ABSTRACT
Psychologists are bound by our Ethics Code (APA, 2017) to both contribute to the advancement of the field and to use that knowledge for human betterment. In attempting to accomplish the first objective we have followed the successful 17th–19th-century logical positivist model of research from the natural and biological sciences that incorporates a belief in excluding all personal and social values from the process. But in applying our scientific findings to contribute to the second objective, it becomes apparent that the role of values is intrinsic to that enterprise. The postmodern or social-constructionist point of view argues that the “value-free” status of science, particularly social science, has always been illusory. A philosopher of science warns “A social science that sought to efface the moral dimension from its descriptions and explanations would simply serve the interests of some other moral conception.” All this seems particularly apt for I-O psychology as the applications of our knowledge entail professional practice in business organizations that have quite salient value systems involving productivity, efficiency and profitability for shareholders, that determine most of what we do in those organizations, how and why we do it, as well as how our work will be evaluated.
