Greetings from the Chairperson

The Japanese Association of Industrial/Organizational Psychology (JAIOP) was founded in 1985 and commemorated its 37th year in 2022. Since our inception, we have focused on both basic research investigating the mechanisms of human psychology and behavior as well as extending concepts learned in basic research to practical research for industries and organizations.

Further, through our journal Industrial and Organizational Psychology we have contributed to the dissemination of numerous academic findings to improve corporate management activities and the lives of working people. As these efforts continue, researchers from universities and research institutes, and many practitioners belonging to business and government have joined the Association, and its membership has grown to about 1,200.

I believe that JAIOP has four main initiatives.

Firstly, in order to comprehensively examine the common issues and themes concerning psychology and behavior of people involved in organizations, we have established the following four divisions: (1) Human Resources, (2) Organizational Behavior, (3) Safety and Operation, and (4) Marketplaces. Each of the four divisions independently holds an annual division workshop to examine and share the latest research findings and developments.

Secondly, we are committed to supporting practitioner members as well as researchers. Several years ago, we established a “Practical Reports” section in our Association’s journal, with the aim of facilitating the compilation and active dissemination of new developments in the field.

In addition, in 2021, we introduced a new “Research Skills Development Seminar” to help practitioners interested in enhancing their research activities gain research skills.

Our third initiative is the provision of support for young researchers. JAIOP has been providing “Researcher Support” funding to its graduate student or working graduate student members to help launch their career in the field. Many of these novice researchers have had their work published in our journal, beginning their publication record and career.

Finally, our fourth initiative is to continue the distribution of useful information to business organizations. As we are all aware, since the outbreak of the world health crisis in 2020, our organizations, as well as our work style and environment have been transformed dramatically.

As radical changes are brought to our workplace, particularly remote work and teleconferencing, a variety of issues have emerged. In response to this, in May 2020 JAIOP released a special feature titled “With and After the Corona Era” in our journal. We also solicited research from a wide range of members and published the insights in a special issue in July 2021.

JAIOP will continue to play a pivotal role in the promotion of academic developments in industrial and organizational psychology while striving to give back to our community through the publication of research that is of particular interest to organizations.

We look forward to the continued support and cooperation from our members as well as all our partners and supporters in the business world.

Hiroshi Ikeda
13th Chairman of the Japanese Association of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Associate Professor,
Graduate School of Human-Environmental Studies,
Kyushu University