The Development of Multidimensional Person-Job Fit
Author
Abstract
In recent years, management scholars have extensively examined the concept of person-job fit (P-J fit), due mainly to its potential benefits for employee attitudes and behaviors. For example, P-J fit has been found to be positively related to higher levels of task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and negatively related to turnover intentions and withdrawal behaviors. As a result, P-J fit has received increasing attention from both academic and practical fields.
As for the existing scales for P-J fit, most scholars focused their attention on the “general fit” between person and job and treated this concept as an unidimensional one. However, some researchers suggested that the multidimensionality and “specific fit” might be more suitable for this construct (e.g., Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005). Therefore, we followed the scale development procedure proposed by Hinkin (1998) to develop the Multidimensional Person-Job fit Scale (MPJS) using two independent samples (a total of 456 employees).
The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (n =131 and 325, respectively) showed that the 5-dimension model of MPJS fits the data better than the unidimensional model. In addition, evidences for criterion-related validity were gathered by correlating the scale with job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, affective occupational commitment, turnover intentions, job search behaviors, and job performance. Moreover, the MPJS demonstrated good convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity. The MPJS scale, including18 specific items in five dimensions, can be used not only to predict employee attitudes and behaviors, but also to identify how to improve employees' fits with their jobs.
