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Walter C. Borman, Daniel R. Ilgen, and Richard J. Klimoski (Editors). Handbook of Psychology, Volume 12: Industrial and Organizational Psychology. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2003, 649 pages, $150.00.
A profession's handbook should achieve at least three goals. It should set forth what the profession views as its areas of learning, science, and practice. It should also demarcate the boundaries of the profession-questions it can answer now, questions it has yet to address, and issues outside of its purview. These boundaries reflect the values of the profession. Finally, a handbook should entice others to become interested in the profession, find it worthwhile, and take it up as their own. The new Handbook of Psychology (HOPv12) sometimes falls short, but is, nevertheless, a fine addition to any professional's required reading list.
The HOPv12 sets out with great ambition. Its editors state that they wish to succeed the 1991 I-O Handbook (Dunnette & Hough, 1991). But others have sought to become the I-O handbook of record (Drenth, Thierry, & De Wolff, 1998; Anderson, Ones, Sinagil, & Viswesvaran, 2001), and there are the Annual Review and Organizational Frontiers series to contend with. One must view this latest addition with one glance toward history and another toward the competition.
The HOPv12 is possibly the last of its kind. Much like the 1991 I-O Handbook, and unlike the 2001 IWO Handbook, the HOPv12's chapters read like a set of survey courses that a first or second-year I-O student would be expected to master. Hough and Furnham's personality and biodata chapter is contemporaneous with Hough's chapter in the IWO Handbook, and it is as well written as one would expect. Kraiger's chapter captures the excitement in the training field and balances the scientist and practitioner aspects of training. Sonnentag and Frese manage to present the "big picture" of stress research without getting lost in the various substreams of the field. Much as economists debate the meaning of money, Motowidlo has the unenviable task of defining individual performance. It is even less enviable when considering that several other authors...