This article brings together three current themes in organizational behavior: (1) a renewed interest in assessing person-situation interactional constructs, (2) the quantitative assessment of organizational culture, and (3) the application of "Q-sort," or template-matching, approaches to assessing person-situation interactions. Using longitudinal data from accountants and M.B.A. students and cross-sectional data from employees of government agencies and public accounting firms, we developed and validated an instrument for assessing personorganization fit, the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP). Results suggest that the dimensionality of individual preferences for organizational cultures and the existence of these cultures are interpretable. Further, person-organization fit predicts job satisfaction and organizational commitment a year after fit was measured and actual turnover after two years. This evidence attests to the importance of understanding the fit between individuals' preferences and organizational cultures. Academy of Management Journal September expectations, interact with facets of situations, such as incentive systems and norms, to affect the individuals' attitudinal and behavioral responses. As with similar fit theories of careers (Holland, 1985), job choice (Hackman & Oldham, 1980), work adjustment (Lofquist & Dawis, 1969), and organizational climate (Joyce & Slocum, 1984), the validation of the construct of person-culture fit rests on the ability to assess relevant aspects of both person and culture. This measurement problem is a significant and sometimes controversial issue (Keon, Latack, & Wanous, 1982; Rousseau, 1990)-one that is at the center of the person-situation debate, that is, the controversy over the degree to which personality or context variables explain attitudes and behavior (Bem & Allen, 1974; Davis-Blake & Pfeffer, 1989; Kenrick & Funder, 1988). The purpose of this research was to examine person-culture fit and its implications for work attitudes and behavior. We draw on recent developments in the applications of Q-sort, or template-matching,1 approaches to resolve some of the measurement issues that have hindered previous research on fit (Bem & Funder,

and tfie anonymous reviewers at Administrative Science Quarteriy for their support and comments. This article focuses on the activities teams use to manage their organizational environment beyond their teams. We used semistructured interviews with 38 new-product team managers in high-technotogy companies, log data from two of these teams, and questionnaires completed by members of a different set of AB new-product teams to generate and test hypotheses about teams' external activities. Results indicate that teams engage in vertical communications aimed at molding the views of top management, horizontal communication aimed at coordinating work and obtaining feedback, and horizontal communication aimed at general scanning of the technical and market environment. Organizational teams appear to develop distinct strategies toward their environment: some specialize in particular external activities, some remain isolated from the extemal environment, and others engage in multiple external activities. The paper shows that the type of external communication teams engage in, not just the amount, determines performance. Over time, teams following a comprehensive strategy enter positive cycles of external activity, internal processes, and performance that enable long-term team success.*

This article brings together three current themes in organizational behavior: (1) a renewed interest in assessing person-situation interactional constructs, (2) the quantitative assessment of organizational culture, and (3) the application of "Q-sort," or template-matching, approaches to assessing person-situation interactions. Using longitudinal data from accountants and M.B.A. students and cross-sectional data from employees of government agencies and public accounting firms, we developed and validated an instrument for assessing personorganization fit, the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP). Results suggest that the dimensionality of individual preferences for organizational cultures and the existence of these cultures are interpretable. Further, person-organization fit predicts job satisfaction and organizational commitment a year after fit was measured and actual turnover after two years. This evidence attests to the importance of understanding the fit between individuals' preferences and organizational cultures.

The increasing reliance on teams in organizations raises the question of how these teams should be formed. Should they be formed completely of engineers or should they include a range of specialists? Should they be made up to people who have long tenure in the organization, or those with a wide range of experience? As teams increasingly get called upon to do more complex tasks and to cross functional boundaries within the organization, conventional wisdom has suggested that teams be composed of more diverse members. This study suggests that the answer may not be so simple. Using 409 individuals from 45 new product teams in five high-technology companies, this study investigates the impact of diversity on team performance. We found that functional and tenure diversity each has its own distinct effects. The greater the functional diversity, the more team members communicated outside the team's boundaries. This communication was with a variety of groups such as marketing, manufacturing, and top management. The more the external communication, the higher the managerial ratings of innovation. Tenure diversity had its impact on internal group dynamics rather than external communications. Tenure diversity is associated with improved task work such as clarifying group goals and setting priorities. In turn, this clarity is associated with high team ratings of overall performance. Yet diversity is not solely positive. While it does produce internal processes and external communications that facilitate performance, it also directly impedes performance. That is, overall the effect of diversity on performance is negative, even though some aspects of group work are enhanced. It may be that for these teams diversity brings more creativity to problem solving and product development, but it impedes implementation because there is less capability for teamwork than there is for homogeneous teams. These research findings suggest that simply changing the structure of teams (i.e. combining representatives of diverse function and tenure) will not improve performance. The team must find a way to garner the positive process effects of diversity and to reduce the negative direct effects. At the team level, greater negotiation and conflict resolution skills may be necessary. At the organization level, the team may need to be protected from external political pressures and rewarded for team, rather than functional, outcomes.

One outgrowth of the person-situation debate has been the use of fit or congruence models to explain work outcomes. In this study, the profile-comparison process, a Q-sort-based technique that provides an isomorphic assessment of job requirements and individual competencies, was used to assess person-job fit in 7 small samples representing a variety of jobs and organizations. The results show that overall person-job fit is strongly related to a number of outcomes, including job performance and satisfaction. Implications for the assessment of persons and jobs are discussed.There has long been a debate in the fields of personality and social psychology over the relative importance of individual variables and characteristics of the situation in explaining behavior (cf. Epstein, 1979Epstein, ,1980Kenrick & Funder, 1988;Mischel, 1968). Recently, this same debate has vigorously emerged in the field of organizational behavior. For example, a recent issue of the Academy of Management Review (1989, Vol. 14, No. 3) dealt extensively with the use of person and organization characteristics to explain individual behavior. Despite the existence of strong positions on both sides (Davis-Blake & Pfeffer, 1989;Schneider, 1987), the general resolution of this debate, at least in organizational behavior, is likely to take an interactionist perspective (Chatman, 1989;Terborg, 1981). What this approach suggests is that both the characteristics of the individual and the organization are likely to predict a person's behavior at work and, furthermore, that the interaction of the two sets of variables will explain greater variance than either set alone.The concept of fit or congruence between individual attributes and the characteristics of a situation has long been an important explanation for differences in individual performance and satisfaction at work (cf. Weiss, Davis, England, & Lofquist, 1967). The application of this general notion has ranged from the typical personnel selection strategy-analyze the job, define ability requirements, hire the person with the right abilities (Schneider, 1978)-to attempts to link more general individual characteristics to particular aspects of an occupation, job, or organization.A great deal of research and theory has attempted to link individual characteristics and particular aspects of the situation. Holland (1985), for example, argued that satisfaction and performance are enhanced when the individual selects an occupation that is compatible with his or her traits and skills. In aWe wish to thank