EMPLOYEE SELECTION WITH THE PERFORMANCE PRIORITY SURVEY

Person-environment congruence, as defined in this series of studies, is the fit between the subordinate's perceptions of the requirements of the job, and the requirements of the supervisor or of the organization. Person-environment congruence is measured in this research by the Performance Priority Survey (PPS), a Q-sort procedure in which respondents rate the relative importance of work behaviors. The priorities of the organization (reported by supervisors) and the priorities of the subordinates (or applicants) are correlated to produce an agreement score. The agreement score for each supervisor-subordinate pair measures the degree of similarity between the perceptions of the relative importance of work behaviors for the job in question, as reported by both members of the pair. The agreement score is calculated in two ways: (a) between the report of the subordinate (or applicant) and the report of the immediate supervisor, and (b) between the report of the subordinate (or applicant) and the organizational culture (aggregated reports of supervisors). The agreement scores correlate significantly with performance ratings. The PPS has a lower adverse impact on African-Americans than a typical multiple-choice test. The PPS is proposed as a means for improving the validity of selection and for reducing adverse impact.