A Handbook of Work and Organizational Psychology

Volume 3: Personnel Psychology

Charles,De,Wolff, P J D Drenth, THIERRY HENK, Charles,De,Wolff, P J D Drenth, THIERRY HENK

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134837977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Personnel Psychology (or Human Resource Management) examines individual differences and their consequences for the organization. Attention is paid to choice processes, abilities and capabilities, needs and need fulfilment, commitment, selection methods, career development, appraisal and training. The focus of personnel psychology is the satisfactory relationship between the employee and the organization, and takes in all the elements influencing this relationship ranging from the traditional area of personnel selection to recent considerations, such as conflict between client demands and government regulations, restriction of output, job evaluation practices, and industrial unrest.

1
Introduction

Charles J. de Wolff

When the editors of this handbook planned its content, they had in mind four sections. The first section was to contain introductory chapters, such as the history of W&O psychology, and methodology. This would be followed by three sections, each focusing on a particular relationship. The first would concentrate on the relationship between the individual person and his or her task. The second would focus on the individual as a member of a social group, and the third would look at the relationship between the individual and the organization and the organizational environment. Later we decided to add some chapters which could not easily be included in these four sections, but which we thought to be of interest to readers.

The Dutch version of our handbook was structured in this way, and was a loose-leaf edition. Every year, two or three chunks, each containing four or five chapters, appeared. In this way the editors did not need to worry about the size of the sections. This was different for the English version. Taking into account the overall size of the handbook it was decided to have four volumes, and it became necessary to regroup the chapters. In particular, the section on the relationship between the individual and his or her task was too long to fit into one volume. So it was decided to split this section in two: to have one volume on work psychology and another on personnel psychology. In this respect the editors followed the recommendations of the European Reference Model, proposed by a group of European W&O psychology professors (Roe, Coetsier, Levy-Leboyer, Peiro, & Wilpert, 1994), for structuring the W&O psychology training programme. Roe et al. (pp. 358-359) give a description of the domain of personnel psychology:

Personnel psychology concerns the relationship between persons and the organization, in particular the establishment of the relationship, its development and its termination. The focus is on “employees”, i.e. those with whom the organization has a temporal relationship. Important subjects are: choice processes of individuals and organizations, abilities and capabilities, needs, and need fulfilment, commitment, methods of selection, career development, appraisal, pay, training, etc.

This is different from work psychology where the focus is on “workers who have to perform tasks that are derived from the work processes taking place in the organization”.

Roe et al. have chosen their points of focus very well, and these force W&O psychologists to occupy themselves with a set of related issues, all having to do with the relationship between the individual and organization, and prevent them from limiting themselves to only one particular issue. For personnel psychology it means that one has to concentrate on a satisfactory relationship between the employee and the employer, which can only be achieved by looking at many issues, such as those mentioned by Roe et al. in their description of the domain. For example, it is not sufficient to look at personnel selection in isolation, because neglecting issues like training and career management may result in an unsatisfactory relationship.

The focus on the relationship between the employee and the employer reflects a development in the attitudes of W&O psychology over the last 25 years. Prior to this, a more limited point of view was adopted. For example, studies on personnel selection concentrated on maximizing the output of a job incumbent and the utility for the organization. For a long time it was assumed that what was good for the organization was also beneficial to the individual. But such a limited approach overlooked the possibility of hidden costs, such a turnover, restriction of output, whistle-blowing, resistance to change, and so on. By concentrating on the relationship between the employee and the employer, the W&O psychologist is stimulated to adopt a broader approach to the issues she or he is studying.

Personnel psychology has a long history. Some studies had already been performed by the end of the nineteenth century. Many of the issues discussed in this volume were also taken up in early textbooks such as Meijers (1920) and Viteles (1932). Viteles spends some 200 pages on the subject of personnel selection, showing that at that time there was already a substantial body of knowledge. But one also finds chapters on movement studies, fatigue, payment, restriction of output, industrial unrest, safety, training, monotony, motives, supervision, and maladjusted workers. Most of these subjects are also covered in this handbook.

It is interesting to see how broad the domain of W&O psychology already was in that early period. Since then, numerous studies have been carried out. Each year hundreds of articles appear in scientific journals, and many books are published. This has resulted in an even more substantial body of knowledge. As one may expect from a well-developed discipline this body of knowledge is on the one hand stable, but on the other hand new aspects are constantly being added and new approaches developed. This is the way a discipline adapts to a changing environment.

W&O psychology is a scientific discipline, but it is also a field of application. There are now numerous W&O psychologists trained in the subject and applying the knowledge accumulated over the past century. They work in organizations and in consultancy agencies where they are confronted with all kind of problems. Clients pose questions, and these psychologists try to find answers. This in turn might lead to new research questions.

Furthermore, W&O psychologists come up against regulations enforced by governments wanting to stimulate employment, protect workers from health risks, help minorities to stand a better chance on the labour market, and provide employees with more influence on the decision-making processes in organizations. This confrontation with client demands and government regulations has given the domain a special kind of dynamism and has enriched the discipline. While there is a set of basic issues, like how to select applicants and how to train workers, there are also all kinds of new issues which demand the attention of the W&O psychologist. In the period when Meijers and Viteles wrote their textbooks, industrial organizations introduced Tayloristic methods for effecting mass production. So it is not surprising to find chapters in their books on movement studies, fatigue, restriction of output, systems of payment (piece work!), and industrial unrest. These were the issues that clients had to struggle with. Today we have other issues, such as participative management, ethnic minorities and absenteeism. Also, in a well-developed field like personnel selection, W&O psychologists are confronted with new demands from clients, and government interventions (see Chapter 2 in Volume 4 of this handbook.

