Person–job fit matters in parastatal institutions: Testing the mediating effect of person–job fit in the relationship between talent management and employee outcomes
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Justice Nyigmah Bawole,James Kwame Mensah |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852317704501 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
Person–job fit matters in
2020, Vol. 86(3) 479–495
! The Author(s) 2017
parastatal institutions:
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Testing the mediating
DOI: 10.1177/0020852317704501
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
effect of person–job fit in
the relationship between
talent management and
employee outcomes
James Kwame Mensah
University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana
Justice Nyigmah Bawole
University of Ghana Business School, Ghana
Abstract
This article responds to recent calls for research examining the mechanisms through
which talent management affects talented employee outcomes. Drawing insights from
attraction–selection–attrition and ability, motivation and opportunity theories, the art-
icle examines one such mechanism, person–job fit, through which talent management
influences talented employees’ affective commitment and quit intentions in parastatal
institutions in Ghana. A sample of 232 talent pool members was used to test a partial
mediation model using structural equation modelling. Our findings suggest that talent
management has not only a direct effect, but also an indirect effect, on talented
employee outcomes of affective commitment and quit intention via person–job fit.
Implications of these finding are discussed.
Points for practitioners
Human resource practitioners can attempt to increase affective commitment and
reduce quit intentions by seeking to match job tasks with talented employees’ know-
ledge, skills and abilities while, at the same time, addressing their needs by the supplies
that emanate from their jobs using talent management practices. Human resource
Corresponding author:
James Kwame Mensah, University of Professional Studies, Accra Department of Business Administration, P.O.
Box LG 149, Legon, Accra, Ghana.
Email: mensjam@gmail.com
480
International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(3)
professionals can choose to assess the person–job fit of talented employees during the
pre-selection phase to their talent pool. Human resource practitioners can achieve the
person–job fit of current talent pool members by using job design and career planning,
as well as career progression. For human resource professionals concerned with the
retention of talented employees and increasing their commitment, attention to creating
person–job fit through talent management practices may be useful in reducing employee
intentions to leave and maintaining high commitment.
Keywords
affective commitment, parastatal institutions, person–job fit, talent management, quit
intentions
Introduction
Over the past decades, interest in the concept of talent management (TM) has
continued to grow. This interest is not all that surprising because in this complex
and dynamic environment, organisational survival is contingent on the ideas, skills
and knowledge of their talents, and every organisation has to bet on talented
people, not only on technologies, factories and certainly not on financial capital.
The management of talented employees is therefore crucial. Although approaches
vary, TM usually focuses on the differential treatment of high-performing/high-
potential employees by organisations who are considered as key professionals
either at present or in the future (Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Gelens et al.,
2013). The extant literature has shown that TM affects employee attitudes of
affective commitment, performance, motivation, satisfaction and quit intention
(Chami-Malaeb and Garavan, 2013; Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Luna-Arocas
and Morley, 2015; Mensah, 2015).
Despite the fact that TM represent a potentially beneficial and unique concept
within the human resource management (HRM) literature, little is known about
how TM really works in practice (Gallardo-Gallardo and Thunnissen, 2016;
Thunnissen, 2016), making it difficult for human resource managers to capitalise
on TM. Thus, whereas TM scholarship is growing, only a few studies (e.g. Chami-
Malaeb and Garavan, 2013; Luna-Arocas and Morley, 2015; Mensah et al., 2016)
have examined the mechanisms through which TM produces its intended out-
comes. Most studies have ignored the mechanisms and interconnected processes
through which TM leads to its intended outcomes. Therefore, our understanding of
the mechanisms through which TM influences talented employees’ outcomes needs
further research (Swailes and Blackburn, 2016). This is significant because, as
known in the HRM literature, HRM systems in general do not lead directly to
employee outcomes; rather, they influence intermediate behaviours that, in turn,
lead to employee outcomes (e.g. Boselie et al., 2005).
