Successful selection activities entail a lot of careful planning and careful thought. The selection process is composed of steps, each of which provides decision makers with information that will help them predict whether an applicant will be a successful job performer. One way to conceptualize that is to think of each step as a higher hurdle in a race. The applicant able to clear all the hurdles wins the race and the job offer. Five employee selection methods are commonly used in business today:
1.Interviews
Research shows that interviews are the most frequently used employee selection process in modern business. Research also shows that unstructured interviews are almost completely indefensible on scientific or legal grounds. Structured interviews, which use a standard script tailored to the demands of the job in question and a standard way to interpret answers, are in fact defensible on scientific and legal grounds. The problem with structured interviews concerns "interview drift"-interviewers get bored with the standard procedure and drift back into unstructured interviews and all the problems that they entail.
Research shows that interviews are the most frequently used employee selection process in modern business. Research also shows that unstructured interviews are almost completely indefensible on scientific or legal grounds. Structured interviews, which use a standard script tailored to the demands of the job in question and a standard way to interpret answers, are in fact defensible on scientific and legal grounds. The problem with structured interviews concerns "interview drift"-interviewers get bored with the standard procedure and drift back into unstructured interviews and all the problems that they entail.
2. Cognitive ability measures
Most psychologists believe that measures of cognitive ability predict performance in any job and are, therefore, scientifically defensible. Research shows that ethnic groups perform differently on standard measures of cognitive ability. This difference is, in fact, discrimination. However, the fact that measures of cognitive ability typically predict job performance is used to offset the problem of discrimination. More importantly, however, cognitive ability measures tell us whether a person can do a job, but they don't tell us whether a person will do a job.
3.Integrity tests
Integrity tests are typically used to screen entry-level employees for honesty, dependability, and willingness to follow rules. These tests have two attractive features. First, they are scientifically defensible - they predict job performance. And second, they are legally defensible - they don't discriminate against minority job applicants. The problem concerns their narrow focus - they only evaluate a person's willingness to follow rules. They have nothing to say about potential for customer service work, for working as part of a team, for exercising leadership or taking initiative, or for thinking creatively.
4.Personality inventories
Well-developed inventories of normal personality such as the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), the 16 PF, and the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) have a number of attractive features. They are scientifically defensible - they predict job performance about as well as measures of cognitive ability. They are legally defensible - they don't discriminate against minorities, women, or older workers. They predict a wide range of performance outcomes from integrity to sales ability. The drawback to tests of this type is that perhaps 2,500 of them are commercially available, and most of them lack scientific credibility - they don't predict job performance. Here it is a case of caveat emptor.
5. Assessment centers
Assessment centers are the gold standard of employment selection. They provide a comprehensive appraisal of a person's talents, skills, and abilities and can be used to select talented employees at any level. Their major drawback is their high costs and the time it takes to complete them.
The concept of human resource management (HRM) has received focused attention for around 20 years, with the catalyst being that “many US companies found they were being rivaled and in some instances overtaken, in markets they had dominated” (Ehrlich, 1994, p. 492). As Lodge (1985, p. 319) observes. By the early 1980s there was still little disagreement that US corporate managers, employees and trade unions would have to change their ways in order to compete successfully for markets in America
Harvard university academics introduced a new compulsory component of HRM into their MBA syllabus and reinforced this so-called “Harvard Model” with influential books and articles (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). While there would surely have been a genuine desire to help US business, US society, and even US employees, there was also “a long-term effort to ensure that the Harvard Business School faculty provided leadership in human resource management” (Walton and Lawrence, 1985, p. xx).The Harvard concept stresses that HRM should lead to employee commitment – not simply as a means to employer objectives of improved productivity and profits, but because “the fulfilment of many employee needs is taken as a goal rather than merely a means to an end” (Walton, 1985a, p. 49).The concept of fit in employee selection has received growing attention in recent years. The overarching concept of fit in this field stems from person-environment (PE) congruence or PE fit in the internationalists theory of behavior (e.g. Lewin, 1951). Among various forms of PE fit, employee selection researchers have extensively studied person-job (PJ) fit and person-organization (PO) fit (Adkins et al., 1994; Cable and Judge, 1997; Edwards, 1991; Kristof, 1996; Kristof-Brown, 2000; Werbel and Gilliland, 1999).
