Telfer Professor Silvia Bonaccio Elected SIOP Fellow

Telfer congratulates Professor Silvia Bonaccio on her election as Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). This exceptional recognition reflects Professor Bonaccio’s dedication, expertise, and impact in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Silvia Bonaccio is a full professor at the Telfer School of Management and holds the Ian Telfer Professorship of Workplace Psychology.

Meaningful and prestigious recognition

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is a renowned international professional association for the science and practice of Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology. With over 10,000 members worldwide, SIOP focuses on advancing research that improves the performance and well-being of individuals in the workplace.

Telfer professor Silvia Bonaccio was elected Fellow of SIOP earlier this year at their annual conference, an event in which she has participated every year since the beginning of her career. Fellow status recognizes individuals who have made diverse and meaningful contributions to the field of industrial and organizational psychology, including research, practice, teaching, administration, and service.

In order to be elected, members must demonstrate a notable and sustained impact in the field of I-O psychology. Fewer than 1% of members are elected Fellow, and even fewer Canadians are represented.
A leader in her field, Professor Bonaccio has received numerous other awards, such as the Telfer Established Researcher Award and the University of Ottawa Excellence in Education Prize.

An impactful career

Evidence of Professor Bonaccio’s impact isn’t hard to find; she has had a remarkable research career, coupled with a proven record of strong academic service and leadership through Telfer and several professional associations, including SIOP. She joined the Telfer School of Management in 2006 after obtaining her PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Purdue University.

Professor Bonaccio’s research centers around three main themes: how to leverage the talents of employees with disabilities; how to ensure that anxious test-takers and interviewees are not overlooked because of their anxiety; and how to encourage decision-makers to use advice to make better decisions in life and at work. Her work in these fields is interdisciplinary and collaborative, contributing to and shaping fields like public health, educational psychology, and behavioral economics, among others.

Since early in her career, her work has had lasting impact and international reach: one of her first publications in 2006 has been cited nearly 1,100 times, with over half of those citations occurring more than a decade later. A more recent article published in 2020 has had considerable impact on practice; it counts 10 policy citations – including the Government of Canada, the European Union, and the United Nations – as well as close to 155,000 downloads from the publisher’s website. She has published in leading journals such as Journal of Management, Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Read some of Professor Bonaccio's most impactful publications:

• Advice taking and decision-making: An integrative literature review, and implications for the organizational sciences, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, November 2006
• The Participation of People with Disabilities in the Workplace Across the Employment Cycle: Employer Concerns and Research Evidence, Journal of Business and Psychology, January 2019

Additionally, there are several notable roles among Professor Bonaccio’s numerous commitments to academic leadership:

• She is Associate Editor at Personnel Assessment and Decisions and serves on the editorial boards of three other journals.
• She served as Chair of the Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• She is a founding member of SIOP’s Disability, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DIAC) Ad Hoc Committee
• She served as Chair of the Organizational Behavior Division of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada

Steady leadership

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology prioritizes advancing research focused on well-being and performance of people and the organizations that employ them. This aligns perfectly with Professor Bonaccio’s work in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources at Telfer, where she contributed to the development and launch of the PhD in Management program. Telfer introduced its PhD program in 2016 with Professor Bonaccio at the helm as Director, a role she held for five years. Today, the PhD program has six key fields of specialization: Accounting and Control, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Health Systems, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources, and Strategy and Organization.

Professor Bonaccio was also instrumental in founding the Thriving Organizations Research Collective (TORC). For TORC and its members, employee well-being is a foundational concern, as well as the motivation for the work being done to build a future where all employees can thrive at work. She and her TORC colleagues and co-leads, professors Jennifer Dimoff and Jane O’Reilly, are working in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts to create the Triple-I Lab. The all-women research team received a grant from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund at the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to support the creation of the lab. The three “I”s in Triple-I stand for Inclusion, Interaction and Intervention. Set to open in late 2023, the lab will allow researchers to record and analyze real-life social behaviours in a variety of settings using state-of-the-art observational technology. This work will contribute to more inclusive and healthier workplace practices through the creation of tools such as training programs and applied intervention guidelines.

Professor Bonaccio has recently been named Vice-Dean of Research at Telfer, a role she officially steps into on July 1st, 2023, for a three-year term. “The school has really grown in terms of research capacity and in reputation. OBHR colleagues are instrumental in fuelling this growth and I believe we are considered a strong research cluster in Canada. I’m excited to see what’s to come for Telfer with our intensifying focus on research, many new collaborations, and promising new faculty hires.”

Congratulations Professor Bonaccio!