Announcing the LOV Center: Our Research Institute to Increase Workplace Thriving

It frequently takes 10 or more years for academic research to become prevalent in the business world. That is far too long.

The result?

Businesses don’t have access to evidence-based information to get proven solutions to their problems. Instead, businesses often build and implement programs not verified to be effective, which are more likely to fail.

Unfortunately, only 18% of the total research at academic institutions is applied in organizations. Numerous studies have highlighted the problematic gap between what’s known from academic research versus what’s practiced. There is a need for more applied research before programs are implemented. 

To bridge the gap between academic research and the business world, we at Connected EC are excited to announce the launch of our research institute, the Leader and Organization Vitality Center (LOV Center), in partnership with Claremont Graduate University’s Leader and Organization Vitality Lab (LOV Lab).

The LOV Center makes cutting-edge research easily accessible for organizations with the rigor of academic research standards. At a time when 64% of leaders and 75% executives are seriously considering quitting for a job that would better support their wellbeing, the need for more applied research on how to foster thriving leaders and positive organizational cultures has never been greater.

The LOV Center, with its focus on applied research, is uniquely set-up to partner businesses with top researchers to advance knowledge within the organization. Research will be dedicated to these key leader, team and organization areas:

• Leader Vitality

• Wellbeing

• Positive Leadership

• Psychological Safety

• Team Cohesion

• Thriving Cultures

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEI&B)

The Absence of Applied Research

What happens in the absence of applied research?

Overall, organizations build programs that aren’t proven to be true. Programs are often based off one of the following: 1) good constructs with useful information, with or without research to back it up 2) “the flavor of the week”, as in the book of the week or month. What that looks like is a leader reads a new book they find impactful and wants to implement a program around the book.

These programs could very well be successful, but many are not. Only 25% of senior managers report that their organization’s leadership development programs were critical to business outcomes. When organizations invest time and resources in a program that fails, their employees can lose trust in new programs.

An evidenced-based approach is more effective. This allows organizations to know they are developing programs with models and ideas that have gone through testing, not simply idea generation. What is most effective is to build programs after having evidence from multiple studies with results that show improvement of business outcomes.

New ideas and concepts are so important in business. However, it’s critical to be cautious of building programs off of them immediately without checking if it’s backed by research. Here’s how:

• Have a scientific eye when you look at leadership, team, and organizational development ideas.

• Consider the following questions: What great ideas have you come across? What makes sense and resonates for you?

• How can you find out if it’s backed by qualitative or quantitative research? Sometimes, you can easily find the information, other times, you may need to look deeper and see if there is research to support the idea.

The Gap Between Academic Research and Business

As mentioned, there is a huge gap spanning years or even decades between when research is conducted and when it becomes prevalent in the business world. How and when psychological safety became well known is a significant example of this.

Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor, coined the term “psychological safety”, in 1999 as part of her PhD’s dissertation research. Her findings showed that psychological safety is critical for team success. They were published academically, which is standard when conducting academic research. However, psychological safety would continue to be an unfamiliar term in the business world for years.

It would take Project Aristotle, a study conducted in 2012 at Google, for psychological safety to become prevalent in the workplace. Project Aristotle set out to research what made the perfect team. The results showed that psychological safety is the most important factor in team effectiveness, re-confirming Edmondson’s research findings.

In 2016, 17 years after Edmondson’s dissertation research, the world started to learn about Project Aristotle in a New York Times article detailing the project. 17 years is a big gap. 

To put the research-application gap into context with a current challenge organizations face, here is another example: how to create an effective hybrid workforce.

As we know, there has been massive shift towards hybrid work in the past few years, since businesses started reopening amid the pandemic in fall of 2020.

As hybrid work has been growing, applied research in organizations on how to create an effective hybrid work model to drive business outcomes is lacking. Though there has been research, such as to make the case for hybrid work, it is mostly general research and doesn’t offer proven solutions to this challenge. Organizations shouldn’t have to wait until 2030 or beyond to have research backed information.

The LOV Center Addresses the Gap

The LOV Center is positioned to increase applied research and address the research to application gap so that organizations have real solutions to leader, team, organization challenges.

The LOV Center provides organizations the opportunity to drive their internal research agendas, within the above research areas, that are significant to them. Organizations are provided access to the most current research and validated scales. The LOV Center tailors its projects with state-of-the art measurement, monitoring, and evaluation services with top scientists/researchers to make them as impactful as possible. The rigorous academic research standards ensure research conducted is strictly confidential, which can alleviate concerns from employees about survey participation.

Dr. Jessica Diaz, Assistant Professor, Claremont Graduate University and LOV Center researcher collaborated with the LOV Center on a transformative project at a Fortune 100 company. She sees the LOV Center’s potential in not only providing a dynamic network for conducting meaningful research but also holding the promise of translating these insights into tangible, transformative change for organizations.

Dr. Diaz shared: “The LOV Center serves as the vital bridge between groundbreaking research and practical application. In a world where researchers and practitioners often exist in separate realms, the LOV Center unites these powerful forces, ensuring that transformative insights don't languish in academia but instead enrich organizations, creating a tangible impact.”

Our hope at Connected EC is that the LOV Center is a conduit for organizations to get the latest information and research in positive organizational psychology to increase thriving in the workplace.

For organizations who want to solve their leader, team and organization workplace challenges through applied research, contact Connected EC. More information about the LOV Center can be found here.