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SCHMIIT, NEAL, BORMAN, WALTER C. and Associates, Personnel Selection in Organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1993. Pp. xxv + 546. $38.95
This book is the sixth in the series entitled Frontiers of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. The contributors promise a book that addresses traditional areas of personnel selection as well as cutting-edge thinking in areas that are typically not covered in journals and textbooks. For example, the former is reflected in chapters on job analysis, criterion development, fairness in selection, and interviewing. The latter is represented by the treatment of corporate downsizing, selection from the applicant's point of view, and selecting people in smaller enterprises
Although the book is allegedly written for practitioners, it is interesting to note that all of the authors are academics who, despite their exposure to real-world organizations through research and consulting, maintain as their primary affiliations colleges and universities. As a result, the book will be seen as most valuable to students, in particular, advanced graduate students about to enter practice in the field of industrial/organizational psychology. Researchers looking to expand the "frontiers" of selection research will also appreciate this work. Of the academics who contribute to the book, the authors represent a good balance between established and well-recognized figures in the field and up-and-coming new faces. The text is organized around the traditional criterion-related validation paradigm, beginning with job analysis. Despite the useful information contained within its pages, the book still sees fit to cite research that draws obvious conclusions, often making our field the object of ridicule and derision. For example, we are informed that substance abusers are more negatively disposed toward mandatory drug testing, and that extensive firings and layoffs have contributed to a high degree of worker cynicism.
The first chapter is a discussion of job analysis by Goldstein, Zedeck, and Schneider. They describe a model of job analysis as it applies to content-valid test construction. Much of the chapter is devoted to the value and relevance of subject matter experts in contributing to test design. One of the more interesting components concerns conducting job analysis on jobs that do not currently exist, something especially important in today's changing work environment. The second chapter addresses the critical issue of performance. From the perspective of Campbell, McCloy,...