Capacity, opportunity and willingness and the incongruence between the research and practice of personnel selection

Abstract

A large amount of evidence has been accumulated that indicates that many of the recommendations made in the research associated with personnel selection are not being adhered to by practitioners. Although providing useful insight into the existence of this gap between research and practice, much of this work has however failed to explain why the gap exists. The current research used the term 'incongruence' to describe this gap and assessed the degree to which the 'classical theory of individual performance' would provide a useful framework to understand this incongruence. The theory asserts that any deviance from optimal performance on a task can be accounted for by three categories of factors (capacity, opportunity and willingness). A survey was conducted in order to assess the frequency with which nine selection methods were used by practitioners. The relative importance of 15 explanations that reflect the capacity, opportunity and willingness reasons for why the selection methods were not always used by practitioners were also assessed. A total of 170 practitioners participated in the research. The frequency with which the methods are used appears to have remained largely unchanged over the last decade. Assessment centre use is increasing, as is the use of psychometric tests. By and large, practitioner and organisational characteristics did not influence the frequency with which the methods were used, nor the explanations that were provided by practitioners for not using the methods. Significant differences were however found in relation to practitioner position and the frequency of use of some of the methods. Capacity related factors were cited more frequently than opportunity or willingness factors, in relation to general mental ability testing, work sample testing, integrity testing and job knowledge testing. Opportunity factors on the other hand were cited more frequently in relation to the job tryout procedure, structured reference checking, personality testing and assessment centres. Overall however, opportunity accounted for the largest amount of incongruence between selection research and practice. Capacity factors accounted for the second largest proportion overall with willingness factors accounting for the least. The implications of the research are discussed and a number of suggestions and recommendations made for future research in this area.