This article brings together three current themes in organizational behavior: (1) a renewed interest in assessing person-situation interactional constructs, (2) the quantitative assessment of organizational culture, and (3) the application of “Q-sort,” or template-matching, approaches to assessing person-situation interactions. Using longitudinal data from accountants and M.B.A. students and cross-sectional data from employees of government agencies and public accounting firms, we developed and validated an instrument for assessing person-organization fit, the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP). Results suggest that the dimensionality of individual preferences for organizational cultures and the existence of these cultures are interpretable. Further, person-organization fit predicts job satisfaction and organizational commitment a year after fit was measured and actual turnover after two years. This evidence attests to the importance of understanding the fit between individuals' preferences and organiza...

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People and organizational culture: a profile comparison approach to assessing person-organization fit

This meta-analysis investigated the relationships between person‐job (PJ), person‐organization (PO), person‐group, and person‐supervisor fit with preentry (applicant attraction, job acceptance, intent to hire, job offer) and postentry individual-level criteria (attitudes, performance, withdrawal behaviors, strain, tenure). A search of published articles, conference presentations, dissertations, and working papers yielded 172 usable studies with 836 effect sizes. Nearly all of the credibility intervals did not include 0, indicating the broad generalizability of the relationships across situations. Various ways in which fit was conceptualized and measured, as well as issues of study design, were examined as moderators to these relationships in studies of PJ and PO fit. Interrelationships between the various types of fit are also meta-analyzed. 25 studies using polynomial regression as an analytic technique are reviewed separately, because of their unique approach to assessing fit. Broad themes emerging from the results are discussed to generate the implications for future research on fit.

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Consequences of individuals' fit at work: a meta-analysis of person-job, person-organization, person-group, and person-supervisor fit

This article presents a comprehensive definition and conceptual model of person-organization fit that incorporates supplementary as well as complementary perspectives on fit. To increase the precision of the construct's definition, it is also distinguished from other forms of environmental compatibility, silch as person-group and person-vocation fit. Once defined, commensurate measurement as it relates to supplementary and complementary fit is discussed and recommendations are offered regarding the necessity of its use. A distinction is made between the direct measurement of perceived fit and the indirect measurement of actual person-organization fit, using both cross- and individual-level techniques, and the debate regarding differences scores is reviewed. These definitional and measurement issues frame a review of the existing literature, as well as provide the basis for specific research propositions and suggestions for managerial applications.

Person-organization fit: an integrative review of its conceptualizations, measurement, and implications

A life-span, life-space approach to career development

Historically, education goals have tended to fluctuate from emphasis solely on cognitive outcomes to major concern with social and affective ones. The emphasis on achievement and the "cult of efficiency" (Callahan, 1962) early in this century was followed by a shift in the 1930's to the comprehensive high school with its social and affective concerns (cf. the Eight Year Study, Aikin, 1942). Then Sputnik initiated a rapid and dramatic reemphasis on cognitive outcomes (Bruner, 1960) from which the current trend seems to be moving in its emphasis on "humanistic" aspects of education. The sharp increase in the number of studies on self-concept is one reflection of the reemphasis on noncognitive outcomes of education. (For references to current educational studies, see reviews by Coller, 1971; Purkey, 1970; Yamamoto, 1972; Zirkel, 1971.) Another symptom of this shift has taken the form of increased concern with enhancing the child's self-concept, espe-

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Self-Concept: Validation of Construct Interpretations

THE purpose of the research described below was to determine the relative social desirability of 15 work values as measured by The Work Values Inventory (Hana, 1954; O’Hara & Tiedeman, 1959; Super & Overs~reet, 1960). In the inventory, each value is represented by two descriptions, both intended to be equivalent expressions of that value. For example, Altruism is represented by the descriptions, &dquo;Work in which you can benefit others,&dquo; and &dquo;Work in which you can help other people.&dquo; Security is represented by the descriptions, &dquo;Work in which you have a feeling of security,&dquo; and &dquo;Work in which you are sure of a job, even in hard times.&dquo; The Work Values Inventory is divided into two parts. Part One consists of one set of 15 different value descriptions, each of which is paired with each of the other 14 value descriptions. In Part Two, the second set of 15 descriptions is similarly paired. Thus, each value appears 28 times. In all, there are 210 pairs of value statements.

Social and Personal Desirability in the Assessment of Work Values

The 17 articles that constitute this special issue have been analyzed for important recurrent themes that may be common to all of the 16 countries covered, or to only some.

Synthesis: Or Is It Distillation?

THIS paper is an attempt to examine group guidance, on the part of one who is not a specialist in that area, to view group guidance in some perspective, to rationalize our thinking about its techniques, and to assess its contribution to and its place in the total program of guidance services. The extremely diverse and incohesive literature was difficult to assimilate and to synthesize. What follows is therefore definitely one man’s attempt to organize a chaotic field; it is sure to prove incomplete and inadequate in many ways.

Group Techniques in the Guidance Program

Following Dr. Super's discussion of the nature and purposes of multifactor tests, we will publish in subsequent issues articles on each of the following multifactor tests: Differential Aptitude Tests by George K. Bennett, Alexander G. Wesman, and Harold Seashore; General Aptitude Test Battery by Beatrice J. Dvorak; Guilford-Zimmerman Aptitude Survey by James P. Guilford; Unifactor Tests by Norman A. Crowder; Primary Mental Ability Tests by Thelma Gwynn Thurstone; Factored Aptitude Series by Joseph E. King; Multiple Aptitude Test by David Segel; and the Flanagan Aptitude Classification Test by John C. Flanagan.—Ed.

Donald E. Super

Papers

Social and Personal Desirability in the Assessment of Work Values

Synthesis: Or Is It Distillation?

Group Techniques in the Guidance Program

The Use of Multifactor Test Batteries in Guidance

Work Salience and Work Values Their Dimensions, Assessment and Significance