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

Publisher description

An ambitious survey of the field, by an international group of scholars, that looks toward the future of person-organization fit. Explores how people form their impressions of fit and the impact these have on their behavior, and how companies can maximize fit Includes multiple perspectives on the topic of how people fit into organizations, discussing issues across the field and incorporating insights from related disciplines Actively encourages scholars to take part in organizational fit research, drawing on workshops and symposia held specially for this book to explore some of the creative directions that the field is taking into the future

Work-family researchers have had much success in encouraging both organizations and individuals to recognize the importance of achieving greater balance in life. Work and Life Integration addresses the intersect between work, life, and family in new and interesting ways. It discusses current challenges in dealing with work-life integration issues and sets the stage for future research agendas. The book enlightens the research community and informs the public debates on how workplaces can be made more family sensitive by providing contributions from psychologists, sociologists, and economists who have not shied away from asserting the policy implications of their findings. This text appeals to both practitioners and academics interested in seeking ways to create meaningful lives.

Person-environment (PE) fit research embodies the premise that attitudes and behaviors result not from the person or environment separately, rather, from the relationship between the two. Person-organization (P-O) fit is a key facet of PE fit, which pertains to the similarity or match between individuals and their organizations. A major area of P-O fit research studies the employees' perception of fit. This line of work asks people to report their fit with the organization, and then correlates this measurement with outcomes of interest such as job satisfaction, intention to leave, and organizational commitment. While fit researchers tend to pay little attention to individuals' conceptualization of the organization in their report of P-O fit, recent research suggests that there are two ways in which people conceptualize their organizations. First, the organization is conceptualized as an abstract entity that has goals, values, rules, and procedures (referred to as PS-PO or person-system fit in this work). Second, the organization is conceived as the sum or aggregate of people in it (PP-PO or person-person fit). In this case, it is the aggregate of people's values, goals, and personalities that comprise the reference for one's fit assessment. The results of this study provide the first empirical support for this proposed split. The results demonstrate that mixing the two conceptualizations of fit results in a problematic operationalization of P-O fit. Also, the two proposed measures, when used together, provide improved predictive capability of key outcomes of interest. When the relationship of key organizational outcomes with PP-PO and PS-PO fit was tested, the findings show, as expected, that PP-PO fit was more strongly related to outcomes that are associated with people who work for the organization, such as the worker's team and supervisor. However, the unique role of PS-PO seem to be less straightforward, and further research is required to unveil its unique significance in predicting outcomes of interest. Finally, this research provides scholars as well as practitioners with two newly and rigorously developed scales of perceived organizational fit. Future work is required to demonstrate whether this split is conductive to theoretical advancement in the study of perceived P-O fit.