Among many salient shifts in international development research over the last few decades has been growing legitimacy in recognition/documentation of the “rise of the South” as noted in the UNDP Human Development Report (2013). This has redirected both research and practice beyond just Northern (read “Western”) approaches, opened up new resource flows for “Southern” institutions, and initiated a whole new set of initiatives around “South–South” cooperation (Malik, Reference Malik2014). To Mahbub ul Haq's original theme of “enlarging people's choices” were added new dimensions of looking beyond just western economies (and solely “economistic” analysis and prescriptions) for solutions to existential threats to sustainable development among the world's poorer nations (UNDP, 1990, p. 9). Fundamental shifts such as these, epitomized in Mahbub's well-known statement on human capacity,Footnote ¹ provide the basis for the focal article by Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (Reference Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru and Oestereich2017) that builds skillfully on a framework, which of course also calls on Amartya Sen's work (so closely aligned with and influential in the Human Development Report series). The result is an original, carefully argued, and, perhaps some will agree, long overdue article synching the broad discipline of modern industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology into a more realistic awareness of how the majority of the world's populations sustain their livelihoods. However, there is a crucial “space” that I-O psychology seems to be still missing, and one barely touched on by this article, and that is the macropolicy environment that brings institutions in government and civil society together in more strategic approaches to developing human “resourcefulness.”

The POSH (Professional, Official, Safe, High) bias is rightly and pointedly detected by the authors as spinning both education and labor market research predominantly “upward” toward formal sector priorities. Such a salty acronymFootnote ² gives a lot of welcome momentum to a much broader and more egalitarian approach to I-O contributions to human development, with a not-so-subtle topical dig at perceived elites and the political resentment they have currently aroused. At the base of this article's sophisticated construction of its case for (a) humanistic and (b) poverty-eradication emphases in I-O research/practice is, according to the article's title, “making human capabilities the business of I-O psychology.”Footnote ³ Sen (Reference Sen2000, p. 18) defines the approach to expanding the capabilities of persons to live the kinds of lives they value as being enhanced by two factors: public policy and the influence of humans participating in that public policy. He labels this two-way relationship as central to the articulation of human freedoms. Axiomatic to his “capability perspective” is the view of poverty as “capability deprivation.”

The underlying problem so comprehensively addressed in the Gloss et al. (Reference Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru and Oestereich2017) article is that the first factor (developing human capacity) does not sufficiently address those living in poverty, and the second (engaging harder-to-reach communities) is generally minimalized for people living in poverty in either rich or poorer countries. Yet experience shows that human capability is fully evident in the ingenuity of both rural and urban (“poor”) populations in dealing with their circumstances. Dharavi (Mumbai), the Rio barrios, Ezulweni or Masai farming communities, or Roma periurban encampments in eastern Europe are full of brilliant and innovative daily problem solutions, in spite of constraints noted above. So the question is how, practically and politically, to tap into and nourish these capacities at all societal levels, and that means greater participatory involvement in public policy by those least influential in the current policy processes.

The section of the focal article titled “The Capability Approach” (p. 349) seems to apply mostly to active interventions rather than the need for a such a fundamental broad “platform” for human capability implied by Sen (Reference Sen2000, p. 142) when he calls for greater institutional linkages “to be able to see what [institutions] can or cannot do” in promoting collectively “opportunities and prospects.” The new Sustainable Development Goals are essentially multisectoral and have injected a whole new set of incentives, importantly not only just to less-developed nations, for mutual cooperation in an atmosphere of shared intra- as well as international coordination of effort. In addition, as the focal article notes in the section “The Impact of CSR on Capabilities” (p. 358), corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a growing force in bringing new actors (e.g., private sector and greater civil society engagement) in working toward SDG monitoring of progress toward achievement. This theme could usefully extend beyond just two paragraphs, given the global attention increasingly drawn to CSR (Hopkins, Reference Hopkins2016; Hopkins & Lawrence, Reference Hopkins and Lawrence2016).

Finally, the issue of integration, cross-sectoral, intra- and intergovernmental coordination, which requires new concepts of socio-economic contractual obligation for human development across entire civil societies, is a crucial and all too often forgotten factor in policy debates. Practical options need to be further explored beyond the good start offered in this article. Some of us have argued for many years for a macro-policy view of developing human resourcefulness (Lawrence, Reference Lawrence2013) and are trying to operationalize the most important policy implication of Sen's arguments (Reference Sen2000, p. 297), namely the “understanding of general economic, political and social connections” [my italics]. Sen lists the variety of social institutions that contribute to the development process and then states categorically, “Analysis of development calls for an integrated understanding of the respective roles of these different institutions and their interactions” (Reference Sen2000, p. 297). This synthesis has typically been missing in intellectual discourse around human capability at macro levels, and this article is a thoughtful and very helpful step in the right direction.