The Structure and Function of Human Capital Emergence: A Multilevel Examination of the Attraction-SelectionAttrition Model (Robert E.

Ployhart , Jeff A. Weekley, Kathryn Baughman) The ASA Model and Human Capital Human Capital refers to the aggregate Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and other competencies of an organizations workforce KSAO. The ASA Model is a person based model of the organization, meaning that it is grounded in the view that the structures, processes, and cultures of organizations reflect their job incumbents collective personality. (Schneider, 1987) A powerful framework for understanding the creation of human capital is the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model. (Schneider, 1987) Homogeneity Hypothesis According to the ASA Model, through the process of attracting, selecting, and retaining individuals, an organization increasingly moves toward homogeneity in knowledge, skills, abilities and other competencies. Members of the same organization (individuals within organizations) should be more similar in shared personality than members of different organizations (individuals between organizations). Multilevel Theory It is not clear how to best conceptualize homogeneity, measure it or understand its effects (Schneider et al., 1995). Multilevel research addresses the inherent nested nature of organizational behavior, conceptualizing individuals as nested within groups, groups nested within organizations and so forth. Bond strength adjacent levels are more tightly coupled and interconnected than levels that are farther apart. Emergence low level constructs (e.g. individual attitudes) form higher level constructs (e.g. organizational climate). Two structures of emergence: Composition Model focuses on consensus - within unit observations will be similar that they can be adequately aggregated and represented by a units mean score. Compilation Model focuses on dissensus - show how variance in lower-level observations represent a higher level construct that can be estimated as a units standard deviation. Integrating ASA Model with Multilevel Theory Five factor model to describe individual level personality to explain organizational collective personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992) 1. Emotional stability 2. Extraversion 3. Openness 4. Agreeableness 5. Conscientiousness The structure of personality emergence what the ASA model calls personality homogeneity should be discussed in terms of personality emergence. composition model (personality consensus) Hypothesis 1. Personality composition, as demonstrated by high interclass correlations is stronger at the job level than the organizational level. - bond strength (HR person practices ASA on individual employees) one should see personality consensus first and most strongly at the job level then at the organizational level Findings Emotional stability - Jobs and organizations with higher mean levels of emotional stability will have members more likely to work together and back each other up resulting to higher individual performance and satisfaction. - In contrast, greater variance in job and organizational-level emotional stability should negatively relate to individual performance and satisfaction. (Moynihan & Peterson, 2004;Stewart, 2004) Conscientiousness - Teams with more conscientious members are more reliable and hard working, and they are more likely to adopt taskoriented norms that would positively relate to individual performance and satisfaction

- In contrast, greater variance in job and organizational- level conscientiousness should negatively relate to individual performance and satisfaction because of compensation for unreliable co-workers. Agreeableness - Individuals within jobs and organizations containing more agreeable members should exhibit better service performance and satisfaction because their co-workers are more likely to assist and help with service provision. - Variability in team members agreeableness negatively relates to team attitudes and performance because it contributes to more conflict and less cohesion and communication. Extraversion - Team-level mean extraversion has been linked to team cohesion, reduced conflict viability and performance resulting to positive relationships to individual satisfaction and performance. (Barrick et al., 1998; Neuman & Wright, 1999) - Job and organizational-level variance in extraversion should show negative relationships to individual satisfaction and performance because of lower communication that disrupts individual behavior. (Barrick et al., 1998; Barrick, Stewart, & Piotrrowski, 2002) Methods Setting, Participants, and Procedures Participants: 9, 603 employees from 85 jobs in 12 organizations Note: organizations all had multiple, geographically distributed stores; from service sector Participants in Organizations Retail 60 jobs in 9 organizations Hospitality 20 jobs in 2 organizations Health care 2 jobs in 1 organization That is, the theory was that individuals are nested within jobs that are nested within organizations. Individuals in a particular job within an organization should have more similar personalities than individuals from similar jobs but different organizations. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 667) Service occupations share a number of team like interaction processes, such as the need for coworkers to back each other up during times of peak demand, to work together for better service provision, and share knowledge about customers and services to enhance the service experierience (Schneider & Bowen, 1992, 1995; Ryan & Ployhart. 2003). Service organizations have always faced considerable challenges in attracting, selecting, and retaining people (Hatch and Clinton, 2000). Race and Gender (Voluntary Basis) Race data were missing for 1, 966 individuals Gender data were missing for 1, 002 people Measures Satisfaction Hackman and Oldhams (1975) three-item measure (two items tapping overall satisfaction and one item pertaining to intentions to quit) The type of job satisfaction measure did not greatly affect the validity of the personality-job satisfaction relationship (Judge et al, 2002) findings: reasonable degree of generalizability Performance Supervisory ratings of customer service (20 items; Example: Responds immediately to any and customer requests) Citizenship performance (30 items; Example: Volunteers for things that are not required) Note: The researchers only had 3, 925 participants items: based on job analysis and on comprehensive reviews of service and contextual performance; 5-point scale Personality Personality profile (25 items) developed by Kenexa, an HR consulting firm Two studies have demonstrated the construct validity of these measures. 1. Goldhabers (1992) five-factor-model trait adjective trait 2. Goldhabers (1999) 50-item Likert measure of the five-factor model Results Overview of the Analyses Three-level Random Co-efficient Model (RCM) to estimate the significance of the personality predictors at individual, job, and organization levels Hypothesis Test Hypothesis 1 We expected job-level composition to be stronger than organizational-level composition

