A Two‐Dimensional Person‐Environment Fit Analysis of the Performance, Effort and Satisfaction of Research Scientists
| Author | Roy L. Payne,Dawn Lane,Muayyad Jabri |
| Published date | 01 April 1990 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.1990.tb00155.x |
| Date | 01 April 1990 |
British
Journalof
Management,
Voi.
I,
45-57
(1990)
A
Two-Dimensional Person-Environment
Fit
Analysis of the Performance, Effort and
Satisfaction of Research Scientists
Roy
L.
Payne, Dawn Lane* and Muayyad Jabrit
Manchester Business School,
*MRC/ESRC,
University
of
Sheffield, ?University
of
Wollongong
SUMMARY
This study questions traditional assumptions in the person-environment fit models. Pre-
vious research has regarded any kind of fit as positive and
any
kind of misfit as negative.
In the present study, this thinking is refined.
It
is proposed that consideration of the
nature of the fit
or
misfit matters and that different dependent variables, including
performance, may be affected differently. The proposal is tested with a sample of
212
research scientists. The findings demonstrate modest support for the differing effects
of type of fit on the dependent variables.
Inspired by the seminal theorizing of Kurt Lewin
(1951)
a great deal
of
psychological research has
been concerned with determining the degree to
which characteristics
of
the person and/or the
environment affect behaviour or experience. An
impressive body of work, particularly in organiza-
tional and industrial psychology, has been labelled
the Person-Environment Fit
(P-E
Fit) approach
(Pervin, 1968). At its simplest this approach has
assumed that the better the fit between the person
and the environment the better the psychological
outcome (i.e. satisfaction, lack of strain, better per-
formance). In some cases any deviation from good,
or
perfect fit, was taken to lead to lower satisfac-
tion, poorer performance, etc. In other work (e.g.
Harrison, 1976) the nature of the misfit was taken
into account.
For
example a person in a job which
requires a greater level of ability than s/he possesses
may be assumed to perform inadequately, and thus
to
be dissatisfied. A person who has more ability
than the job demands may perform very well, but
still be dissatisfied because their abilities are under-
utilized.
Whilst the present study involves scientists who
have very limited managerial responsibility the con-
ceptual approach can be applied to jobs for which
managers are responsible, and to the jobs of
managers themselves. Thus, although the approach
is rooted in applied psychology, it is psychology
which can be applied to jobs at any level of the
organization, and hopefully exemplifies the role
of applied psychology as one of the disciplines con-
tributing to the developing discipline of manage-
ment.
One of the most sophisticated studies to employ
the P-E Fit framework is that by French et
al.
(1 982)
who used it to predict psychological strain in work
settings. In Figure II1,l of their book (p.
29)
they
show three hypothetical shapes of the relationship
for the goodness of fit between the motives a person
wishes
to
satisfy and the ability of the job environ-
ment to satisfy them, and the degree of strain a
person may experience. To match the sophistica-
tion
of
their hypotheses French
et
al.
employed
a number of clever transformations of their data
allowing them to create measure of ‘fit’; ‘excess’;
‘deficiency’ and ‘poor fit’: in poor fit the direction
(excess or deficiency) of the misfit is ignored.
Since the transformations applied to their data
permitted the use
of
correlational analysis French
et
af.
were able to hypothesize eight types of
relationships based on the four types of fit and the
sign of the correlation between the measure of fit
and a dependent variable such as strain (Table
1045-31
72/90/010045-13$06.50
0
1990 by John Wiley
&
Sons,
Ltd.
Received 26
July
1989
Revised
30
November 1989
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