The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Hartel, C. & Page, K.M. (2009). Discrete emotional crossover in the workplace: The role of affect intensity. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 24 (3), 237-253.

Emotions in the workplace have been frequently discussed for  some time now. Surprisingly, there has been little focus on the amount individuals’ experiences at work are interwoven with the experiences of those they interact with.

This phenomenon is known as crossover- the process by which an individual’s emotional state influences the emotional state of another individual.

When Can Crossover Occur?

Crossover can occur during positive and negative work events. For example, during positive work events (e.g., exciting new project) an employee’s heightened work engagement can crossover to coworkers. On the other hand, during negative work events (e.g. unrewarding, tedious project) an employee’s burnout can crossover.  Also, stress and anxiety have been shown to crossover within colleagues of the same work environment.

Crossover and Affect Intensity

Crossover is partially controlled by the degree an individual experiences emotion, also known as affect intensity.  More specifically, Affect Intensity (AI) is described as the varying intensity in which individuals experience emotions in reaction to workplace events and people such as upcoming deadlines or supervisors.

Individuals with high AI tend to focus more on the negative or positive side of things; therefore, they report stronger emotional reactions than those with low AI.”

Because of their higher emotional reactivity, high AI individuals may be more susceptible to crossover, especially from one individual with high AI to another with high AI.

Thus, understanding AI within each individual may lead to better management of crossover within the work environment.

Implications for Practice

Applying the knowledge of crossover, one should strive to reduce the number of negative work events and encourage a more positive work environment where positive crossover can occur. Specifically, one should implement practices that encourage:”

• Increases in positive emotion and action, which lead to positive resources including creativity and problem solving.
• An “undoing effect,” where those encountering negative emotions (e.g., anger or fear) overcome negative physical reactions more rapidly.
• An “upward spiral,” where individuals are more resilient and thus better able to overcome negative outcomes while seeking out positive ones – through crossover “upward spirals” occur at the individual, group, and team level.

Although these may seem quite obvious, consider the following:  positive emotions have been linked to helping behaviors, creative problem-solving, collaborative negotiation, and effective decision making strategies.  Satisfied employees are more likely to feel engaged at work, be intrinsically motivated, committed to a company, and receive higher performance ratings.  Employee satisfaction can lead to positive crossover effects, which leads to better morale within the workplace and higher positive outcomes.

Overall, positive emotional crossover is likely to have beneficial effects at the individual and organizational level, while understanding negative implications of crossover (e.g., burnout) may allow for better control of these outcomes.  Lastly, understanding affect intensity can help predict individual employees’ susceptibility to emotional crossover

Interpretation by:

Adam Bradshaw

The DeGarmo Group

The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from:

It is widely known that the workforce in the United States is aging. With this, comes a more prevalent risk of age stereotyping within the workplace, affecting a larger group of individuals.  If stereotypes cause an increase in the rate of turnover within older workers, organizations fail to take advantage of skilled and productive workers.

Types of Age Stereotypes

Personal beliefs and expectations about workplace age groups are considered workplace age stereotypes. Often these stereotypes are biased, negative preconceptions about older workers (this can also include younger workers), which include:

• Poor Performance- older workers have lower performance, productivity and motivation.
• Resistant to Change- older workers tend to be harder to train, are less adaptable, and more resistant to change, resulting in less return on training investments.
• Lower Ability to Learn- older workers tend to have less ability to learn; therefore, they do not develop new skills as well as younger workers.
• Shorter Tenure- Due to their age, older workers are thought to have more turnover than other age groups.
• More Costly- Older workers are more costly because they are close to retirement, use more benefits, and obtain higher wages.

These stereotypes are all rather negative giving a poor outlook for the older workgroup.  On the other hand, there is evidence to refute these negative preconceptions:

• General Tendencies- Little evidence supports declining performance with age, and more often performance improves with age.
• Individual Differences- Age is less important than differences in individual skill and health.
• Tenure- Older workers are less likely to quit, thereby resulting in more return on investment (e.g., training investments).

It should be noted that age stereotypes could be directed at younger workers too (i.e., an older individual is hired over a younger individual because it seems as though they have more experience), but our focus here is on older workers.

