Person -environment congruence, job stability, and job satisfaction: An examination of Holland's theory of vocational personalities and work environments in the nursing profession

This study investigated the job satisfaction and job stability of hospital staff nurses as it relates to John L. Holland's concept of person-environment congruence. According to Holland's theory of vocations, congruence between personality type and work environment contributes to individuals' job satisfaction and job stability. It was hypothesized that there was a positive relationship between person-environment congruence and job satisfaction or job stability.;Two hundred twenty-eight staff nurses from a regional referral hospital in western Tennessee returned survey instruments that included the Self-Directed Search (SDS), Position Classification Inventory (PCI), Abridged Job Descriptive Index/Abridged Job In General (AJDI/AJIG), Nurse Retention Index (NRI), and a personal demographic form. As a result of the SDS and PCI scores, each subject was assigned a Holland three-letter personality code and three-letter work environment code. Nurse personality Holland RIASEC code scores of Social-Investigative-Artistic were consistent with Holland's Dictionary of Occupational Codes; however, the nurse environment PCI scores demonstrated a predominant number of Social-Realistic-Conventional Holland RIASEC scores. The level of person-environment congruence was determined for each subject using the Brown and Gore congruence C-Index with scores ranging from 0 to 18. The AJIG and NRI results were utilized to measure subject's job satisfaction and job stability, respectively.;Results of the bivariate correlation analysis of congruence-satisfaction did not demonstrate significant results. The job satisfaction and C-Index correlation measure of .069 were not significant at the .05 level. Congruence-stability also did not demonstrate significant results with a correlation of.027. A low degree of variability was evident within the sample for both the satisfaction and stability scores.;Results of the study were discussed and possible reasons for unexpected findings were explored along with implications for further research on Holland's congruency hypothesis, particularly in the areas of personality-environment score coding and congruence measurement.