Person Organization Fit
Introduction
This week, we discuss how the notion of person-organization fit may be recast from a sense-making perspective. We were also asked to identify 3 to 5 organizational culture profile items from a list created by O’Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell, (1991), and describe experiences that are consistent with those profile elements, as well as describe how we believe individuals in the organization played a role in the development of those cultural attributes.
Person-Organization Fit and Sense-Making
To define person-organization fit can be complex, as per my understanding of O’Reilly et al’s article (1991), though I might resolve to use one basic explanation from the article for the basis of my discussion: the congruence of a person’s characteristics (values, beliefs, work abilities, ambitions) to the characteristics perceived of an organization. Recognizing that large, formal organizations like Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), for which I work, employs thousands of people with diverse characteristics, sense-making becomes a fundamental role for leaders to bring employees together to adopt common or shared key characteristics required of the organization to achieve its goals. I looked for support of this postulation from articles by Smircich and Morgan (1982) and Pye (2005). “The actions and utterances of leaders frame and shape the context of action in such a way that the members of that context are able to use the meaning thus created as a point of reference for their own action and understanding of the situation” (Smircich and Morgan (1982, p. 261). Moreover, “the key challenge for a leader is to manage meaning in such a way that individuals orient themselves to the achievement of desirable ends” (Smircich and Morgan, 1982, p. 262). Pye (2005) quotes Karl Weick, a psychologist and key researcher in sense-making and organizations, and his seven characteristics of sense-making, of which, identity construction, is listed as first, and therefore,
This week, we discuss how the notion of person-organization fit may be recast from a sense-making perspective. We were also asked to identify 3 to 5 organizational culture profile items from a list created by O’Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell, (1991), and describe experiences that are consistent with those profile elements, as well as describe how we believe individuals in the organization played a role in the development of those cultural attributes.
Person-Organization Fit and Sense-Making
To define person-organization fit can be complex, as per my understanding of O’Reilly et al’s article (1991), though I might resolve to use one basic explanation from the article for the basis of my discussion: the congruence of a person’s characteristics (values, beliefs, work abilities, ambitions) to the characteristics perceived of an organization. Recognizing that large, formal organizations like Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), for which I work, employs thousands of people with diverse characteristics, sense-making becomes a fundamental role for leaders to bring employees together to adopt common or shared key characteristics required of the organization to achieve its goals. I looked for support of this postulation from articles by Smircich and Morgan (1982) and Pye (2005). “The actions and utterances of leaders frame and shape the context of action in such a way that the members of that context are able to use the meaning thus created as a point of reference for their own action and understanding of the situation” (Smircich and Morgan (1982, p. 261). Moreover, “the key challenge for a leader is to manage meaning in such a way that individuals orient themselves to the achievement of desirable ends” (Smircich and Morgan, 1982, p. 262). Pye (2005) quotes Karl Weick, a psychologist and key researcher in sense-making and organizations, and his seven characteristics of sense-making, of which, identity construction, is listed as first, and therefore,