In this article, we introduce the concept of person–job fit (P–J fit) as the mediat-
ing mechanism between TM and employee outcomes of affective commitment and
Mensah and Bawole
481
quit intention. Thus, in the TM literature, little attention has been paid to the more
nascent area of P–J fit and how it induces talented employees’ outcomes. We make
a straightforward assumption that the fit between talented employees’ abilities and
the demands of their job, as well as the supply of their needs/desires, explains why
TM produces positive outcomes. There are undoubtedly other factors that may
help explain why TM produces its positive outcomes, but our view on P–J fit is a
particularly rich one. First, the fit between talented employees’ abilities and the
demands of their job, or their needs/desires and what is provided by their job, is
significant in producing positive outcomes as exceptional performance is more
context-dependent (Groysberg, 2010). Second, P–J fit has been a powerful pre-
dictor of job satisfaction, commitment, low job stress, motivation, performance,
attendance and retention (Edwards, 1991; Kristof-Brown et al., 2005).
We also draw from the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) and attrac-
tion–selection–attrition (ASA) theories to explain why P–J fit might serve as the
mechanism through which TM affects employee outcomes. The study makes its
contribution by providing insights into the mediating role of P–J fit on the
relationship between TM and employee outcomes, thus offering a new perspective
by which to study the impact of TM. The study is structured as follows: the next
section develops the study hypotheses through a review of the literature. The
methods and measures are outlined in the second section while the analysis and
results are presented in the third section. This is followed by the discussion, limi-
tations and conclusion.
Theory and hypothesis development
Considering the number of books and scholarly articles that have been published
on TM, there is little doubt that it has gained popularity among scholars and
practitioners and has grown exponentially (e.g. Scullion and Collings, 2011;
Sonnenberg et al., 2014; Thunnissen, 2016; Ulrich and Allen, 2014). This popular-
ity is geared to the belief that TM practices have the potential to deliver superior
results, motivate and retain talented employees, and be used as a tool for
competitive advantage (Avedon and Scholes, 2010; Bethke-Langenegger et al.,
2011; Gallardo-Gallardo and Thunnissen, 2016). However, a cursory trawl of
the literature reveals the difficulty of defining TM – TM as a substitute for
HRM, the development of talent pools, filling of all positions with ‘A performers’,
the management of talented people and the positioning of high performers in
strategic organisational positions. Although approaches vary, TM focuses on the
activities and processes that are used to identify key positions, the development of a
pool of high-potential and high-performing employees to fill these roles, and the
continuous management of such employees with differentiated human resource
architecture to ensure their continued commitment to the organisation (Collings
and Mellahi, 2009; Gelens et al., 2013).
Generally, there are two approaches to the study of TM: exclusive and inclusive.
The exclusive approach views talented employees as an elite subset of the
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(3)
organisation’s employees as they exhibit a drive to excel, a catalytic learning cap-
ability, an enterprising spirit and a dynamic sensor (Ready and Conger, 2007). On
the contrary, the inclusive approach is based on the ‘egalitarian’ principle that
talent is inherent in each person (Iles et al., 2010). However, when TM concentrates
on everyone in the organisation, then it appears that there is no difference between
TM and HRM. In this study, we adopt an exclusive approach and concentrate on
employees who are perceived as talented and as having high potential, who are
singled out for special treatment. Adopting an exclusive approach will help differ-
entiate TM from HRM in order to give scholars and practitioners direction in their
‘war for talent’ (Gallardo-Gallardo and Thunnissen, 2016).
Over the last two decades, TM research has proliferated from macro (e.g.
Bethke-Langenegger et al., 2011; Ulrich and Allen, 2014) to micro (e.g. Gelens
et al., 2015; Luna-Arocas and Morley, 2015) levels. Generally, it has been found
that organisations can enhance their employees’ outcomes, attitudes, performance
and organisational performance through the implementation of TM practices
(Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Gelens et al., 2015; Luna-Arocas and Morley, 2015;
Ulrich and Allen, 2014). What is not clear however is the mechanism through
which TM influences employee attitudes and...
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