There are differences between periods, but also between countries, as a result of different socioeconomic systems and cultures. This makes W&O psychology and personnel psychology more complex but also more interesting disciplines. Personnel psychology is nowadays a well-developed discipline. One may expect that in the next century there will be plenty of new questions that it will be required to answer.

References

Meijers, C.S. (1920). Mind and work. London: University of London Press.

Roe, R.A., Coetsier, P., Levy-Leboyer, C, Peiro, J.M., & Wilpert, B. (1994). The teaching of work and organizational psychology in Europe: Towards the development of a reference model. The European Work and Organizational Psychologist, 4, 355-365.

Viteles, M.S. (1932). Industrial Psychology. New York: Norton.

2
Personnel Selection: Principles, Models and Techniques

Robert A. Roe

Introduction

What is personnel selection?

Personnel selection can be defined as an organization’s activities aimed at choosing people for the fulfilment of jobs. It comprises both choices concerning the decision to admit people to the organization and the decision about a change of position inside the organization. The choice typically aims at achieving an “optimal” result defined by some kind of objective. While formerly the objective has been to find “suitable candidates”, nowadays it is to optimize “utility”, defined in terms of the interests of the organization. Utility refers to the overall result of selection evaluated against the background of the goals and resources of the organization, and to its success in the organization’s environment.

Personnel selection is part of a larger set of activities called either personnel management, human resources management, or social policy. It has connections with personnel planning, recruitment, training, career development and so on. In modern views of management, centring around the notion of human capital, selection is seen as the cornerstone of a policy that tries to acquire and accumulate human capital.

Personnel selection is a phenomenon with many facets, which can be looked upon from many perspectives. Economically it is a process in which the demand for labour and the supply of labour meet. Legally it is a process in which two parties establish a labour contract in a mutually satisfying way. In this connection special attention is being paid to the power inequality between the two parties, and the risk of harming the weakest party. From a sociological perspective, selection is seen as a mechanism for reproducing and modifying the relationships between social classes and other social entities in society. However, personnel selection is most of all known to be a subject for psychology. Since psychologists have dealt with selection problems for almost a century it is not surprising to see that they have generated a large variety of different approaches to selection. Initially much attention was given to the notion of “suitability” or “fitness” and the methods for its assessment. In later years attention has shifted towards cut-off scores, utility, ethical aspects, discrimination, the impact of selection on the individual and so on (Roe, 1996a).

This chapter deals with the methodological side of personnel selection¹. The focus is on the “how” of selection. Unlike in the earlier days (i.e. before the 1990s) the question is not how to assess the qualities of a candidate but how to structure the selection process in such a way that the parties involved can achieve an optimal result. Central is the notion of “selection procedure” which will be defined later. The point of departure is that selection procedures can be designed intentionally (Roe, 1989). Until the 1990s this subject received little methodological attention. The psychological literature has mainly favoured the “classical model”, a recipe for a linear procedure to compose predictive test batteries. In practice it was left to the ingenuity of personnel managers and psychologists to invent procedures. The notion of “selection procedure” as such has played hardly any role. The attention was primarily devoted to tests, interviews and other diagnostic instruments. Of course, these are important as elementary building blocks, but they are insufficient to solve selection problems satisfactorily. One also needs methods for processing information and decision making, as well as methods for building up the procedure as a whole.

In this chapter we will first discuss the notion of selection procedure (1) and the methodology of design (2). Next, we will deal with two important functions of selection procedures: the prediction of work performance (3) and decision making about admission and career (4). We will give an overview of the principles for realizing such functions, the models based on these principles, and the methods and instruments to be used in implementation. Our emphasis will be on ‘formal’ methods which can be fully explicated. In a final section we will discuss ‘informal’ or clinical methods and the role they can play in selection procedures.

The selection procedure

Organizations are recurrently faced with selection problems. Expansion and restructuring create a demand for new jobs to be taken by people, while innovations and automation produce job changes which call for incumbents with different qualifications. Also, employees leave the organization and move to other positions, thus leaving vacancies to be filled. In all these cases there are jobs for which one or more vacancies exist and one or more candidates (applicants) ready to fulfil these vacancies. The selection problem to be solved consists of making a choice in such a manner that the result satisfies certain standards.

Selection problems can be resolved ad hoc by recruiting a number of candidates and finding out which of them seem most suitable for the job. In practice, this is often done without a thorough analysis of the job and by using simple methods such as letters, interviews, and reference checks which require little preparation and elaboration. Usually there is not sufficient time for another approach. This is the common approach to selection in many smaller firms.

An alternative is to proceed in a systematic manner and to design a selection procedure before starting the actual recruitment and selection process. The procedure indicates which steps should be taken, in which order, which people should be involved, which roles they have to fulfil, which tools have to be employed, how they must be used, and so on. In short, it specifies the what, when, by whom, what with and how of selection. Thus, a “selection procedure” is a set of instructions regarding the course of action in selecting people for a job or career. Of course, selection procedures don’t have to prescribe everything in detail. They can also be of a general nature or indicate possible options regarding certain decision points. When opting for using selection procedures it is recommended to put them down in writing, e.g. in a procedure manual (cf. Roe, 1983, 1989). This is not only useful for guiding the actual selection process but might also help in meeting the...