A Brief History of Organization and Management Solutions (OMS)
In 1993, Dr. Steven Cronshaw recognized that graduate student training in Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology needed to integrate I-O Psychology content with both research and practice. At the time I-O Psychology in Canada was quite new and Dr. Cronshaw had been instrumental in developing the I-O program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Guelph. As an applied discipline, many programs at that time lacked practical skills training for their students. As anyone with practical expertise is aware, working with clients is the best way to develop these skills.
Although there were some practical opportunities at that time, most of these were independent projects with faculty members or via applied internships in external organizations. Although this approach provided some students with practical opportunities, these were sporadic and opportunistic with the result that only some students could work on projects and the type of work often did not connect to their expertise. To resolve these issues and to ensure on-going meaningful consulting project work, Dr. Cronshaw created the Guelph Centre for Occupational Research Incorporated (GCORI).
The creation of GCORI allowed all of the graduate students in the program to have the opportunity to work on consulting projects and created the infrastructure to bid for work that reflected a wide range of consulting issues. Later in the 1990’s it was recognized that the name GCORI did not resonate with clients, primarily due to the term “research”. As a result Organization and Management Solutions (OMS) was created to more clearly link the name of the organization with the services it provided. OMS was listed as a division of GCORI. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, OMS flourished under the direction of a new Executive Director – Diane Green, with support from Dr. Cronshaw and other I-O faculty. The majority of work at that time was for government organizations. Although the organization rented space on the university campus and employed I-O graduate students and faculty, it operated as a separate company in parallel to the graduate program.
In 2008, it was decided to bring OMS into the Department of Psychology to more fully integrate the consulting experience with student learning and development. This is the current model for OMS. This approach has produced many benefits for OMS and the graduate program. From a client perspective, it brings together both consulting and research expertise to ensure that organizational solutions are based on the best research evidence. From a graduate student perspective, it ensures that their learning is integrated into their program and specific projects can be developed to maximize their skill development. Our clients comment on the strong partnerships that we have developed with them, the high quality work that we deliver, and the professionalism of our consultants. Our alumni comment on the skills that OMS helped them to develop and how the consulting projects prepared them for a career in I-O Psychology. The I-O faculty at the University of Guelph are proud of this aspect of our program and the impact that OMS has had on government, corporate, and non-for-profit organizations over the past 31 years. As OMS enters a new phase in its journey, we hope that its unique contribution to organizations, graduate student training, and I-O Psychology in Canada will continue.
Organization & Management Solutions
4010 MacKinnon Ext
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1
Phone: 519-767-5071
Email: oms@uoguelph.ca