Even though person-job fit (PJ fit) is a crucial predictor of employees' overall engagement and performance in their jobs, few studies have identified the mechanisms that enhance PJ fit during the employment relationship. Further, the models that do predict how PJ fit evolves over time are predominantly based on the idea that fit improves through individual adjustment processes by workers. This paper provides a new lens on PJ fit that is based on strengths theory, proposing that strengths-based leaders play a critical role in enhancing both dimensions of PJ fit, i.e. needs-supplies (NS) and demands-abilities (DA) fit, by encouraging employees to use their unique strengths. Furthermore, based on theorizing on substitutes for leadership, proactive career management, and situational strength theory we test the idea that high levels of proactive personality and job autonomy may partly compensate for a lack of strengths-based leadership. We collected three waves of data with two-month time lags from a representative sample of 308 Dutch workers, resulting in 906 datapoints. Results of multi-level path modeling indicate that strengths-based leadership is indeed positively related to both DA fit and NS fit and mediated by strengths use at the within-person level. Further, our results indicate that the combination of high job autonomy and high proactive personality partly compensates for the absence of strengths-based leadership on the within-person level. We conclude that strengths-based leadership is particularly important to facilitate strengths use and PJ fit of employees who have a low propensity to be proactive and/or do not have a high degree of autonomy in their job. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.

中文翻译：

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增强人与工作的契合度：谁需要一个基于优势的领导者来适应他们的工作？


尽管人与工作的契合度（PJ 契合度）是员工整体敬业度和工作绩效的重要预测因素，但很少有研究发现在雇佣关系中增强 PJ 契合度的机制。此外，预测睡衣舒适度如何随时间变化的模型主要基于这样的想法：通过工人的个人调整过程来改善舒适度。本文提供了基于优势理论的 PJ 契合度的新视角，提出基于优势的领导者在增强 PJ 契合度（即需求-供给（NS）和需求-能力（DA）契合度）方面发挥着关键作用，通过鼓励员工发挥他们独特的优势。此外，基于领导力替代品、主动职业管理和情境优势理论，我们检验了这样的观点：高水平的主动性人格和工作自主权可能部分弥补基于优势的领导力的缺乏。我们从 308 名荷兰工人的代表性样本中收集了三波时滞两个月的数据，得出 906 个数据点。多层次路径建模的结果表明，基于优势的领导力确实与 DA 契合度和 NS 契合度呈正相关，并由内部层面的优势运用所调节。此外，我们的结果表明，高度的工作自主权和高度主动的个性相结合，在一定程度上弥补了内部层面上基于优势的领导力的缺失。我们的结论是，基于优势的领导力对于促进积极主动性较低和/或在工作中没有高度自主权的员工的优势利用和睡衣适应尤为重要。我们讨论这些发现对研究和实践的影响。