The practitioner-researcher divide revisited: Strategic-level bridges and the roles of IWO psychologists

This paper responds to, and extends, the debate between Gelade, Wall, Symon and Hodgkinson in JOOP. In concluding that JOOP is fulfilling its remit for robust information exchange between research and practice, four lines of argument are proposed that (i) the Principle of Scientific Replication warrants full details of study methods being routinely published, (ii) any divide is reflective of a perfectly natural distance between the two wings of the discipline and is not necessarily harmful as long as sufficient bridging mechanisms exist, (iii) several strategic-level bridging mechanisms do exist but need to be better utilized and (iv) as JOOP will be unable to be all things to all readers, its most suitable niche remains as a scientific outlet for pragmatic research in IWO psychology internationally.