Implications for Practice

When dealing with age stereotypes in the workplace, organizations should:

• Identify Reasonable Factors. Ensure that hiring practices can identify factors other than age, which have influenced hiring decisions.  Preventing age stereotypes requires vigilance through observation and statistics, thereby preventing legal liability.
• Use Job Related Information. Identify age stereotypes to increase the likelihood of correctly identifying when they occur, while using valid selection procedures.
• Use Training and Development. Ensure management is properly trained to identify age stereotypes, while properly training employees will lead to development and growth of workers as they age.
• Target High-Risk Areas. Identify situations or jobs that have been stereotyped towards a certain age group.  Often times varying jobs are identified within a certain age group, therefore creating bias within a certain job domain (e.g., CEOs should be older individuals).
• Utilize Older Workers as a Competitive Advantage. Focus on skill rather than age, thereby hiring the most skilled older workers other companies may have over-looked due to their age.
• Consider Adding Complexity. Due to the fear of declining cognitive ability, managers are often inclined to reduce older worker’s responsibilities, but research suggests it may be better to switch things up and make them more complex.

Ageism may be occurring in the workplace; however, there are many methods or practices that can be useful in mitigating the negative consequences.

Interpretation by:

Adam Bradshaw

The DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Ames, D. R., & Flynn, F. J. (2007). What breaks a leader: The curvilinear relation between assertiveness and leadership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 307-324.

There can be too much or too little of a good thing when it comes to assertiveness in managers. Recent research has found ratings of managerial leadership are highest at a moderate level of managerial assertiveness, with low and high assertiveness being associated with lower ratings. This summary will review possible work-related costs that may explain this effect.

Assertiveness Defined

Assertiveness is defined as speaking up for oneself and acting in one’s own interests (i.e., values, goals, and preferences). Assertiveness is thought of in terms of a continuum, ranging from being submissive to hostile. It is a relatively unique characteristic in that assertiveness can be a problem if it is too high or too low; other characteristics (such as intelligence or charisma) are usually only considered problematic if they are too low.

Aspects of Leadership

The research examined how perceptions of managerial assertiveness affected ratings of four leadership aspects:

• Motivation
• Social Influence
• Managing Conflict
• Team Work

A pattern was found that showed extreme ratings of assertiveness negatively affected the ratings of each of these aspects.

Assertiveness Costs: The Buddy and the Boss

The differences in leadership ratings may be based on different social and instrumental costs associated with varying degrees of assertiveness. When managers exhibit low levels of assertiveness, they may be more well-liked but be perceived as weak and not able to get the job done; this weakness can be thought of as the instrumental cost of being too passive or submissive. On the other hand, managers who are extremely aggressive may be thought of as highly effective in terms of getting work accomplished but suffer a social cost in that they are not well accepted as leaders because they are personally disliked.

Implications for Practice

Managers with a generally moderate level of assertiveness may be viewed more positively as a leader compared to low or high assertiveness managers. Moderate managers have the ability to accomplish the instrumental tasks at work without being socially abrasive. Some suggestions for encouraging managers to be moderately assertive include:

• Using skills training and coaching to teach managers how to be more (or less) assertive
• Regularly emphasizing the importance of moderate assertiveness to help ensure managerial behavior doesn’t revert back to previous unsatisfactory levels
• Changing managers’ norms about what is considered acceptable assertiveness

A key to improving perceptions of managerial leadership is changing managers’ expectations about what level of assertiveness is appropriate when their expectations are not congruent with how much assertiveness is actually necessary. This can be done through changing norms and skills using training or coaching. For those people who will not change their assertiveness if needed, other methods may be necessary in areas such as hiring or promotion to reduce the number of these individuals in managerial roles.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Nishii, L. H., LePak, D. P., & Schneider, B. (2008). Employee attributions of the “why” of HR practices: Their effects on employee attitudes and behaviors, and customer satisfaction. Personnel Psychology, 61, 503-545.

Employees’ attitudes have long been recognized as important factors that affect their behavior at work. Recent research has looked into what specific attributions about HR’s motives influence employees’ work attitudes and customer service behavior.

Employee Attributions

An attribution is an explanation that a person makes about other peoples’ intentions and actions. Attributions are important because different people can come to very different conclusions about the same thing based on making different attributions. Regarding HR practices, employees can attribute positive intentions behind those practices such as a desire for service quality and employee well-being. However, employees can also attribute negative intentions to HR practices and may think that only desires for cost cutting and even employee exploitation underlie their implementation. An example of an HR practice that can be taken either way by employees is giving employees increased job responsibilities and duties.

