Schneider's Attraction-Selection-Attrition cycle (ASA; Schneider, 1987) is one of the most influential models in the person-organisation (P-0) fit literature. The main idea in this framework is that organisations attract, select, and retain those people who share their values. Schneider (1987) argues that this cycle creates homogeneity in the type of people employed by the organisation. He predicts that over time this homogeneity is dysfunctional for organisations as they become increasingly ingrown and resistant to change. The first part of this study contains a literature review. These chapters position Schneider's ASA cycle within the wider P-0 fit literature and review the studies that have considered features of the cycle. In brief summary, these studies have found the predicted homogeneity of values amongst organisational employees. The attrition phase of the cycle has received much research attention and researchers have demonstrated the attrition effect with people who do not share the values of organisations leaving them. In contrast, the attraction and selection phases of the cycle have received much less attention and there have been no direct tests of these propositions. The main study, which is reported in the third part of this thesis, is a direct test of Schneider's attraction and selection propositions. The results reject Schneider's attraction proposition that organisations attract people who share their values. However, the results suggest that the value congruence between people is more influential than the value congruence between people and environments in predicting selection outcomes. To enable these direct tests to be conducted a new instrument was developed that allows for the capture of work values in a format suitable for the calculation of fit with a geographically remote and distant set of respondents. The development and testing of this instrument is described in the five chapters in the second part of this thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:397296 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Billsberry, Jon |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10911/ |
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