Testing(2 ways): 1. They examined the intraclass correlation (ICC[1]) from the RCM for each personality trait 2. They conducted Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) using the personality constructs as the dependent variable and job type as the categorical independent variable Results: Supports Hypothesis 1 and suggest that composition within organization follows hierarchy and it is nested. Emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness can be used to distinguish between jobs and organizations. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 670) For job satisfaction, there were significant relationships for individual-level emotional stability, job mean emotional stability, and organizational mean emotional stability. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 670) For job performance, there were significant relationships for individual, job mean, organizational mean, and organizational variance emotional stability, and a significant organizational mean by variance interaction. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 670) Figure 1: Organizational mean and performance were more strongly related when variance was lower (Ployhart et al, 2006: 670). For job satisfaction and job performance, there were significant relationships for individual-level conscientiousness, job mean conscientiousness, and organizational mean conscientiousness. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 670) For job satisfaction, relationships were significant only for individual-level, job-mean-level, and job variance agreeableness. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 671) For job performance, relationships were significant only for individual and job mean agreeableness. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 671) For both job satisfaction and performance, there were significant relationships for individual-level, job mean, and variance scores, and their interaction, and for organizational mean extraversion. (Ployhart et al, 2006: 671) Discussion Such a multilevel integration addresses several recent calls for building bridges between micro and macro levels of HR research Argues that homogeneity is really a form of emergence Multilevel theory composition process operate in hierarchical manner, emerging more strongly at lower levels Individuals with more emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion = more satisfaction and performance More variance less satisfaction and lower performance Theoretical Implication The consequences of homogeneity may be better conceptualized in terms of a units variance rather than mean, and such a conceptualization would require a fundamental change in the framing and testing the ASA model. (Ployhart et al, 2006:673) A multilevel ASA model provides an important vehicle for such integration because it describes why marco HR practices should influence the emergence of human capital. (Ployhart et al, 2006:673) Managerial Implications Classic individual level approach - firms hire individuals with more emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion Recruitment phase: emphasis of 4 traits (part of organizations personality) attract and retain individuals with similar personalities Selection phase: selection = job-specific factors + matching personality of applicant and coworkers in job and organization Limitations 1. Researchers should clearly seek to replicate these findings with different measures and samples. (Ployhart et al, 2006:674) 2. The personality and satisfaction measures were collected in the same session and may have been affected by common source bias. (Ployhart et al, 2006:673) 3. We cannot be sure homogeneity was not affected by participants responding to the personality measures in the manner consistent with what they believed the organization expected or valued, rather than with their true personalities. (Ployhart et al, 2006:673) 4. We did not examine the processes through which job- and organization-level personality were expected to affect job satisfaction and performance. (Ployhart et al, 2006:673) 5. Our data were cross-sectional, and we did not examine the longitudinal processes through which emergence occurs. (Ployhart et al, 2006:673)