Attributions and Attitudes

Evidence suggests that employees have more positive attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and commitment to the organization) when they attribute HR’s policies to a desire by the company to promote quality and employee well-being. On the other hand, the same research also indicates that when employees attribute negative motives to HR they tend to have more negative work attitudes. Attitudes seem not to be affected by attributions when employees believe that policies are put in place for external motives (i.e., union or legal compliance purposes); in other words, it appears that employee attributions have their greatest effect on their work attitudes when employees are inferring about intentions of motives internal to their organization.

Attitudes, Actions, and Customer Satisfaction

Research shows that employees’ attitudes meaningfully affect their willingness to perform organizational citizenship behaviors like helping others, following rules, and regularly attending work. Importantly, but perhaps not surprisingly, employee helping behaviors are positively associated with customer satisfaction. Thus, the attributions employees make about HR intentions affect their attitudes, which in turn affect their actions at work and subsequently influence an important outcome in customer satisfaction.

Implications for Practice

Based on these results, human resource professionals should attempt to:

• Assess employee attributions of policy implementation to understand their perceptions of HR management intentions.
• Make sure the organization is clearly communicating its policies and procedures to stakeholders in a noticeable manner.
• Ensure as best as possible that policies are implemented the same across departments and units by all supervisors to make sure that all employees will similarly interpret organizational motives.

By following the above suggestions, unintentional or unwanted attributions by employees about HR practices may be reduced or reversed. This can be significant not only for employee-management relations, but for customer service satisfaction as well.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Burris, E.R., Detert, J.R., & Chiaburu, D.S. (2008). Quitting before leaving: The mediating effects of psychological attachment and detachment on voice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 912-922.

Speaking up refers to employee willingness to voice to supervisors when they believe something isn’t right in the workplace or could be improved. By speaking up on such issues, employees can alert their supervisors to potentially serious problems within or involving the organization. However, some employees are more likely to speak up than others. One factor that influences employees voicing their concerns is mental detachment.

Mental Attachment to Work

Before mental detachment is described, first mental attachment will be defined. Mental attachment is when an employee feels particularly attached and identified with the organization. While related to having better relationships with one’s supervisors, feelings of attachment to one’s workplace do not automatically lead to a greater frequency of speaking up about workplace issues. This is because many people like their workplaces for some of the same reasons that make the workplace ineffective. That is, some people are attached to their work because a faulty status quo actually works in their favor.

Mental Detachment from Work

On the other hand, having a negative view of a supervisor’s leadership abilities or feeling that one’s supervisor is abusive results in employees having a greater desire to quit their jobs, also known as mental detachment. Employees essentially stop caring about what happens at the organization, which contributes to their not voicing about potential improvements or problems.

Implications for Practice

Here are a few suggestions for how to prevent mental detachment from occurring with your employees while also promoting speaking up to supervisors.

• Encourage feedback on what is and is not working from employees. Outlets for feedback may include a suggestion box, a hotline-type system, and an “open door” policy where individuals can feel free to communicate with their supervisors.
• Take steps to improve the quality of relationships between employees and their supervisors.
• Enact procedures to reduce and eliminate supervisors’ abuse of employees.
• Be proactive in encouraging and rewarding employees for challenging ineffectiveness in your organization’s status quo.

Managers and supervisors don’t always know what is effective in their workplaces, so they must rely on feedback from subordinates who are often much closer to the potential issues. Creating conditions that encourage employees to speak up and not detach mentally from work can facilitate this important feedback process.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Mckay, P. F., & Avery, D. R. (2006). What has race got to do with it?  Unraveling the role of racioethnicity in job seekers’ reactions to site visits. Personnel Psychology, 59, 395-427.

In recent years minority recruitment has become more and more imperative for companies. A diverse company can avoid legal woes, improve public image, and legitimize itself to minority customers. With the increased importance of a diverse workforce, it has become important to consider the best practices for recruiting minority candidates. While it may seem that the same guidelines for recruiting majority candidates should be used, this is not entirely accurate.

Selecting an Employer

Consider yourself as a minority candidate deciding between two companies that have each extended a job offer. The companies are similar in a number of aspects, but they are not identical. Company A overtly displays the presence of minorities in the organization through recruitment literature, while Company B exhibits no such minority presence. Additionally, you were pleasantly surprised by the prevalence of minorities whom you were introduced to during your site visit at Company A, and you were equally disappointed to see minority representation only existed at the lowest levels of the organization in Company B. As a minority candidate, which company would you perceive as more friendly?

