The Assessment of 21st Century Skills in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Complex and Collaborative Problem Solving
Citation. Neubert, J. C., Mainert, J., Kretzschmar, A., & Greiff, S. (2015). The assessment of 21st century skills in industrial and organizational psychology: Complex and collaborative problem solving. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8(2), 238–268. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2015.14
Summary. Neubert and colleagues argue that I-O psychology should integrate complex problem solving (CPS) and collaborative problem solving (ColPS) as transversal skills for nonroutine and interactive work. The article positions CPS and ColPS between broad basic constructs such as intelligence and narrower application-oriented constructs such as learning agility or talent, emphasizing their stronger theoretical connection to real problem interaction and computer-based assessment. It uses education-assessment advances, especially simulated microworlds, as a template for more reliable and valid workplace assessment of job-relevant skills.
Key claims
- Work has shifted toward nonroutine and interactive tasks, making active problem solving and collaboration more central to job requirements than routine task execution.
- Traditional I-O approaches each have limits for 21st-century skill assessment: basic constructs can be too broad for workplace-specific behavior, application-oriented constructs can be weakly validated, and job/work analysis can be tied too closely to existing occupations and current task descriptions.
- CPS and ColPS are transversal skills that capture how people acquire and apply knowledge while interacting with complex, dynamic problems individually or with others.
- Computer-based microworld assessments can systematically vary problem features, simulate complex and collaborative work demands, and capture process data that questionnaire-based or static assessments often miss.
- CPS and ColPS may help bridge scientist-practitioner gaps by retaining theoretical grounding while producing assessment designs that are closer to real workplace problem solving.
Evidence & limitations
- The article is a conceptual focal article in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, not an empirical validation study of a new workplace assessment battery.
- Its strongest evidence base comes from adjacent educational assessment work, especially PISA-style CPS and ColPS assessment, which the authors argue can inform workplace assessment but do not treat as already validated for all organizational uses.
- The paper is useful for construct framing and assessment-design logic, but any use in selection, training, leadership assessment, or workforce planning would still require job-relevance evidence, criterion validation, and context-specific implementation checks.