PJ fit is defined as the compatibility between a person's characteristics and those of the job or tasks that are performed at work. Edwards (1991) mentions that PJ fit has both a demands-supplies relationship (i.e. demands of the job and the abilities of the person) and a needs-supplies relationship (i.e. needs of the person and supplies from the job). PO fit is defined as the compatibility between people and entire organizations. Kristof (1996) summarizes several conceptualizations of PO fit, including supplementary PO fit (i.e. fit as similarity) and complementary PO fit (i.e. fit between demands and supplies). Cable and DeRue (2002) propose a three-dimensional model of PO value congruence, PJ needs-supplies fit and PJ demands-abilities fit. In the employee selection literature, the demands-abilities dimension of PJ fit and the supplementary dimension of PO fit are most frequently used (Adkins et al., 1994; Kristof-Brown, 2000; Werbel and Gilliland, 1999), and this paper also focuses on these two types of fit.
Traditional research on employee selection has focused on PJ fit or the match between individual knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) and the requirements of the job as the major selection criteria; however, a growing number of practitioners and researchers advocate that this is not enough (Bowen et al., 1991; Kristof, 1996; Montgomery, 1996; Werbel and Gilliland, 1999). For example, Bowen et al. (1991) argue that organizations with self-motivated and committed employees tend to select employees based on PO fit as well as PJ fit. Werbel and Gilliland (1999) propose that employee selection should include PO fit and person-group (PG) fit as well as PJ fit. These researchers also propose ways to assess PO fit in selecting employees, such as conducting organizational analyses and assessing applicants' personality, values and needs (Bowen et al., 1991; Werbel and Gilliland, 1999). Other researchers suggest that PO fit has already been included in actual employee selection practices such as in the selection interviews (Chatman, 1989; Ferris and Judge, 1991; Judge and Ferris, 1992; Rynes and Gerhart, 1990). Recent meta-analyses conducted by several researchers found that both PJ fit and PO fit are related to many positive individual outcomes, indicating that both PJ fit and PO fit should be considered in selecting employees (Hoffman and Woehr, 2006; Kristof-Brown et al., 2005; Verquer et al., 2003). For example, Kristof-Brown et al. (2005) report that PJ fit has strong correlations with job satisfaction (0.56), organizational commitment (0.47) and intent to quit (−0.46), and moderate correlations with overall performance (0.20). Similarly, they report that PO fit has strong correlations with job satisfaction (0.44) and organizational commitment (0.51), and moderate correlations with intent to quit (−0.35) and contextual performance (0.27).
While research to date indicates that both PJ fit and PO fit are important as selection criteria, Werbel and Gilliland (1999) further suggest that the relative importance of fit is contingent on the work context. However, there has been little research into such a work context. That is, the PE fit literature has not provided theoretical guidance as to the relative importance of different types of fit when organizations hire new employees.
In today's world, hiring and managing a diverse workforce appear to be the keys to an organization gaining competitive advantage. For example, there has been a gradual movement away from full-time and ongoing employment arrangements towards an increased use of contingent workers (Kalleberg, 2000; McLean Parks et al., 1998). Another trend is that the number of professionals, such as lawyers, doctors and engineers, working in organizations has increased dramatically (Barley, 1996). Therefore, it is now common for many organizations to hire different types of employees, such as contingent employees and professional employees, as well as traditional full-time/regular employees. In such a situation, organizations should use different weights of PJ fit and PO fit as selection criteria for different types of employees, because the effect of each type of fit on various employee and organizational outcomes may differ according to the type of employees or employment relationships.
