Conscientiousness is one of the most trusted predictors in personnel selection. A 2023 meta-analytic review finds that barely 12 percent of the supporting research was conducted under realistic hiring conditions, leaving the real-world validity of the measure more uncertain than its reputation suggests.
The Question In 1902, French colonial officials in Hanoi offered a bounty for rat tails to combat a plague-driven infestation. Residents duly
AI is already handling routine management. A 2023 opinion piece argues the assumption that human leadership is safe from automation deserves serious challenge, and that business education has not yet reckoned with what that means.
Workplace wellbeing programmes are widely offered and widely trusted. A 2024 study of 46,000 workers finds that participants report mental health outcomes no better than those who received nothing at all.
The Question The question of whether male and female brains are organised differently has been scientifically contentious and culturally charged in roughly
The case for large CEO bonuses rests on the assumption that they drive company performance. A 2023 systematic review of four decades of evidence finds that assumption is largely unsupported, and that nobody had thought to check it systematically until now.
Game-based assessments promise to make hiring more engaging while measuring the same things as traditional tests. A 2024 study finds the validity case is reasonable, but the engagement promise is not: applicants actually reacted more negatively to the game format, especially those without much gaming experience.
A 2024 debate in organisational psychology asks whether selection tests are being systematically undervalued due to how their effectiveness is calculated. One side says yes, and proposes a correction that makes the numbers look considerably more impressive. The other side agrees with the conclusion but argues the correction answers the wrong question.
Attention is widely assumed to decline with age. A 2024 study testing older and younger adults across 11 attention tasks finds the reality is far more complicated, and that the general decline narrative does not hold up under careful scrutiny.
Situational judgment tests and assessment centres are both widely used in selection. A 2024 head-to-head comparison finds they are not interchangeable: one predicts thinking performance well, the other is needed for interpersonal and leadership performance. The right question is not which is better, but better at predicting what.