When minority candidates are selecting an employer they will, either implicitly or explicitly, more likely choose the company they perceive as the most positive toward minorities. While a company may try to portray an image that discrimination against minority candidates does not occur, the perception of a job seeker can be drastically different.

Changing Impressions

To make your company appear more favorable to minority job seekers, it is important for the job seeker to see that your company hires and promotes minorities. While this can be advertised through recruitment literature, it will not be fully accepted by the minority job seeker until the candidate visits the company.

The Site Visit

Site visits are generally a late step in the recruitment process, and candidates who have reached this point are more likely to be offered a job. However, this step in the process is also the point at which 75% of job seekers decide whether or not to accept an offer, if one is extended.

With the site visit being so important to a candidate’s choice of accepting an offer, it is important to maximize the chances of the candidate choosing your company.

To ensure minority candidates view your company favorably during the site visit, it is important for them to notice a minority presence in the company, both with potential coworkers and supervisors. This can put the candidate at ease, because they will see that your company has a culture that accepts and promotes minorities. Additionally, the candidate may be more at ease knowing that they are not the only minority in the workgroup.

The final important aspect of the site tour is meeting with the potential supervisor. While the recruiter cannot change who the supervisor is, the recruiter can take steps to ensure the supervisor’s behavior is inviting to the candidate. Many people can unknowingly display negative non-verbal reactions to minority candidates, like blinking excessively, being physically avoidant, or maintaining poor eye contact. Recruiters can help ensure that the supervisor avoids these pitfalls by discussing them with him or her in a tactful manner. For instance, the topic of minority recruiting does not need to be broached with the supervisor; instead, just remind the supervisor that the applicant is interviewing the company as much as the company is interviewing the applicant. In that context, the recruiter can remind the supervisor of some potentially negative non-verbal queues that should be avoided with all applicants.

Remember, recruiters have more contact with the candidate than anyone else in the company pre-hire, so recruiters should pay extra attention to avoid exhibiting negative body language and be as friendly and inviting as possible.

Interpretation by:

David Daly

DeGarmo Group

The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Chiaburu, D. & Harrison, D. (2008). Do Peers Make the Place? Conceptual Synthesis and Meta-Analysis of Coworker Effects on Perceptions, Attitudes, OCBs, and Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 93 (5), 1082-1103.

Work in many organizations is beginning to shift from an individual orientation, where tasks are completed alone, to a more team-based orientation, where individuals work with one another to complete projects. This shift in orientation leads to more interaction among coworkers, which can impact organizational outcomes.

What Impact Do Coworkers Have?

The impact coworkers may have on each other is profound. In fact, this influence may be even greater than the influence of supervisors. Coworkers can impact or influence others in both positive and negative ways, as they may provide support for or be antagonistic towards each other. Coworkers’ support (or lack thereof) can influence:

• Role perceptions
• Work attitudes
• Individual effectiveness

Role Perceptions

Coworkers can often be an important source of information for employees seeking advice, instruction or help when they are unsure of what to do. Coworkers can often provide information to support or discourage certain activities. This can be particularly useful for reducing uncertainty about one’s expected role within the organization. Additionally, coworker support can reduce both role conflict (directly conflicting tasks) and role overload (excessive demands given the amount of resources).

Work Attitudes

Coworkers can also influence employee opinions and attitudes. Coworker support is often associated with high job satisfaction, job involvement and a deeper commitment to one’s organization. This increase in positive work attitudes can be achieved when coworkers provide task-based assistance, information, or emotional support.

Individual Effectiveness

Coworker support has been found to reduce counterproductive workplace behaviors and employee withdrawal (i.e., coming to work late, purposefully working slowly, being verbally aggressive towards other employees, etc.) and increase organizational citizenship behaviors (i.e., altruistic helping, not taking extra breaks, obeying the rules even when no one is watching, etc.). Ultimately, coworker support can increase individual performance by providing “critical information” about the organization and task processes.

Final Thoughts

Coworker relationships can have profound positive and negative effects on employee and organizational outcomes. Organizations should focus their attention on understanding how to foster these relationships. This can be accomplished through various means such as decreasing competition amongst coworkers, allowing supervisors to establish a friendly and helpful workplace climate and creating a strong set of standards that encourage coworker support. The importance of employee interactions is often overlooked. However, with the increasing focus on team-based work and flatter organizational structures, the relationships between employees become increasingly important.

