The Fit Project
[APOLOGIES - PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Overview
The Fit Project began in 1998 as a joint research project between myself and Philip Marsh, the Director of Human Resources at The Open University. We were interested in understanding employment dynamics in The Open University, especially its extraordinarily low staff turnover rates and the strength of its culture. The Open University has always been known internally and externally for its social mission of helping people who missed out on education first time around and its attraction of employees who shared these values. Its prominent position on British television throughout the 1970s and 1980s reinforced these impressions. As a result, we thought the ideas surrounding person-organisation fit would help us understand the culture better and, in turn, be an interesting way of understanding the construct of person-organisation fit better as well. In particular, there were theoretical arguments suggesting that 'high fit' environments would be deleterious to organisations due to factors such as 'cloning', reduced creativity, and ossification. We wanted to explore these matters to see 'high fit' did indeed lead to these things.
We were able to gain seedcorn funding of £40,000, shared equally from The Open University Business School and the Human Resources Division, to recruit a part-time Research Fellow. Dr. John Moss-Jones was hired and he conducted 66 in-depth interviews employing cognitive mapping techniques with members of staff at The Open University to explore what 'fit to the university' meant to them.
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Phase One
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Phase Two
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Phase Three
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Other Research
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Internal Consultancy
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Global e-Conference on Fit
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Published Outputs
Edwards, J.A. and Billsberry, J. (2011) Testing a multidimensional theory of person-environment fit. Journal of Managerial Issues, 22 (4), 476-493.
Billsberry, J. and Birnik, A. (2010) Management as a contextual practice: The need to balance science, skills and practical wisdom. Organization Management Journal, 7 (2), 171-178.
Ambrosini, V., Billsberry, J. and Collier, N. (2009) Teaching soft issues in strategic management with films: Arguments and suggestions. International Journal of Management Education, 8 (1), 63-72.
van Ameijde, J.D.J., Nelson, P.C., Billsberry, J. and van Meurs, N. (2009) Improving leadership in higher education institutions: A distributed perspective. Higher Education, 58 (6), 763-779.
Billsberry, J. (2009) The social construction of leadership education. Journal of Leadership Education, 8 (2), 1-9.
Billsberry, J. (2009) The embedded academic: A management academic discovers management. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, 2 (3), 1-9.
Billsberry, J. and Edwards, G. (2008) Toxic celluloid: Representations of bad leadership on film and implications for leadership development. Organisations and People, 15 (3), 104-110.
Billsberry, J. (2008) Management education as an emotional science. Organization Management Journal, 5 (3), 149-151.
Billsberry, J. and Gilbert, L.H. (2008) Using Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to teach different recruitment and selection paradigms. Journal of Management Education, 32 (2), 228-247.
Coldwell, D.A.L., Billsberry, J., van Meurs, N. and Marsh, P.J.G. (2008) The effects of person-organization ethical fit on employee attraction and retention: Towards a testable explanatory model. Journal of Business Ethics, 78 (4), 611-622.
Edwards, J. A., Webster, S., Van Laar, D. & Easton, S. (2008). Psychometric analysis of the UK Health and Safety Executive’s Management Standards work-related stress Indicator Tool. Work & Stress, 22 (2), 96-107.
Billsberry, J. (2007) Attracting for values: An empirical study of ASA’s attraction proposition. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22 (2), 132-149.
Edwards, J. A., Guppy, A. & Cockerton, T. (2007). A longitudinal study exploring the relationships between occupational stressors, non-work stressors, and work performance. Work & Stress, 21 (2), 99-116.
Edwards, J. A., Cockerton, T. & Guppy, A. (2007). A Longitudinal Study Examining the Influence of Work & Non-Work Stressors Upon Well-Being: A Multi-Group Analysis. International Journal of Stress Management, 14 (3), 294-311.
Van Laar, D. L., Edwards, J. A. & Easton, S. (2007). The Work-Related Quality of Life scale for healthcare workers. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 60 (3), 325-333.
Billsberry, J. (2006) Towards a future where we select for fit. People and Organisations at Work, 13 (Autumn), 10-11.
Billsberry, J. and Marsh, P.J.G. (2006) Organisational research: The missing link in HR departments. Capacity, 5 (July), 2-3.
Billsberry, J., Ambrosini, V., Moss-Jones, J. and Marsh, P.J.G. (2005) Some suggestions for mapping organizational members’ sense of fit. Journal of Business and Psychology, 19, 4, 555-570.
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Books
Kristof-Brown, A.L. and Billsberry, J. (in preparation; Eds.) New Directions in Organizational Fit. Chichester: Wiley.
Billsberry, J. (2009; Ed.) Discovering Leadership. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Billsberry, J. (2007) Experiencing Recruitment and Selection. Chichester: Wiley.
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Book chapters
Billsberry, J., Talbot, D.L. and Ambrosini, V. (in preparation) Mapping fit: Maximizing idiographic and nomothetic benefits. In Kristof-Brown, A.L. and Billsberry, J. (Eds.) New Directions in Organizational Fit. Chichester: Wiley.
Searle, R.H. and Billsberry, J. (2011) The construction and destruction of trust during recruitment and selection. In Searle, R.H. and Skinner, D. (Eds.) Trust and HRM. Chichester: Edward Elgar.
Billsberry, J. (2009) Leadership: A contested construct. In Billsberry, J. (Ed.) Discovering Leadership, pp. 24-34. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Billsberry, J. (2009) A leadership curriculum. In Billsberry, J. (Ed.) Discovering Leadership, pp. 1-11. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Billsberry, J. and Nelson, P.C. (2008) The impact of individualism on the outcome of penalty shoot-outs in international football tournaments. In Reilly, T. and Korkusuz, F. (Eds.) Science and Football VI, pp. 169-173. Oxford: Routledge.
van Ameijde, J.D.J., Nelson, P.C., Billsberry, J. and van Meurs, N. (2008) Distributed leadership in project teams. In Turnbull-James, K. and Collins, J. (Eds.) Leadership Perspectives: Knowledge into Action, pp. 223-237. London: Palgrave.
van Meurs, N. and Spencer-Oatey, H. (2006) Multidisciplinary perspectives on intercultural conflict: The ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of conflict, culture and communication. In H. Kotthoff and H. Spencer-Oatey (Eds.), Handbook of Applied Linguistics, Volume 7: Intercultural Communication. Mouton: de Gruyter Publishers.
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