Matching People and Organizations: Selection and Socialization in Public Accounting Firms

I thank Charles O'Reilly, Benjamin Schneider, Barry Staw, Robert Sutton, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper, Gerald Salancik for his insight and guidance, and Linda Pike and Seymour Chatman for their editorial improvements. A shorter version of this paper won the Best Paper Based on a Dissertation Award, for the Academy of Management's Organization Behavior Division and was printed in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings in 1989. To investigate how the fit of an employee with his or her organization as a whole is established and maintained and what the consequences are in organizations, this study tracked the early careers of 171 entry-level auditors in eight of the largest U.S. public accounting firms and assessed the congruence of their values with those of the organization. Person-organization fit is shown to be created, in part, by selection (assessments of who the person is when he or she enters the organization) and socialization (how the organization influences the person's values, attitudes, and behaviors during membership. Results show some support for three general hypotheses: First, recruits whose values, when they enter, match those of the firm adjust to it more quickly; second, those who experience the most vigorous socialization fit the firm's values better than those who do not; and third, recruits whose values most closely match the firm's feel most satisfied and intend to and actually remain with it longer.'