Interpretation by:

Elizabeth Allen

The DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from:

As companies seek to expand beyond national boundaries, one question becomes particularly relevant: is the “job” the same in different countries? Are the functions of a bank teller in the United States the same as those of a teller in Japan? When companies seek to become multi-national, it becomes increasingly important to determine if the job companies are moving from the United States (U.S.) will end up being the same job in another country.

The Global Movement

Services typically performed at corporate headquarters in the U.S. – e.g., technology, call center functions, product testing, and research & development — are increasingly being moved off-shore to other countries.

Global developments require the use of information about jobs to be applied across country boundaries. As such, an understanding of how job demands may differ across those boundaries is essential – particularly for the cross-country application of job models and competencies for performance appraisal systems. Typically job information has been developed using U.S. jobs/workers, which then is used by other departments and organizations overseas.

The Influence of Culture

Research has shown that cultural values, combined with the organization’s environment, influence human resource management practices. Specifically, the degree to which a country values individualism versus collectivism typically emerges as important.

While it is true individualistic/collectivistic value differences do exist, they do not appear to affect the importance of different work activities, skill requirements, and work-style requirements of the same job across countries/cultures.

The US Department of Labor’s O*NET is the most comprehensive and readily accessible repository of occupational information, available via http://online.onetcenter.org/. Thus, generally speaking, the detailed job information available on O*NET may be useful for a multitude of applications across countries, including the beginning stages of a global job analysis.

The implication for practitioners is that for uses like developing job descriptions, matching applicant KSAOs with those required by the job, and creating realistic job previews based on information measured from jobs in the U.S. , much of this information is likely to transport (or “translate”) for the same job overseas – regardless of the job’s – or company’s – country of origin!

A Word of Caution

One important caveat to keep in mind, though, is that the transportability of job information from the U.S. to other countries and cultures still depends on the level of precision and detail required by the situation.

For high-stakes applications requiring great levels of precision, such as validation of selection assessment instruments and creating norms/ranges for test scores, use of local detailed job analysis data is much more appropriate for ensuring that country or cultural differences do not negatively affect the results.

Interpretation by:

Kathleen Melcher

DeGarmo Group

The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Mayer, D.M., Greenbaum, R.L., Kuenzi, M., & Shteynberg, G. (2009). When do fair procedures not matter? A test of the identity violation effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 142-161.

Sometimes managers and business owners are required to make tough decisions, and these decisions don’t always result in favorable outcomes for every employee.  Both research and practical experience have shown us that employees’ perceptions of decisions can have dramatic outcomes for the organization.

If an employee believes that he has been treated unjustly, this can lead to a number of negative outcomes for the organization including lower performance, higher turnover intentions, and higher deviant behaviors at work.   When an employee believes that she has been treated fairly, this can result in positive work outcomes such as higher job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, and higher performance.

Fairness and Perceptions of Justice

One way to increase employees’ perceptions that they have been treated fairly is through procedural justice.  Procedural justice occurs when the processes and procedures taken to make a decision are perceived as fair.  If an employee believes that the steps taken to reach a decision are fair and just, then she is more likely to be satisfied with the outcome of the decision – even if it is not in her favor.

One way of increasing perceptions of procedural justice is by giving employees “voice” in the decision-making process.  This includes letting employees express their opinions and weigh-in on the issue at hand.  Giving employees a voice in the decision-making process will let them know that you value their input. Another way of increasing perceptions of procedural justice is by making sure that the decision-making process is fair and unbiased.  Transparency of the process will help increase perceptions of procedural justice.

Personal and Social Identity Violation

Unfortunately, sometimes procedural justice just isn’t enough to overcome an unfair outcome. When decision outcomes violate employees’ personal and social identity – deeply rooted moral convictions and connections to groups with whom they identify (such as a work group, organization, or occupation) – how the decision was made does not seem to matter.

When an individual’s personal or social identity is violated, he will search for flaws in the decision-making procedure to justify his anger and dissatisfaction with the outcome. Often, this process results in the employee believing that employee opinions or voice were not considered during the decision-making process. This can lead to negative reactions from the employee.

Practical Advice: Good News and Bad News

The good news is that in many situations, managers can take steps to minimize perceptions of unfairness by providing employees a “voice” in the decision-making process and by ensuring that fair procedures are followed throughout.

