Perceived and Actual Organizational Fit: Multiple Influences on Attitudes

Recent widespread concern with the changing composition of the American workforce has led to a strong interest in person-organization fit on the part of both researchers and practitioners (e.g., Bowen et al., 1991; Cable and Parsons, 2001). One fundamental issue is that increasing heterogeneity of the workforce leads to a lower overall degree of fit between workers and traditional work environments (e.g., Hopkins et al., 2001), and decreases the strength of existing organizational cultures. At the very least, this trend should greatly increase the costs of new member socialization incurred by the organization. Literature on this issue dates back to some of the earliest management writers (i.e., Barnard, 1938; Selznick, 1957), who were concerned with the conveyance of value-related beliefs from top management to organizational employees as a key element of managerial effectiveness. Both perceived and actual organizational fit have been examined primarily from the perspective of core work values (e.g., Cable and DeRue, 2002; Meglino and Ravlin, 1998), although other sources of fit (e.g., person-job fit; Stevens and Ash, 2001) have been the subject of some research. However, Feather's question, "is it more productive in research on person-environment fit to deal with the perceived environment of values or the objective environment of values (1979: 131)? " has never really been answered (see also Kristof, 1996). The theoretical orientation underlying both perceived and actual values-based fit research is that the sharing of work values, or beliefs concerning what one should or ought to do at work (Ravlin and Meglino, 1987), relates to the sharing of methods of cognitive classification and interpretation, thus reducing uncertainty regarding interpersonal interactions (e.g., Schein, 1985). Kluckhohn (1951) also noted that if individuals possess similar values, their role expectations become clearer and more predictable. The needs-supplies perspective suggests that individuals with high organization fit will find their values fulfilled by the organization (Cable and DeRue, 2002). Therefore, value congruence has been hypothesized to increase satisfaction, commitment, and other positive work attitudes (Verquer et al., 2003). Our purpose was to examine the relationship between attitudes and person-organization fit from the perspective that both types of fit--perceived and actual--are different constructs, and may have unique influences. Below, we review literature on actual and perceived values fit, derive propositions from the literature on their inter-relationship and their effects on attitudinal outcomes, and describe a field study examining these relationships. LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH PROPOSITIONS Perceived and Actual Fit Research on actual value fit or congruence, in which two different sources for the two sets of values to be matched are utilized, has typically suggested that use of perceived congruence is a flawed approach. Perceived congruence measures (matching an individual's values with his or her perception of organizational or management values, or eliciting overall impressions of fit or similarity) may be open to consistency effects (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1977) or other problems such as social desirability response bias (Crowne and Marlowe, 1964). Studies using actual organizational value congruence have found positive relationships with satisfaction and commitment, and negative relationships with intent to quit (e.g., O'Reilly et al., 1991; Westerman, 1997). In contrast, other researchers have argued that the perception of congruence is the important construct (e.g., Enz, 1988), in part because unrecognized or unnoticed congruence should not necessarily have positive relationships to job attitudes. Research employing perceptions of congruence also has found that value congruence between employees and their organization related to satisfaction, commitment, and intentions to quit (Cable and Judge, 1996; Lauver and Kristof-Brown, 2001). …