Perspectives on Organizational Fit

Cheri Ostroff, Timothy A. Judge, Cheri Ostroff, Timothy A. Judge

• Éditeur: Psychology Press
• Année: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781136679216
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Business
• Sous-sujet: Management

This book concerns how employees consider their work lives, how well they fit their jobs, the work setting, other people, and what is important and valued in their organizations. Perspectives on Organizational Fit, a new book in SIOP's Organizational Frontiers Series, takes a scholarly look at fit in organizations: the relationship between individu

Part I

Extending Fit Theory

In part I of this volume, the authors challenge and extend fit research in a number of content domains. Starting with the individual level of analysis, then moving to the group and organizational level of analyses, new perspectives of fit are introduced to explain attitudes, behavior, and performance in organizations. Together, the chapters in part I provide a comprehensive treatment of fit across content domains and across levels of analysis.

Chapter 1

Multiple Perspectives of Fit
in Organizations Across
Levels of Analysis

Cheri Ostroff

University of Maryland

Mathis Schulte

Wharton, University of Pennsylvania

The notion that a good fit between person and environment leads to positive outcomes has long held intuitive appeal. Even early philosophers, such as Plato, emphasized the importance of assigning people to jobs that are congruent with their temperaments and abilities (Kaplan, 1950). In social science research, the notion of fit, also termed congruence or correspondence, has pervaded theory and research across many organizational domains since the 1900s.

Like much of the research on organizational phenomena in the past 25 years (cf. Kozlowski & Klein, 2000; Staw & Sutton, 1992), the application of the concept of fit to organizational domains has come to be largely characterized along the two extremes in the micro–macro continuum. On the one hand, there has been a micro-level focus on person–environment (PE) fit with the term being applied to a class of measures that are used to examine the relationship between individuals and the organizational environments in which they find themselves (Kristof, 1996; Tinsley, 2000). The basic premise of PE fit theory and research is that when characteristics of people and the work environment are similar, aligned or fit together, positive outcomes for individuals such as satisfaction, adjustment, commitment, performance, reduced stress, and lower turnover intentions result. On the other hand, macro-level theorists and researchers have largely focused on organizational-level phenomena, arguing that components of the organizational system, such as structure, strategy, goals, and culture, must fit together or complement one another to foster effectiveness, adaptation, and survival in the larger environment within which the organization operates (Bedeian, 1986; Katz & Kahn, 1978). We refer to this organizational-level focus as system fit, but also note that system fit can apply to lower levels such as divisions, units, or groups.

PE fit has been examined from a number of disciplines (e.g., organizational behavior, education, and vocational, counseling, social, and industrial/organizational psychology) and across a number of different content domains. For example, in vocational psychology, hundreds of studies have indicated that a greater degree of fit between the interests, preferences, and attributes of individuals and those of occupations is related to occupational choice, career success, and satisfaction (Holland, 1997; Spokane, Meir, & Catalano, 2000; Tinsley, 2000). In industrial/organizational psychology and organizational behavior, the underlying premise of selection testing has been on achieving fit between skills and abilities of workers and skill requirements of jobs (Edwards, 1991). The importance of fit between personal characteristics or needs and job demands or job reinforcers has also been emphasized in studies of stress, job satisfaction, and other attitudes (Edwards, 1991; Kristof, 1996). Similarly, the impact of fit between individuals’ needs, goals, or values and those of the job, group, or organization has been examined in studies of recruitment and organizational choice among applicants (e.g., Cable & Yu, chap. 5, this volume) and in studies of individual behavior and attitudes among job incumbents (e.g., Chatman, 1991).

The concept of fit has also been implicit in research on relational demography, leadership, and employee–organization relationships. For example, fit is implied in the area of relational demography owing to its focus on similarity between an individual’s demographic characteristics and those of his or her workgroup (Riordin, 2000). Recent work on 360-feedback assumes a fit perspective by focusing on correspondence or agreement in perceptions between a manager’s self-evaluation of his or her own behavior and the evaluations of the manager made by others (Atwater, Ostroff, Yammarino, & Fleenor, 1998). Research in leadership has also examined congruence between employee perceptions and attributes and those of their superior (e.g., Atwater & Dionne, chap. 6, this volume). In studying employee–organization relationships, fit has been examined between employee expectations and human resources (HR) practices (Tsui, Pearce, Porter, & Tripoli, 1997) and between employees’ and employers’ believes about the exchange agreement (Dabos & Rousseau, 2004).

