Attitudes Towards Personnel Selection Methods in Lithuanian and Swedish Samples
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School of Social Sciences Psychology PS 5424 Spring 2008 Attitudes towards personnel selection methods in Lithuanian and Swedish samples Author: Simona Sudaviciute Supervisor: Abdul H. Mohammed, Ph D Examinor: Andrejs Ozolins, Ph D ABSTRACT Candidates’ attitudes towards various personnel selection methods get attention of organizational and work psychology specialists because of various reasons. The most important reason is that individuals’ attitudes towards personnel selection methods influence their latter behavior. Although there is a substantial amount of studies carried out in different countries, there is no data from Lithuanian and Swedish samples. The aim of current study was to analyze the attitudes towards personnel selection methods among Lithuanian students, Lithuanian employees and Swedish students. The participants (197 students and 86 employees) filled in a questionnaire, which includes short descriptions of 10 personnel selection methods as well as items about fairness of these methods. According to the results of the study, work-sample tests were ranked as the fairest personnel selection method in the Lithuanian sample. The fairest personnel selection methods in Swedish sample were work-sample tests, interview, resumes, and personal references. Lithuanian students ranked the fairness of written ability test and honesty test more favorably than Swedish students, but Swedish students tended to rank as more favorable interview, resumes, personal references and personal contacts. Personal contacts and graphology were ranked the lowest on fairness dimension in Lithuanian sample, and Swedes ranked only graphology as the least fair personnel selection method. Lithuanian employees ranked personal references, personal contacts and graphology more favorably than Lithuanian students. In Lithuanian students sample, perception of personnel selection method as a scientifically proved, logic and precise or providing an opportunity to show one’s skills, had the strongest connection with favorability ranking of personnel selection method’s fairness. In the Lithuanian employees and the Swedish students samples, perception of the method as logic or providing an opportunity to show one’s skills, had the strongest link with fairness. Key words: attitude towards personnel selection methods fairness, attitude towards personnel selection methods fairness dimensions, attitude towards the suitability of personnel selection methods to positions, self-efficacy. 1 INTRODUCTION Personnel selection is one of the most important practice fields in organizations which has received considerable attention by work and organizational psychologists. Many companies try to do more work with fewer employees and because of this personnel selection becomes more actual. Personnel selection – the process when the best candidate is selected and employed from a lot of candidates to a work position, - is the application of various personnel selection methods: interview, resumes, practical tasks, biographical information, references, written ability, personality, honesty tests, graphology and all relevant methods. Work and organizational psychologists are interested in candidates’ attitudes towards personnel selection methods for some reasons. One reason is that the first personal contact between an employer and a prospective employee (candidate) is usually established through the selection process and it is very important because not only companies select employees, but applicants also select the organizations to which they will apply and where they are willing to work (Rynes, 1993), i.e. a two-way decision is proceeding. The first contact might affect an applicant’s attitudes towards the organization and his or her decision to accept a job offer (Anderson, 2004; Chapman, et al., 2005; Macan, Avedon, Paese & Smith, 1994), to recommend or not other potential employees to go to that organization (Smither, Reilly, Millsap, Pearlman & Stoffey, 1996) or even to use or not to use services and products of that organization (Anderson, 2004; Hausknecht, Day & Thomas, 2004). Another reason is the danger that employees can retire from selection and in this way the organization will have additional charges (the organization can loose potential high level employees) (Anderson, 2004; Chambers, 2002). Also, the growing interest of candidates in selection processes and techniques encourages the creation of a fair selection system. Another important reason to explore candidates’ reactions to selection methods is that selection methods can have negative psychological effects on candidates (Anderson, 2004). In addition, understanding candidates’ reactions gives a conceptual background to develop better selection systems and this would cause desirable reactions and would affect organization attractiveness and commitment would increase (Chan & Schmitt, 2004). Although this field of organizational and work psychology has received attention by researchers, there is not so much research carried out especially compared with research about selection methods from organizational perspective: less than 5 percent of the studies give attention to the candidates’ perspective (Anderson, Lievens, Dam & Ryan, 2004). 2 To date, whereas studies on fairness in selection have been conducted in a number of countries, no literature exists for Lithuanian and Swedish samples. Most of the research concerning applicants’ fairness perceptions towards selection has been conducted in the United States (Steiner & Gilliland, 1996). In Europe, some data have been collected in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Greece and Netherlands and a good deal of data is available for France (Steiner & Gilliland, 2001). Theoretical background The term “Applicant attitudes” has been used as a synonym to such terms as: candidate/ individual reaction, perception, cognition about selection process or methods (Hausknecht, Day & Thomas, 2004). A growing interest in candidates’ attitudes towards selection procedures was noticed in the last decade. The main reason is the belief that attitudes may be related to subsequent behavior. One of the theories explaining links between attitudes and behaviors is a theory of planned behavior, which was proposed by Icek Aizen (2006). This theory is valued as one of the most predictive persuasion theories. As seen in Figure 1, attitude toward the behavior is one of the factors influencing people’s intentions and subsequent behavior. So, according to this theory it becomes clear that understanding about the applicants’ attitudes towards personnel selection methods is really important because knowledge about candidates’ attitudes could help to improve selection process and this could cause more desirable behavior of applicants. Figure 1: Theory of planned behavior, (Icek Aizen, 2006). 3 One of the first explanations about the importance of candidates’ reactions was made by Schuler in 1993. He introduced the term “social validity” which means that the applicants’ attitudes depend on four factors (Moscoso & Salgado, 2004): 1. Received information about task requirements and organization characteristics; 2. Direct or representative participation that candidates have in the development and execution of the selection process; 3. The transparency of selection process; 4. The form and content of feedback given to candidate. Concurrently there were attempts to relate existing research with organizational justice theory (Gilliland, 1993). According to organizational justice theory, applicants evaluate selection procedures on the basis of four aspects of organizational justice: perceived fairness of (1) outcome allocations, (2) rules and procedures used to make decisions, (3) sensitivity and respect shown to candidates and (4) given explanations or accounts to individuals. Bauer et al. (2001) developed Gilliland’s organizational justice rules into a scale that was called Selection Procedural Justice Scale and their results showed that there were eleven factors (job-relatedness (predictive), information known, chance to perform, reconsideration opportunity, feedback, consistency, openness, treatment, two-way communication, propriety of questions, job-relatedness content) that relate perceived fairness of selection and later outcomes. One of the latest attempts to explain applicants’ reactions to selection methods was made by Hausknecht, Day and Thomas (2004). They offered an updated theoretical model (see the figure 1 in Appendix A) and the main premise of this model was that candidates’ perception about the selection process can help to predict later outcomes. The model consists of four parts: applicant perceptions, antecedents, moderators and outcomes, - and we focus most on the links between applicant reactions and outcomes. According to their results the applicants’ perceptions, except test anxiety, were positively related to self-assessed procedure performance, organizational attractiveness, recommendation intentions and offer acceptance intentions (average correlations were generally moderate to large). Test anxiety was negatively related to actual procedure performance. These results support the belief that attitudes can predict later behavior but there is need to do more research to find out if the relations are robust or not (Hausknecht, Day & Thomas, 2004). 4 Personality traits relations to attitudes towards personnel selection procedures As Ryan and Ployhart (2000) notice among other determinants of fairness reactions, scientists should also explore the role of individual differences,