DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CRITERION‐RELATED VALIDATION OF SELECTION PROCEDURES: A CRITICAL REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE

The use of validated employee selection and promotion procedures is critical to workforce productivity and to the legal defensibility of the personnel decisions made on the basis of those procedures. Consequently, there have been numerous scholarly developments that have considerable implications for the appropriate conduct of criterion‐related validity studies. However, there is no single resource researchers can consult to understand how these developments impact practice. The purpose of this article is to summarize and critically review studies published primarily within the past 10 years that address issues pertinent to criterion‐related validation. Key topics include (a) validity coefficient correction procedures, (b) the evaluation of multiple predictors, (c) differential prediction analyses, (d) validation sample characteristics, and (e) criterion issues. In each section, we discuss key findings, critique and note limitations of the extant research, and offer conclusions and recommendations for the planning and conduct of criterion‐related studies. We conclude by discussing some important but neglected validation issues for which more research is needed.     

EMPLOYEES' CHALLENGING JOB EXPERIENCES AND SUPERVISORS' EVALUATIONS OF PROMOTABILITY

Promotability evaluations are important for individuals' career development and organizations' human resource management practices. Nevertheless, little empirical research has addressed predictors of promotability evaluations, and the studies that have, have often focused on current job performance and fixed, nonbehavioral predictors. This study takes a more behavioral approach, and investigates whether besides how one performs (i.e., job performance) what one performs also serves as an indicator of promotability. Specifically, we examine the relationship between employees' challenging job experiences and supervisors' evaluations of employees' promotability over and above employees' current job performance. Results from 3 field studies, sampling different types of employees via different measures, consistently showed that challenging job experiences explained incremental variance in supervisory and organizational evaluations of promotability over and above current job performance and job tenure.     

PATTERNS OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN WORK TEAMS: A TWO-LEVEL INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONS WITH JOB AND TEAM SATISFACTION

A questionnaire study in 17 school and 24 engineering teams examined affective reactions to task and goal interdependence at the group and individual level of analysis. Group-level task interdependence was positively related to group members' job and team satisfaction. Within-group differences in the degree of task interdependence were unrelated to affective responses. Interactions revealed that within-group task interdependence is positively related to both job and team satisfaction only if the degree of goal interdependence in the work team is high.     

Can Virtuous People Emerge from Tragic Dilemmas Having Acted Well?

abstract   A tragic dilemma is thought to arise when an agent, through no fault of her own, finds herself in a situation where she must choose between two courses of action, both of which it would be wrong to undertake. I focus on tragic dilemmas that are resolvable, that is, where a reason can be given in favour of one course of action over another, and my aim is to examine whether Hursthouse's virtue-ethical account of right action succeeds in avoiding two problems presented by tragic dilemmas. The first of these is that they produce the seemingly contradictory conclusion that an agent, in doing what she ought to do, acts wrongly, making it appropriate for her to feel guilt. The second is the paradox of moral luck, which consists in the conflict between the intuition that an agent cannot be held responsible for actions that are not fully voluntary, and the fact that she may nevertheless believe that she has done something morally reprehensible. I argue that if we accept Hursthouse's separation of action guidance and action assessment, her account succeeds in solving the problem of contradiction. However, it does not completely avoid the problem of moral luck. I argue, against Hursthouse, that the virtuous agent can emerge from a tragic dilemma having acted well, and that this is the conclusion we must arrive at if we want to avoid the problem of contradiction and of moral luck.     

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF JOB SELECTION METHODS ON SIZE, PRODUCTIVITY, AND PAYROLL COSTS OF THE FEDERAL WORK FORCE: AN EMPIRICALLY BASED DEMONSTRATION

In this study, job performance increases resulting from improved selection validity were measured empirically rather than estimated from the standard linear regression utility equations. Selection utility analyses based on these empirical measurements were carried out for most white-collar jobs in the federal government. Results indicate that selection of a one-year cohort based on valid measures of cognitive ability, rather than on non-test procedures (mostly evaluations of education and experience), produces increases in output worth up to $600 million for each year that the new employees remain employed by the government. Newly hired federal employees remain with the government an average of approximately 13 years, resulting in a total gain in output of almost $8 billion over this period. This gain represents a 9.7% increase in output among new hires. If total output is held constant rather than increased, new hiring can be reduced by up to 20,044 per year (a 9% decrease), resulting in payroll savings of $272 million for every year the new cohort of employees remains on the job. The percentage of new hires in the bottom decile of the non-test-selected job performance distribution     

Sequential analysis of autonomy-interdependence and affiliation-disaffiliation in couples' social support interactions

Sequential patterns of social support interactions between satisfied (n= 33) and dissatisfied (n= 23) husbands and wives were observed as the spouses took turns confiding about personal problems. The interactions were coded with an adaptation of Benjamin's Structural Analysis of Social Behavior, which evaluates interpersonal behaviors along two dimensions of independence-interdependence and affiliation-disaffiliation. Log-linear analysis verified expected complementary sequential exchanges of behaviors that fell in the mid-ranges of independence, interdependence, affiliation, and disaffiliation, although extreme forms of independent and interdependent behavior showed unexpected functional associations with non-complementary behaviors. Dissatisfied wives displayed imbalanced levels of independent and interdependent behaviors, and both spouses showed relatively less support for each other's independent initiative. Dissatisfied spouses also had difficulty providing and accepting assistance in affiliative ways. The findings are discussed in terms of the balance of autonomy and interconnectedness in marriage, and the implications for improving supportive interactions for dissatisfied couples.     

Attachment style in married couples: Relation to current marital functioning,stability over time,and method of assessment

We examined several aspects of attachment in marriage, including the association among attachment style, mental models of the spouse, satisfaction, affect regulation within the marriage, the stability of attachment style, and its operationalization. Fifty-three married couples completed initial assessments, and 44 participated in a 24-month follow-up. Attachment style was related to positive and negative affect immediately preceding a potentially stressful event and to the mental model of the spouse. Approximately 35% of the subjects changed their attachment style rating over a 2-year period; later attachment style was related to changes in mental models of the spouse. Categorical and dimensional measures of attachment style did not yield equivalent results. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.