The Jeanneret Symposium on the topic of assessing and developing senior leaders was held in Dallas in 2016, and a comprehensive report by Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, and the Jeanneret Symposium Participants was published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology in 2018.  The symposium and open access publication were made possible by a generous gift from Dick Jeanneret to the SIOP Foundation’s Fund for the Future.  Unexpectedly, funds from that gift are now available to SIOP members as an $11,000 grant for research about senior leaders.

The overarching goal for this grant is to build on the accepted wisdom and research needs identified by Reynolds et al. (2018).  Thus, the research should yield new insights in one of the following areas:  the evolving criteria for successful leadership, measuring leadership potential, the role of context in senior-level assessment, the role of line managers in using assessment data and in developing senior leaders, the effectiveness of current assessment and development practices at the senior level, or the use of new concepts or technologies for assessing senior leaders and predicting their work performance. Priority will be given to proposals that are a cooperative effort between practitioners and academics.

The grant submission package must include a grant proposal (see formatting guidelines below).

The principal investigator of the project must be a SIOP Fellow, Member, Associate, or Student Affiliate. Proposals submitted with a Student Affiliate as the principal investigator must include a letter of endorsement from a SIOP professional member, preferably the student's academic advisor.

If the proposal has an organizational partner for the research, it is strongly recommended that a letter recognizing this support is included in the grant submission package to ensure the organization’s commitment to the project.

Guidelines for Proposal Budgets

This grant can be used in conjunction with other funding for a larger-scale project. If this is the case, the proposal should describe the scope of the entire project, the entire budget, and the portion of the budget for which SIOP award money will be spent.

The funds may not be used in the following ways:

• To pay for overhead or indirect costs.  It is the explicit policy of the SIOP Research Grant Program that grant funds may not be used for overhead or indirect costs. In the committees’ experience, most universities will waive overhead and indirect costs under two circumstances: (a) the grant is relatively modest in size, and/or (b) the awarding institution (i.e., SIOP Foundation) does not allow it. If the above statement disallowing funds to be used for overhead is insufficient, the chair of the Jeanneret Grant Subcommittee will provide additional documentation and evidence explicitly recognizing this policy. 
• To pay for travel to the SIOP conference.
• To pay for ancillary costs related to the project (publication or presentations at conferences, such as open access and registration/travel costs).

Size of the Grants

The maximum award for any one grant is $11,000.  

Criteria for Selecting Award Winners

Each grant proposal will be reviewed by both academic and practitioner members of the subcommittee. The following criteria will be used to evaluate each proposal:

• Significance:  Does the proposal address an important problem relevant to both the academic and practitioner membership of SIOP, as identified by Reynolds et al. (2018)? Will the proposal advance practice in assessing and developing senior leaders?
• Appropriateness of budget:  Is there clear justification and rationale for the expenditure of the award monies? Can the proposed work be accomplished with the funds requested, or is there evidence that additional expenses will be covered by other sources of funding?
• Research approach: An assessment of the overall quality of the conceptual framework, design, methods, and planned analyses.
• Innovation:  Does the proposed research employ novel concepts, approaches, or methods? Does the proposal research have original and innovative aims?
• Aimed at a wide audience:  The proposal should be clear, understandable, and communicable to a wide audience and have implications for all members of SIOP (academics and practitioners).
• Realistic timeframe: Likelihood that the project can be completed within 1 year of award date.
• Academic–practitioner partnership: Does the grant involve a partnership between an academic and a practitioner?
• If applicable, the names of all team members must be entered during the online nomination/application process.  Please ensure that all participants in your nomination have current information in their siop.org profiles. All nonmembers should create an account at siop.org (creating accounts is not equivalent to applying for membership).

Administrative Procedures

• Nomination materials will be reviewed by an Awards subcommittee that consists of a minimum of three current SIOP members. The subcommittee members must have expertise in the assessment and/or development of senior leaders. Diversity of all types is encouraged, including non-U.S. based members.

• No active member of the subcommittee will be eligible for a grant.

• The Awards subcommittee may decide that no applicant is deserving of the grant, in which case the grant may be withheld.

Reference

Reynolds, D., McCauley, C., & Tsacoumis, S. (2018). A Critical Evaluation of the State of Assessment and Development for Senior Leaders. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 11(4), 630-652. doi:10.1017/iop.2018.84

Format of the Proposal

The proposal should adhere to APA formatting guidelines and should include the following sections:

• Abstract
• Literature review and rationale for the project
• Method—including information about the sample, measures, data collection strategies, and analytical strategies
• Implications for both academicians and practitioners
• Budget and justification for expenditures of the award

The proposals should not exceed 10 pages of text (not including references, tables, appendices). The proposal should be double spaced and use a 12-point font and 1” margins. The proposal must be a single document, either a Word document or a .pdf file.

All awarded authors will need to certify, by signature or other means, that the research will be carried out in compliance with ethical standards with regard to the treatment of human subjects (e.g., institutional review board or signed statement that the research adhered to the accepted professional standards regarding the treatment of human subjects). 

Deliverables

All grant award recipients will be required to deliver a final report to the SIOP Foundation within one (1) year of the date of the award. Awardees should be aware that a synopsis of their research will be placed on the SIOP website. This synopsis will be of such a nature so as not to preclude subsequent publication of the research. It is strongly encouraged that the results of the research be submitted for presentation at the annual SIOP conference.