The preceding conceptualizations of PE fit are cross-level in nature because they concern characteristics of individuals in conjunction with some characteristic of their work environment (hence the overarching term PE fit), and because outcomes are based on the individual level of analysis. Yet, the notion of fit is also pervasive at higher levels of analysis (e.g., the group or organizational level), in which the primary focus is on the match or alignment among elements of the group or organizational system, and the outcome of interest is at the higher level of analysis. For example, at the group level, issues of fit have been addressed in team relations and team processes, focusing on fit among the different characteristics of team members (Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas, & Volpe, 1995; Maruping & Agarwal, 2004). Fit has also been addressed in team job design, such as alignment between the task environment and reward systems, structure and technology (see DeRue & Hollenbeck, chap. 8, this volume). At the organizational level, numerous theories speak to the importance of alignment among internal organizational features or elements (system fit), such as the structure, strategy, culture, and processes of the organization as they relate to organizational environment (e.g., Barney, 1991; Pfeffer, 1997; Scott, 1995). Similarly, work on human resources management (HRM) systems has emphasized internal fit among the various HR practices and well as vertical fit between the HRM practices and other elements of the organizational system such as organizational strategy (e.g., Gerhart, chap. 10, this volume).

Despite the almost ubiquitous use of the fit concept across content domains and levels of analysis, fit research and theory have developed almost independently in the macro and micro arenas as well as within each of the various content domains. The result has been that a number of different theoretical perspectives have been offered to explain how fit develops and why it is important, leading some researchers to describe the topic as elusive, imprecise, confusing, or unclear (e.g., Judge & Ferris, 1992; Muchinsky & Monahan, 1987; Rynes & Gerhart, 1990). Our goal in this chapter is to synthesize and extend prior work on the development of fit in organizational research to provide a more parsimonious and generalizable perspective that integrates different types of fit and different content domains. We limit our focus to fit as it applies to organizational settings. As such, we do not discuss person–occupation or person–vocation fit; comprehensive reviews of these research areas are available elsewhere (e.g., Holland, 1997; Spokane et al., 2000; Tinsley, 2000; special issue of Journal of Vocational Behavior, 2000). Similarly, we do not fully address fit concepts in the organizational theory domain that focus on understanding how organizations operate within their environmental context. We also note that our intention is not to provide a comprehensive review of the fit literature. Rather, our emphasis is on elucidating core concepts and a broad perspective of fit.

In the first section, we provide a brief review of the historical roots and foundation of fit. In the second section, we attempt to clarify and synthesize the many different types of fit across levels of analysis. In the third section, we highlight some implications of the multilevel model with particular attention to the simultaneous consideration of multiple types of fit. Finally we focus briefly on fit as a dynamic process that occurs over time.

A Brief Historical Perspective of Fit

The split into two paradigms of fit research, system fit and PE fit, occurred around the late 1960s and early 1970s as the macro–micro separation in organizational research became prominent. Before that time, the emphasis was largely on the micro-level and individual behavior. The emergence of the human relations movement in the 1920s spurred psychologists to understand individual and group behavior and attitudes in organizations, and researchers began to examine how situational factors such as the structural features or culture of the organization influenced individual responses (Üsdiken & Leblebici, 2001). PE fit notions in psychological research also had their early origins during this time. Murray (1938), with his need-press theory whereby individual’s needs could be fulfilled or hindered by the environment, and Goldstein (1939), with his emphasis on the relationship between a person’s qualities and the nature of the tasks he or she confronts in the environment, have been credited with early considerations of PE fit in psychology (Schneider, Smith, & Goldstein, 2000).

The transition to a macro perspective began in the 1960s and 1970s. Compared with the earlier emphasis on how structure affected individual attitudes and behaviors, the importance of understanding interrelationships among structural features of organizations began to be emphasized (Bedeian, 1986). Further, organizations began to be conceptualized as social systems, based on the open systems paradigm (Katz & Kahn, 1978). The effectiveness of the organization was purported to depend on the alignment among input, transformation, and output processes, taking into account the available environmental resources (Yuchtman & Seashore, 1967).

During this time, the psychological and behaviorist tradition from the human relations movement and PE fit was integrated with systems views of organizations (Üsdiken & Leblebici, 2001). For example, Likert (1961, 1967) placed a strong emphasis on the congruence of internal processes such as communication, influence, decision-making, control, and reward processes to facilitate stability and equilibrium among employees, stating that “All component parts of any system of management must be consistent with each of the other parts and reflect the system’s basic philosophy” (Likert, 1961, p. 222). Appropriate and internally consistent structural arrangements were purported to facilitate the development and self-actualization of employees. Emphasis was also placed on the importance of satisfying employees’ physical and emotional needs because only then would employees be willing give their services wholeheartedly to the organization and perform up to their potential (Argyris, 1964; Likert, 1961; McGregor, 1960). Both system and PE fit were also evident in sociotechnical systems theories of organizations (e.g., Emery & Trist, 1960) that emphasized fit between the social (interrelationships among people) and technical (technologically based) subsystems in the organization. As noted by Katz and Kahn (1978), the sociotechnical approach “takes as its target a complex emergent variable: goodness of fit between the social and technical aspects of the organization, and by extension between those aspects of organization and the needs and abilities of individuals” (p. 716).

