Person-environment congruence and Holland's theory: A review and reconsideration

A dozen literary reviews and two meta-analyses of congruence research, oper ationally defined using John Holland's (1959) theory, continue to reveal a mixture of significant and nonsignificant relations between congruence and a variety of work-related behaviors. Congruence appears to be a sufficient, though not a necessary, condition for job satisfaction with correlations i n the .25 range (5% of variance). Repeated and sometimes trenchant criticis m of the design, methodology, and analyses employed in previous studies of congruence has produced an improved array of research designs, including mo re longitudinal, moderator, and multidimensional designs, yet results using these designs have done little to clarify the central issues in the congru ence model. The present review examines 66 published congruence studies fro m 1985 to 1999. Benchmark studies with improved methodologies are described . A paradigmatic shift in the next generation of congruence research is rec ommended, with continued improvement and diversification of design and meth odology drawing more heavily from person-environment psychology as well as a change in emphasis from correlational to experimental designs. (C) 2000 A cademic Press.