When Preference Is Not Satisfied but the Individual Is: How Power Distance Moderates Person–Job Fit

One aspect of person–job fit reflects congruence between personal preferences and job design; as congruence increases so should satisfaction. The authors hypothesized that power distance would moderate whether fit is related to satisfaction with degree of job formalization. They obtained measures of job formalization, fit, and satisfaction, as well as organizational commitment , from employees (N = 772) in a multinational firm with subsidiaries in six countries. Confirming previous findings, individuals from low-power-distance cultures were most satisfied with increasing fit. However, the extent to which individuals from high-power-distance cultures were satisfied did not necessarily depend on increasing fit but mostly on whether the degree of formalization received was congruent with cultural norms. Irrespective of culture, satisfaction with formalization predicted a broad measure of organizational commitment. Apart from the novel extension of fit theory, the authors show how moderation can be tested in the context of polynomial response surface regression and how specific hypotheses can be tested regarding different points on the response surface. 1 Acknowledgments: We are grateful to the editor and to the reviewers for their helpful and developmental comments. We also thank Marius Brulhart, Jeffrey Edwards, Amy Kristof-Brown, Rafael Lalive, and Christian Zehnder for helpful suggestions we received in the different phases of this article. Any errors or omissions are our responsibility.