Design, Validation and Reliability Assessment of the Person-Organization Fit Questionnaire

Abstract

The concept of person-organization fit gained momentum in the domain of organizational behavior in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it can probably be dated back to Argyris’s claims (1957) that people’s organizational behaviors are rooted in person-organization interactions. This idea led Schneider (1987) to propose the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model. Later, Jennifer Chatman (1991) introduced this model as person-organization fit in the form of the compatibility of personal and organizational values. Finally, Kristof (1996) provided a more complete person-organization fit model in the form of supplementary and complementary fit. The present study was conducted to design, validate and assess the reliability of the Person-Organization Fit Questionnaire. The data collection methods included library research, questionnaires and interviews. The data collection instruments included un-structured questionnaires and interviews in the qualitative part and structured questionnaires in the quantitative part. In the qualitative part, 17 experienced professors, managers and banking experts were selected through judgmental sampling until theoretical data saturation occurred. In the quantitative part, 255 bank personnel were selected via cluster sampling using Sample Power software. Data analysis in the qualitative part consisted of creating 80 different preliminary codes from the interviews in MAXQDA, based on which the preliminary questionnaire was then designed after checking its content validity and reliability and applying the necessary modifications. Finally, after pre-processing and assessing the construct validity (convergent and divergent), and upon eliminating the items without construct validity, the data obtained were divided into ten categories, which were named with the help of the qualitative part, research literature and expert feedback. The Person-Organization Fit Questionnaire was thus designed and validated and its reliability was measured with four dimensions, ten components and 29 indices. This study proposed two new components, namely “leadership style”, with three indices, and “organization maturity”, with two indices. In this research, 52 preliminary codes were obtained from the interviews with experts and 28 codes from the literature review. All these 28 preliminary codes were iterated in the interviews by the experts. In other words, in the qualitative part, all the codes obtained from the literature review were in line with the experts’ opinions.