Although early notions of organizational systems took into account both the importance of fit among the structural and process elements of the organization as well as the human component and the fit of individuals to the organization, the 1960s and 1970s brought a split between the micro, organizational behavior, and the macro, organizational theory, strains (Üsdiken & Leblebici, 2001). On the macro side, contingency theories began to proliferate in the 1970s, triggering an emphasis on the organizational-level and organizational effectiveness outcomes. The focus turned largely to internal design, and interorganizational design and environmental relationships. For example, Miles and Snow’s (1978) typology focused largely on fit between organizational strategy, structure, and internal processes. Particular emphasis on alignment between the internal structural arrangement of the organization and the relationship to environmental constraints such as uncertainty was evident in Pennings’ (1975) structural-contingency model. Later developments in organizational theory moved toward more complex macro conceptualizations of interrelationships between the organization and environment, focusing on how to reduce or alter resource dependencies (e.g., Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), the location of organizations in institutional environments defined by the social and cultural context (e.g., Scott, 1995), populations of organizations in environmental niches (e.g., Hannan & Freeman, 1989), configural theories to represent the patterns of relevant contextual, structural, and strategic factors and ideal types (e.g., Doty, Glick, & Huber, 1993), and transactions between managers and stockholders, among board members, and between organizations (e.g., Eisenhardt, 1989). Although the “people” aspect was given some attention, for example, through the information-processing demands placed on decision makers about strategic and structural choice or through the enactment of organizational processes and culture, individual differences and direct attention to how people fit in with the organization were not explicitly addressed. Thus, system fit has come to be largely examined from a macro lens, emphasizing alignments between various internal organizational features and various environmental factors.

On the micro side, more specific attention to the notion that behavior of individuals can only be understood as an interaction between people and their context started to gain momentum. The first PE fit models began to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the discussion of interactionist theories in personality and social psychology These theories suggested that attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors are the result of the continuous interaction between person and situation factors. Interestingly, a number of researchers and theorists had earlier emphasized the interplay between personality traits and situational factors for understanding behavior (e.g., Kantor, 1926; Lewin, 1935, 1951; Murray, 1938). However, it was not until an open debate led by “situationist” Mischel (1968) and “personologist” Bowers (1973) brought up the old question of what determines behavior and resulted in a rapprochement of their positions that inspired the formulation and empirical testing of interactionist models (Ekkehammar, 1974; Endler & Magnusson, 1976; Mischel, 1973).

From Interactionism to PE Fit

The interactionist perspective emphasized that neither traits nor situations were the primary determiners of individuals’ responses, but rather, the interaction between the two influence responses (e.g., Schneider, 1983; Terborg, 1981). One problem with interactionism was that it did not specify how the person and situational or environmental elements should interact in influencing responses. PE fit and congruence addressed this issue by proposing that it is necessary to match person characteristics with their corresponding environmental characteristics. Hence, PE fit can be understood as a specific type of person–situation interaction that specifies match or congruence as the way the two factors interact—high congruence between corresponding or commensurate person and environment dimensions yields more positive outcomes (Caplan, 1987; Graham, 1976).

The early work in PE fit was inspired largely by Murray’s (1938) need-press model and was conducted outside of organizational psychology According to the need-press model, congruence between an individual’s needs and the equivalent characteristics of the environment (press) can produce either need satisfaction or need frustration. In educational psychology, Stern (1970) conceptualized PE fit as the match between students’ personalities (needs) and corresponding school climates (press). Similarly, Pervin (1967, 1968; Pervin & Rubin, 1967) showed that poor fit between students’ need for structure and the amount of structure in the educational approach of universities was related to academic dissatisfaction and to dropping out of school for nonacademic reasons. PE fit models were also developed in vocational psychology, addressing the match between individual and occupation characteristics (Tinsley, 2000) and emphasizing fit between the needs of the individual and the supplies of the occupational environment (e.g., Holland, 1964...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Contributors
• Part I: Extending Fit Theory
• Part II: Linking Theory and Analysis
• Part III: Commentary and Reflections
• Author Index
• Subject Index