ABSTRACT
Psychologists are often asked to comment on many of the issues covered by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), though they do not always speak with one voice. Certainly their research efforts have helped them make a serious contribution to understanding many of these issues. Indeed, it may well be that one of the more useful tasks of humanitarian work psychology (HWP) is to draw together the research findings that speak to global development issues for wider dissemination. Within organizations, HWP can explore absolute income via living wages and relative reward. In order for HWP to help NGOs balance distinctiveness against harmonization, brands and branding may have to be conceptualized and re-aligned in a different way. The scientist-practitioner model of clinical and work psychology that aims to balance the pure and applied aspects does not always succeed, as individuals have a tendency to lean strongly on one side of the pure-applied research divide.
