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Journal of Business and Psychology

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01-12-2011

Do Managers Use Feedback Seeking as a Strategy to Regulate Demands–Abilities Misfit? The Moderating Role of Implicit Person Theory

Authors: Toon Devloo, Frederik Anseel, Alain De Beuckelaer

Published in: Journal of Business and Psychology | Issue 4/2011

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Abstract

Purpose

This study examined to what extent managers who hold an incremental implicit person theory (i.e., believe that personal attributes are relatively malleable) rely on proactive strategies to address imbalances between demands and abilities.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were collected from a convenient sample of managers in 12 organizations in Spain and Belgium (N = 303). Given the well-known shortcomings of traditional congruence measures, we conducted polynomial regression.

Findings

Results indicated that implicit person theory was a significant moderator of the relationship between demands–abilities (D–A) fit and feedback seeking for two out of three task dimensions. Specifically, incremental theorists sought feedback to a great extent when misfit occurred between low to moderate demands and abilities.

Implications

The current study found preliminary evidence for a proactive framework of person–job misfit which could be used to guide future research. The results of this study suggest the use of self-persuasion techniques to influence managers’ incremental person theory (Heslin et al., J Appl Psychol 90:842–856, 2005).

Originality/Value

Research on person–environment fit is often guided by the assumption that individuals react negatively to misfit leading to maladaptive outcomes. However, this study tested a different perspective on P–E misfit by extending initial work (i.e., Simmering et al., J Appl Psychol 88:954–963, 2003) on the positive relationship between P–E misfit and proactive behavior.

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Due to the fact that the sample of our study consists of managers from several organizations, we conducted a homogeneity test to see if organizational differences could be accounted for the observed effects. We tested the homogeneity of our sample by conducting a one-way ANOVA test (Welch V _w) of variable means (i.e., all variables included in Eq. 1) with post-hoc comparisons (Games–Howell post-hoc test, which assumes unequal variance and unequal sample size between groups; see Clinch and Keselman 1982; Games et al. 1981). Organization 12 (M = 6.9 and M = 8.1) appeared to have lower abilities for the planning–coordinating task dimension than organization 1 (V _w = 2.890, p < .05). Organizations 3 and 8 (M = 3.3 and M = 3.0) scored lower on feedback seeking than organization 1 (vs. M = 3.7, V _w = 2.741, p < .05). To check whether mean-level differences on key variables across organizations drastically affected our results and the conclusions drawn, we reran our analyses without organizations 3, 18, and 12 from the sample and we were able to replicate the results of our initial analysis (i.e., sample including all 12 organizations) with a significant moderation effect of IPT on the relationship between D–A fit and feedback seeking for the planning-coordinating (F-change(11, 242) = 2.41, p < .05) and for decision making task dimensions (F-change(11, 242) = 3.82, p < .01). Given that our results appeared to be relatively robust, we present the analysis where all 12 organizations were included in the sample (N = 303).

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Title: Do Managers Use Feedback Seeking as a Strategy to Regulate Demands–Abilities Misfit? The Moderating Role of Implicit Person Theory
Authors: Toon Devloo
Frederik Anseel
Alain De Beuckelaer
Publication date: 01-12-2011
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Business and Psychology / Issue 4/2011
Print ISSN: 0889-3268
Electronic ISSN: 1573-353X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9200-7

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Abstract

Purpose

Design/Methodology/Approach

Findings

Implications

Originality/Value

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