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Personnel Selection in Organizations, edited by Necrl Schmitt and Walter C. Borman. San Frcmcisco: Jossey-Bass, 546 pp., cloth.
Reviewed by Kevin R. Murphy, Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO.
Personnel Selection in Organizations is the latest entry in the Frontiers in Industricrl and Organizational Psychology series, sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Like other Frontiers books, Schmitt cmd Borman's edited volume was designed to present current theory, research, and practice in a particular topic arear. Their book includes 14 substantive chapters and 2 chapters of commentary, all authored by prominent researchers.
The editors used two heuristic devices to structure the book. First, their selection of chapter topics parallels the traditional criterion-related validation paradigm. Ten chapters cover topics such as job analysis, recruitment and retention, predictor and criterion measurement, validation, and utility assessment. The remaining four chapters examine internal cmd external influences on the implementation and outcomes of the criterion-related research paradigm (e.g., the effects of changing demographics and technology). Second, authors were asked to consider how attention to (or lack of attention to) construct validity issues has affected developments in the areas covered by their chapters. This attempt to focus on the constructs underlying personnel selection is consistent with current thinking about the nature of validity (some of which is summarized in chapters by Klimoski and Schmitt and Landy), and there are several chapters that benefit from this construct orientation. However, as Schmidt notes in one of the commentaries, discussions of constructs and construct validation in the field of personnel psychology (and in some of the chapters of this book) are often superficial and vague. It is my sense that the field has not advanced sufficiently for all of these authors to say something meaningful about construct-related issues in the areas covered by their chapters.
Edited volumes inevitably have their strengths and weaknesses, but as a whole, this is a very strong book. Several chapters either present syntheses of existing research or suggest substantially new directions for future...