Selection, meaningful work and employee retention: A self-concept based approach to person-job fit

Work plays a central role in the lives of most people. Compared with workers of past generations, today's workers have a growing sense of entitlement to meaningful work and are increasingly expecting such work from their employers. Organizations that are successful at attracting and retaining top qualified employees in times when labor markets are tight will be those that have jobs that provide meaningful work to the individual. Shamir (1991) proposed that meaningful work results from the fit or match of job tasks and an individual's self-concept. A self-concept based approach to person job fit in the human resource selection process is proposed in which job tasks are matched with an individual's self-concept. A measure of self-concept-job fit is developed and validated. Measures of other types of person job fit and a measure of person-organization fit are also developed. Focus groups and factor analysis were used to develop the perceptual fit measures. Structural equation modeling and multiple regression analysis were used to examine the relationships between various types of fit/match and meaningful work and between meaningful work and outcome variables related to employee retention. Through the examination of these relationships, the study attempts to examine the validity of a self-concept based theory of work motivation (Shamir, 1991) and add specificity to the idea of fit proposed in the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Model (Schneider, 1987) as being necessary for employee retention.; The factor analysis and correlational analysis resulted in the development and validation of perceptual measures of demand-abilities, supply-value, person-organization, and self-concept job fit. However, the convergent and discriminant validity of the supply-value and person-organization fit measures are somewhat questionable. Multiple regression analyses indicated that self-concept-job fit was a significant predictor of meaningful work and intentions to leave the organization. However, the effects of self-concept-job fit on these variables were not statistically significantly greater than the effects of supply-value fit.