XXII 
THE MEASURE OF COMPARATIVE 
PRODUCTIVENESS 
Every case of employment has two aspects; namely, 
selection and retention. Selection rests on the judgment 
of the employment manager as to the fitness of an appli 
cant for a particular position. Retention depends upon 
the judgment of some superior officer as to the degree of 
fitness which the applicant reveals after he has been em 
ployed. When the judgment of the employment manager 
regarding a man and that of the man’s superior agree, 
we have what is termed a perfect correlation. If their 
judgments are entirely at variance the correlation is 
negative. 
One of the most important and at the same time one 
of the most difficult problems in the selection and reten 
tion of employees is the determination of the degree of 
correlation which exists between selection and retention, 
between the employment manager on the one hand, and 
the various officers such as foremen, superintendents, etc., 
who control employees after they have been selected on 
the other hand; in other words, to determine the extent 
to which the agencies of selection and the agencies of 
retention agree in their judgments. In the large majority 
of cases there is no reliable or impersonal standard for 
estimating the correlation between these two factors. A 
general practice, when a question as to the success of a 
selection arises, is to “pass the buck”. The employment 
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