// The notion that HR work has become more focused on delivering to business needs and effectiveness/efficiency criteria can be seen in the works of leading HR academics and practitioners. Ulrich (1997, 1998) argues that HR can adopt several roles; business partner, change agent, administrative expert and employee champion, and that HR must “measure their effectiveness in terms of business competitiveness rather than employee comfort” (Ulrich, 1998, p. 126). These tensions are recognized by Cappelli (1999) who argues that some of the pressures leading to the new deal “have been generated by new management practices that have essentially brought the market inside the firm” (Cappelli, 1999, p. viii), and by other authors noting that market pressures enable a reconfiguration of HRM which enables HR practitioners to “have the chance to move on to higher things” (Brewster et al. 2001, p. 37).
This new “strategic” HR role is one that asks HR managers to ensure that they deliver the “best fit” in tailoring HR strategies to organizational goals rather than adopting a “best practice” (or “one size fits all”) approach (Hastie, 2002; Marchington and Wilkinson, 2002). Although none of these works ignores the need for “good practice” in HRM, and all appreciate that good practice is not often common practice, a common theme in them is the relative lack of focus on employee wellbeing compared with delivering for business needs.
Employee wellbeing
The findings of the 1998 WERS included items on both workplace wellbeing and employee attitudes to work. Cully et al. (1999) found that managers' views of workplace wellbeing included concerns over issues of relatively high sanctioning of employees (60 per cent of workplaces) including sackings (39 per cent of workplaces) and of serious injuries at work (61 per cent of workplaces) (Cully et al., 1999, p. 125)[1]. Employee attitudes to work differed, and these revealed that three in four employees felt that their job required them to work very hard, with only 49 per cent agreeing that management support skill development, more employees rating management as poor than good on consulting/taking on board their views, less than one in ten employees feeling satisfied with their jobs, and management strategy and structure being to “retain control and contain costs” (Cully et al., 1999, pp. 167, 293)[2].
Buckingham's (2001) longitudinal research on employee engagement at work revealed that “only 17 per cent” of UK
The studies point to a series of workplace practices that seem to negatively affect employees’ sense of wellbeing at work. The extent to which HR managers are preventing or perpetrating such outcomes vis-à-vis employee wellbeing are now detailed, via two notions of “guardians” and “gamblers” roles for HR managers.
Human resource roles
Role one: HR managers as the “guardians” of employee wellbeing
This (first) role for HR includes the portrayal of HR managers as change agents, strategic partners and employee champions (Beattie, 2001; Schuler et al., 2001; Ulrich, 1997, 1998). Commentators have noted the potential for HR managers to engage in setting up meta-standards in HRM above the level of the firm (Sparrow, 1999), the role of HR specialists in securing employee welfare “as a guardian of ethics” (Cornelius, 2000; Woodall and Winstanley, 2001), and personnel/HR handling initiatives like managing diversity, family-friendly policies, provision of crèche facilities, counselling on drug/alcohol abuse/AIDS, and early retirement due to ill-health (Kelly and Gennard, 2001, p. 7).
We could expect HR managers to argue that devolution of HR work to the line could enable HR issues to be solved at source, and spread responsibility/accountability for HRM to all managers. An outcome here could be that HR managers are released to develop “strategic” HR initiatives that enable HR managers to secure the highest priority for employee wellbeing across their organizations. Some HR directors are certainly clear that their key role is one of “employee champion”, as:
It must be fought for by the HR director, because nobody else will. If the HR director fails to do so, the organization will be failing its people and the HR director will also be failing in his or her responsibility… so what does an HR director do all day? Ultimately he or she is concerned with all the delivery of the objectives of all stakeholders, whether shareholder, employee, customer or community (Sparkes, 2001, p. 44).
However, the contradictions (above) of being able to deliver to all stakeholders look difficult to reconcile and, if the Ulrich model is adopted, contradictions exist here too (see Kirkbride and Ward (2002)). Other authors have noted many contradictions in HRM, i.e. between “hard” and “soft” HRM, “empowerment” as “decreased autonomy and labor intensification”, “self-control” as “ownership” (Legge, 1995, p. 244), and “rightsizing” as “downsizing” (Sparrow, 1999). New tensions now exist in HRM today, and one is the possibility of HR managers adopting a strategic approach to advance their own interests and not those of employee wellbeing – a “gamblers” role for HR.
