LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF ABILITY JOB COMPLEXITY FIT AND JOB CHANGE

The study examines job mobility as a function of congruence between in dividuals' abilities and their job's complexity. The gravitational hyp othesis (McCormick, DeNisi, & Staw, 1979; McCormick, Jeanneret, & Mech am, 1972), a keystone of this objective, posits that individuals will sort into jobs that are commensurate with their ability level. This st udy used various analytical techniques to examine the relationship bet ween ability, person-job fit, and occupational mobility. First, the gr avitational hypothesis was tested. Second, the direction of mismatch b etween ability and job complexity was hypothesized to predict directio n of change in job complexity over time. Two national, longitudinal da tabases, the National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 (NLS-72) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience-Youth Cohort (NLSY), were used to test these relationships. Results were su pportive in both the NLS-72 and the NLSY. Additional analyses examined the difference between measures of objective job complexity and subje ctive job complexity (Gerhart, 1988) for the gravitational process and the difference in employer- and employee-initiated job changes. These results have implications for employers, vocational counselors and jo b applicants. Suggestions for improving the ability-job complexity mat ch are provided.