Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Triandis's role differs by edition. In the first edition (1976), edited solely by Marvin D. Dunnette, Triandis was not an editor; the chapter on cross-cultural issues in I-O psychology was written by Gerald V. Barrett and Bernard M. Bass . In the second edition (1990–1994), Dunnette and Leaetta M. Hough edited the first three volumes, but the fourth volume was edited by Harry C. Triandis, Marvin D. Dunnette, and Leaetta M. Hough . Triandis also authored the chapter 'Cross-Cultural Industrial and Organizational Psychology' in that fourth volume . The profile's attribution to Triandis is therefore accurate specifically for the second edition's final volume, not for the 1976 original.

Dunnette's stated purpose was that chapters should move beyond reviewing available information and 'strike new paths for theory building and data construction' . Reviewers in Administrative Science Quarterly (1977) took this mandate seriously and judged the results mixed. They praised several chapters as excellent, significant contributions—singling out Chapanis on engineering psychology, Thomas on conflict management, and Jacoby on consumer psychology—while calling others 'disappointing; narrow in scope, eclectic, idiosyncratic, divergent from their purpose' . Crucially, the reviewers placed responsibility on the difficulty of the mandate rather than on Dunnette's editorial diligence, noting that his control over invited authors was necessarily limited and that he had performed an 'exceedingly thorough and comprehensive' editorial task .

The first edition was a single 1,740-page volume published by Rand McNally in 1976 . The second edition, published by Consulting Psychologists Press between 1990 and 1994, expanded to four volumes with Leaetta M. Hough as co-editor . The fourth volume, edited with Triandis, covered cross-cultural and international topics including Triandis's own chapter on cross-cultural I-O psychology and Lévy-Leboyer's chapter on selection and assessment in Europe . Citations that say simply 'Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook' without specifying edition or volume are ambiguous and can mislead: the 1976 chapter on cross-cultural issues was by Barrett and Bass, not Triandis, and the four-volume structure did not exist until the 1990s.

Triandis's chapter, 'Cross-Cultural Industrial and Organizational Psychology,' surveyed how cultural variation affects work behavior, organizational practices, and the applicability of Western-derived I-O theories across societies . It applied the framework he had developed in Individualism and Collectivism (1995) and earlier work on subjective culture to the organizational domain, arguing that I-O psychology's generalizations required cultural specification. The chapter's placement in the handbook's fourth volume—dedicated to international and cross-cultural concerns—reflects the field's growing recognition in the early 1990s that American I-O psychology could not simply be exported. Readers interested in Triandis's organizational applications should pair this chapter with his later Managing Global Organizations (2012), which expands the argument into a full-length treatment.

It remains valuable as a historical document and as a reference for theories and methods that shaped the field, but it has been substantially superseded for current research purposes. Later handbooks—including the Handbook of Psychology (2003) and the Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology (2001)—cover more recent developments . However, the Dunnette volumes retain citation value for tracing the state of I-O psychology at specific moments: the 1976 edition captures the field's self-understanding after the upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s, while the 1990–1994 second edition documents the discipline's expansion into cross-cultural and strategic domains. A Choice review of the second edition called it 'the most valuable resource of its kind' for comprehensive coverage, a judgment that remains a fair description of its historical standing .

The Administrative Science Quarterly review noted that the first edition's chapters varied widely in quality and scope, with some authors producing narrow or idiosyncratic treatments despite the editorial mandate . The reviewers also observed that certain topics—notably training, in Hinrichs's chapter—were poorly served, with two-thirds of the chapter devoted to a general systems framework rather than to training methods . More broadly, the first edition's cross-cultural coverage consisted of a single chapter by Barrett and Bass, which by the 1990s was judged insufficient; this likely motivated the expansion to a dedicated fourth volume in the second edition. These criticisms reflect the inherent difficulty of producing a unified handbook from dozens of independently written chapters.