Role two: HR managers as “gamblers” of employee wellbeing
This (second) role for HR includes the notion that a strategic approach for HR managers may mean that they do not devote enough time to “operational” HR work, and line managers “empowered” in HRM produce poor outcomes (from an employee perspective), as the line do not give HR work the priority it needs amongst their other tasks (McGovern et al., 1997). Middle managers do not necessarily take on increased duties in HR willingly, as they can feel “stuck in the middle” (Redman et al. 1997), and/or “the filling in the sandwich” (McConville and Holden, 1999). Devolution of HR work to the line has resulted in “a sort of tennis really” where “a lot of it has bounced straight back” (Torrington and Hall, 1996, p. 91).
An issue here is whether a strategic approach for HR managers and devolution of HR work to the line are feasible and useful ways to get HR work done (IRS, 2000), and whether HR managers are misleading organizations in arguing the case for them. Another issue is that in using these initiatives there may be scope for line managers to abuse their position vis-à-vis employees, as HR may not be “on tap” and “on top” to police the line on a daily basis when the line conduct “devolved” HR duties.
As the level of complexity in HR work is on the increase (especially in employee relations/employment law due to interpreting and enacting new EU directives), there seems more need for HR input, not less (Deeks, 2000, p. 9), but Townley (1994) notes how “through a process of inscription or translation, HRM facilitates the operation of action at a distance” (Townley, 1994, pp. 139, 154). The split encouraged by HR managers adopting a strategic approach, of HR doing “strategy” and the line doing “operations”, is perhaps a classic example of HR managers facilitating “action at a distance”. This picture may be reflective of a wider shift in the ethical agenda of HRM, where HR practices like “flexibility” become a “normal” HR practice (Cully et al., 1999, p. 300), as does a business case approach rather than a legal one for diversity management, and reward management discards job evaluation “in ensuring fairness and justice” (Woodall and Winstanley, 2001, p. 40).
The general (alternative) impression given here is one of employee wellbeing being seen as an extremely low priority by HR managers. Such notions are perpetrated by the (political) need for HR managers to make links with CEOs/MDs ahead of employees to secure HR's own organizational survival; HR managers being criticized for focusing on “aesthetic peripherals” rather than business needs (Beer, 1997); and HR justifying the logic of “the market” in awarding executive pay packages (Sparkes, 2001).
// At about the same time as the Harvard concept was being developed another viewpoint was being promulgated by academics who supported a “strategic” concept of HRM, with the major work edited by Fombrun et al. (1984). This work emphasis’s that the “four generic human resource activities of all organizations:
- selection/promotion/placement process;
- reward process;
- development process; and
- appraisal process” (Tichy et al., 1984, p. 26)
need to be strategically aligned with the organization’s overall strategic objectives.
Hard and soft HRM
British writers have focused on the differences between the Harvard “commitment” concept of HRM and the strategic HRM concept. Keenoy (1990, p. 368) sees the Harvard concept as “philosophically grounded in the recognition of multiple stakeholders and the belief that the practice and benefits of HRM can be achieved through neo-pluralist mechanisms”, while the strategic concept is “ almost uniformly unitarist in orientation and displays a quite singular endorsement of managerial values”. The former is frequently referred to as “soft” HRM, while the latter is “hard” HRM.
In theory, soft HRM fulfils employee needs as an end in itself, and the favorable attitudes generated from the use of “appropriate” HRM practices (Guest, 1997) together with “communication, motivation and leadership” (Storey, 1987, p. 6), result in commitment to the organisation and improved performance. Hard HRM is only concerned with the effective utilisation of employees (Guest, 2002) and emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head count resource in as “natural” a way as for any other economic factor (Storey, 1987, p. 6).
