve working conditions of people across different cultures.    

Needless to say, this story stimulated a lot of questions and comments about the international cooperation between universities in our field: the American professors were amazed and filled with awe. The questions were about how to overcome the problems in international university education and how to prevent them. José María addressed many of them and acknowledged the effort and contributions of the professors, a great part of the administrative staff of the participating universities and students. The fact that Justine, Andy and me were sitting there to hear his words showed, that it is hard, but not impossible. And when it happens, it leads to an extraordinary enrichment of all the parties involved, especially of the students.

When I realized this, I couldn't resist the strong sense of pride, satisfaction and thankfulness for having the opportunity to be a part of this master. The learning opportunities that we as WOP-P students have in our reach are distinguished worldwide.  And as I realized this, I looked at the smiles on Justine's and Andy's faces. I had a strong impression that they have felt the same way in that moment (but still, I could be wrong - make sure you read their SIOP story as well!).

Attending the SIOP conference gave me a broad and deep vision of the I/O (WOP-P) field on a global level. Behind all of the articles and books that we read as students, there are people who dedicate their lives to making the workplaces a better place for other people. Even though it may be hard to imagine by some of us, they breathe, eat and drink just like other humans and if you are interested in what they do, they love to connect to you, share their ideas with you and listen to those that you might have (some of them even ride the mechanical bull after the closing ceremony).

If I was to give one piece of advice to all the WOP-P students, it's GO TO SIOP! For those of you who won't have the opportunity, do your best to go attend EAWOP or other professional conferences in our field. Because even though there is not many of us, we can have huge positive impact on the world around us, if we talk together and invent and organize new forms of cooperation between us. 

SIOP Conference 2013 in Houston

Article by a Student Author

A WOP student’s experience at the SIOP conference

I attended the SIOP annual conference principally because of peer pressure and curiosity about what Houston, Texas really looks like. On my way there, the man seated next to me in the plane noticed the research I was reading and started to talk to me. It appears that he was one of the first researchers that highlighted the work-family conflict and that my research thesis was partially based on his work.

This is only one example among a million, but what I am trying to say is that, behind the fact that you learn a lot about topics that matters to you, you also create amazing connections. You get the chance to meet experts in the fields you’re interested in, to ask advices to professionals, to discover new topics. As an I/O student, this conference is the best way to find people that will help you to reach your goals or to help you finding them.
           

The SIOP conference also allowed me to realize that we are part of a unique program. Everybody seemed to be aware that somewhere, across the Atlantic Ocean, there is a Master Program that is currently creating an army of WOP psychologists full of international skills and more aware about cross-cultural issues than any other psychologist.           

Indeed, because of the French accent I guess, I had to confirm many times that I was one of the “Peiro’s students”, and the reactions were always the same: “How lucky you are! How many languages do you speak? How many countries have you been to? I dream about doing it but there is nothing like this here! “

The recognition of my academic that I missed in Europe, I found it there and I am pretty sure now that we all chose the best way to become proficient Industrial/Organizational Psychologists.

On my way back home, I realized that I hardly saw my friends for the past three days and that I don’t know anything about Houston. But I found solutions for the projects I am working on, I clarify my goals and I met people that will help me to achieve them. Without forgetting that I received 100 invitations to visit every cities in US and gave just as much invitations for visiting Paris.

I can assure you that I will do my best to attend the conference next year and I hope I will not be the only one to get the chance to not get the time to discover Honolulu in 2014.  I also invite all of you to get information about the International congress of applied psychology that will take place in Paris in July 2014.