The bad news is that when a decision outcome violates an employee’s social or personal identity, fair procedures might not be enough to assuage negative reactions of employees.

Managers can take proactive steps to avoid negative employee reactions by anticipating which types of situations will not be aided by procedural justice. These might include issues that individuals may have a strong moral conviction about or any types of decisions that will impact a particular group, such as a work group or a profession.

It’s also important to keep in mind that people are protective about the members of the groups to which they belong, so when a decision is made that negatively impacts an individual, other employees who share group membership with that person may become dissatisfied.

However, in order for an employee to perceive that an injustice was perpetrated, he or she has to believe that there were no other suitable alternatives for the situation. Therefore, managers can emphasize a lack of suitable alternatives or inevitability of the current situation in order to minimize negative reactions.

Interpretation by:

Michelle Toelle

The DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Arthur Jr., W., Bell, S. T., Villado, A. J., & Doverspike, D. (2006). The use of person-organization fit in employment decision making: An assessment of its criterion-related validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 786-801.

Imagine a situation in which an individual has found an occupation that suits his needs, works for a pleasant supervisor, and receives a competitive wage and benefits. While this may sound like a storybook tale, if we further consider that the same individual enjoys working in teams, is excited by working to meet challenging goals, and cherishes the opportunity to make important decisions without asking for approval, all of which his organization does not foster, suddenly our storybook tale has taken a turn for the dark side: now our protagonist is unhappy, underperforming, and surfing the internet for a new place to work.

While this fictitious example may seem extreme, it is closer to reality than you think. When employees do not value the same things as the organization they work for, negative outcomes can result. Conversely, good fit between the values of an employee and organization can lead to positive outcomes, like higher levels of organizational commitment.

What is Person-Organization Fit?

Person-Organization fit (P-O fit) is a concept that goes back many years, and is generally defined as compatibility between employees and their organizations. Compatibility can result from one party supplying a need of the other party, similar values across parties, or both. Researchers have found meaningful relationships with P-O fit as a predictor of work attitudes, job performance, and turnover.

Why is P-O Fit Important?

The general idea behind the importance of P-O fit is based on the attraction-selection-attrition (A-S-A) theory. According to the A-S-A theory, individuals are attracted to organizations with similar values and organizations tend to hire such individuals during the selection process. Finally, attrition becomes important as the employee sees first-hand the extent to which he or she is actually congruent with the organization, leading to a choice to either continue working for or leave the company.

What does P-O Fit Predict?

As mentioned previously, P-O fit has demonstrated relationships with three very important outcomes:

• Work attitudes
• Turnover
• Job Performance

While each of the three aforementioned outcomes is related to P-O fit, these relationships vary in magnitude; the strongest relationships are listed first.

• Work attitudes - The link between P-O fit and work attitudes is the strongest and most robust: the more an individual fits with the organization, the more likely he or she is to display higher levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
• Turnover - Considering the high cost of turnover, this relationship is very important to the bottom line. It seems obvious, but individuals do not enjoy working for companies that do not align well with their personal values and often leave as a result.
• Job Performance - When individuals do not feel they fit well with the organization, it often has negative effects on the effort they put forth at work, leading to lower levels of job performance. Researchers have found P-O Fit to relate to both task performance (performance on tasks required of the job) and contextual performance (performance on tasks outside of those required by the job, like Organizational Citizenship Behaviors).

Implications for Practice

With the relationship between P-O fit and important work outcomes firmly established, the question becomes, how can organizations leverage this knowledge?

Unfortunately, as it is currently conceptualized, P-O fit cannot be taught. The values and interests individuals have when they join an organization are longstanding, and will likely not change much as a result of employment.

The alternative option is to look for applicants who match the company and bring them aboard to increase overall fit. This option is gaining in popularity in the last few years and will likely continue on that trend.

To bring people aboard who match the organization, a P-O fit test, interview, or other form of selection tool will likely need to be implemented. Several consulting firms are available to aide in this type of selection.

Going back to our initial example, let’s say our fictions organization implemented a screening tool to help choose the right people for the organization. As a result, the organization hires a different employee, one who prefers to work individually, is partial to working towards less optimistic goals, and would rather fall back on management when making important decisions. Now the organization and employee fit very well and stay together for a long time, perhaps living happily ever after?

Interpretation by:

David Daly

DeGarmo Group