If the reality of soft HRM practice was that it produced the benefits referred to in the rhetoric of academic evangelists such as Richard Walton then it should be highly favoured by both employees and employers. Questions have been raised by a number of researchers, however, about the ability of soft HRM to achieve these benefits. There are two concerns. The first is that the real motive behind its introduction is to undermine unions (Sisson, 1994). Indeed, going back to the introduction of the Harvard concept of soft HRM, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) writes about a seminal colloquium on HRM between 35 senior executives and Harvard academics. He claims that the question as to whether HRM was designed to keep the union out was “emphatically denied”, and he protested that all but three of the firms represented were at least partially unionised, with several having had a significant number of units of both kinds, with their “older plants unionised and the newer ones not”. An unreasonable interpretation therefore would be that these leaders of commitment HRM will happily dispense with unions given the opportunity. Indeed, Lawrence
The second concern is that meeting the needs of employees has never been an objective in itself, and has simply been the normative view of what Harvard academics would like to see as the employment relationship. Truss et al. (1997, p. 70) in a study of soft and hard models of HRM, concluded that “even if the rhetoric of HRM is ‘soft’, the reality is almost always ‘hard’, with the interests of the organisation prevailing over those of the individual”. Similar conclusions have been reached by Keenoy (1990), Poole and Mansfield (1992), Guest (1995) and Legge (1995a, b, 1998).
If the soft model of HRM has validity, then there should be a clear relationship between the experience of soft HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (reflecting their needs are being met) and increasing employee commitment – as well as improved productivity. Surprisingly, however, most of the research and reporting on HRM has ignored the views of employees. Legge (1998, p. 14) points out: “when reading accounts of HRM practice in the UK North America it is noticeable the extent to which the data are (literally) the voices of management”. Guest (1999, p. 5) agrees, claiming that “from its conception human resource management reflected a management agenda to the neglect of workers' concerns”. Some studies have considered employee reactions to HRM (Gibb, 2001; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000; Mabey et al., 1998) – but Guest (2002, p. 335) is perceptive in his criticism that “a feature of both advocates and critics of HRM is their neglect of direct evidence about the role and reactions of workers”. Even the exceptions noted which gave employee reactions to HRM did not relate the employee experience of HRM practices to their reactions, and Guest (1997) argues for a research agenda that addresses this gap.
This paper aims to contribute to this gap by fulfilling two major objectives. The first is to add to the limited number of studies which have tested to see if there is a relationship between HRM practice and positive employee attitudes. The second objective is to see if there is a significantly stronger relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes if employee perceptions of HRM practice are taken as the measure of HRM rather than employer perceptions, which has been the approach taken in general by previous researchers.
HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes
The soft model of HRM, as stated previously, suggests a relationship exists between the use of “appropriate” HRM practices and positive employee attitudes, and while theoretically these relationships remain poorly developed (Guest, 1997, 2001), a number of attitudes are nonetheless widely considered to be an outcome of soft HRM. For example, levels of job satisfaction, which is the affective perception that results from the achievement of desired outcomes (Harber et al., 1997), are found to be related to levels of HRM practice (Guest, 2002; Ting, 1997). High levels of employee commitment have also been found to be related to the use of “appropriate” HRM practice (Guest, 2002), and results from investing in HRM practices which benefit employees. For example, the provision of opportunities for training and skill development benefits the employee by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to function autonomously and responsibly (Guest, 2002). Furthermore, it improves retention and enables them to cope with change in the work environment (Guest, 2002).
Organizational fairness is the term used to describe “the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace” and is concerned with “the ways employees determine if they have been treated fairly in their jobs and the ways in which those determinations influence other work-related variables” (Moorman, 1991, p. 845). The HRM systems, policies, and procedures that operate in an organization have been identified as impacting on an individual's perceptions of bias and fairness (Kurland and Egan, 1999; Greenberg, 1990). Studies show that where employees believe they are treated fairly in the workplace then they hold positive attitudes towards the organization (Moorman, 1991), whereas HRM practices that are perceived to be unfair have been found to result in the employee feeling bewildered and betrayed and thus less committed (Schappe, 1996).
As far as the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is concerned, the HRM practice dimension has been measured by collecting data from employers in one of the two ways – using additive measures of HRM practice or self-reports about the extent to which particular HRM practices have been operationalized. A possible third approach would be to collect employee views about the operationalization of HRM practice and then relate these reactions to their attitudes. These approaches are described below.
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