Assistant Professor
BA (Honours), MA, PhD (Guelph)
Dr. Scott Cassidy is an assistant professor of management in the University of Prince Edward Island's McDougall Faculty of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology from the University of Guelph, as well as a diploma in information technology from Conestoga College.
A firm believer in the researcher-practitioner model, Dr. Cassidy has worked as both an academic and a consultant – and joined UPEI after spending a number of years applying his I/O psychology training out "in the field". During his consultancy, Dr. Cassidy engaged with clients spanning the healthcare, education, first responder, financial services, agriculture, and immigration service sectors – and has worked most recently within the high-stakes professional testing industry. While working as a consultant, he developed a particular interest in using psychometric science to build accurate and valid competency models, entry-to-practice exams, and employment selection tests – an interest that he now carries forward in his research and teaching at UPEI.
Dr. Cassidy's program of research stems from his dual academic background in psychology and technology – as well as his professional experience in assessment and psychometrics. His current projects aim to address a few overarching questions, including: 1) how to effectively manage an increasingly decentralized and digitalized workforce; 2) how employees come to construct a sense of organizational identity in the age of remote work, and engage in meaning making at their jobs; and, 3) how to develop professional credentialling, employment selection, and performance assessment methods that are accurate and fair for diverse applicant and job incumbent pools. He is also interested in employee work attitudes and well-being, organizational trust, team development, and research methods, measurement, and statistical issues in the organizational sciences. To date, his scholarly work has appeared in several outlets, including the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology (EJWOP), the International Journal of Selection and Assessment (IJSA), and the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences (CJAS).
As a member of UPEI's Faculty of Business, Dr. Cassidy teaches in both the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs, mainly in the areas of human resource management, data analytics, organizational research methods, and evidence-based management. Prior to joining UPEI, he also taught both undergraduate and graduate-level courses in I/O psychology, statistics, and psychological measurement as a sessional instructor in the University of Guelph's Department of Psychology, where he was recognized with multiple teaching awards (including the 2021 Guelph College of Social and Applied Human Sciences [CSAHS] Teaching and Learning Excellence Award for Sessional Instructors, the 2017 CSAHS Teaching and Learning Excellence Award for Graduate Teaching Assistants, and a 2013 Certificate of Teaching Excellence from the Council of Canadian Departments of Psychology).