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  applicant ­
  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  employed. ­
  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  retention ­
  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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