Context is Pivotal to Organizational Measurement: Change of Context Specificity Results in Phenomenon Reversal in the Coalescence of Workplace Adaptive Skill

Abstract

This paper describes an innovative interview methodology to assess workplace adaptive skills. Workers are assessed via the interview for their adaptation and functioning in two contexts – One proximal to the work they are presently performing and the other distal. Reversals in the patterning of adaptive skills are found over three worker age cohorts, depending on whether the adaptive skills were assessed for the proximal or distal context. It is shown that the interview methodology is drawn from paradigmatic assumptions that are different from the traditional positivistic approaches to the assessment of individual differences. Implications of the interview methodology and substantive findings are discussed for the better understanding and managing of individual change at work.

Keywords: adaptive skills, context effects, skills coalescence, individual change at work, interview methodology