“This is not a test”: How do human resource development professionals use personality tests as tools of their professional practice?

• Date: 01 June 2019
• Author: Rob F. Poell,Brigitte Kroon,Henriette Lundgren
• Published date: 01 June 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21338

QUALITATIVE STUDY

“This is not a test”: How do human resource

development professionals use personality tests as

tools of their professional practice?

Henriette Lundgren | Rob F. Poell | Brigitte Kroon

Department of Human Resource Studies,

Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands

Correspondence

Henriette Lundgren, Department of Human

Resource Studies, Tilburg University, PO Box

90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, the Netherlands.

Email: henriette.lundgren@gmail.com

Although human resource development (HRD) professionals enjoy the

use of personality tests in their practice, the appeal of these tests to

some is harshly criticized by others. Personality tests attract through

optimistic descriptions and ease of use for individual and team deve l-

opment while often lacking predictive and discriminant validities.

Despite those concerns, the personality-testing market can be charac-

terized as a dynamic industry, with many professionals using assess-

ments in developmental settings such as management training and

executive coaching. The aim of this article is to explore how individual

meaning-making and organizational sensemaking theories help to

explain the widespread and sustained use of personality tests in devel-

opmental contexts among HRD professionals. Using grounded theory

and inductive analysis, we distill meaning from semistructured inter-

views with 18 HRD professionals. Through pattern analysis, we estab-

lish six strategies that describe practical approaches in personality

testing: 1. Ethical-protective,2.Scientific-selective,3.Cautious-avoiding,

4. Cautious-embracing,5.User friendly-pragmatic,and6.Knowledgeable-

accommodating. We find that HRD professionals deal with cognitive

dissonances and paradoxical situations in their professional personality

test use practice on a regular basis. Research limitations and implica-

tions for practice and future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS

cognitive dissonance, grounded theory, HRD, individual meaning-

making, organizational sensemaking, pattern analysis, personality

test, practitioner strategies

DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21338

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which

permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no

modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2019 The Authors. Human Resource Development Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Human Resource Development Quarterly. 2019;30:175–196. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrdq 175

Survey research conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the United Kingdom shows that

personality tests are increasingly employed by human resource development (HRD) professionals forindividual-learning and

team-learning purposes (McGurk & Belliveau, 2012). Personality tests are standardized assessments used to det ermine a

person's set of preferences, traits, or behavioral styles, most commonly—but not exclusively—using self-report question-

naires. Human resource (HR) practitioners may use these tests for recruiting (Hossiep, Schecke, & Weiss, 20 15) as well as

for development purposes (Benit & Soellner, 2013), although many of the personality tests used were originally developed

for personnel selection and not specifically for developmental practice (Costa & McCrae, 1996; McAdams, 1997).

When looking at research in the developmental context more closely, we find that personality tests are used in

management coaching (Nelson & Hogan, 2009; Passmore, 2008; Passmore, Holloway, & Rawle-Cope, 2010; Schar-

lau, 2004), educational leadership (Tomlinson, 2004), organizational and team development (Badham, Garrety, Morri-

gan, Zanko, & Dawson, 2003; Clinebell & Stecher, 2003; Kuipers, Higgs, Tolkacheva, & de Witte, 2009; Ludeman,

1995), management learning (Ford & Harding, 2007; Furnham & Jackson, 2011; Goodstein & Prien, 2006), and lead-

ership development (Allen & Hartman, 2008). In many of these studies, type-basedpersonality tests, and in particular

the Myers-Briggs-Type Indicator (MBTI),

1

are named as the most popular tools for developmental use (Clinebell &

Stecher, 2003; Passmore et al., 2010; Stothart, 2011). A type-based personality test may appeal to HRD profes-

sionals as the descriptions of personality are mostly optimistic (Ford & Harding, 2007), feedback reports ease the

exploration of differences among test takers (Passmore et al., 2010) and discussion of personality test outcomes

promises to facilitate team development (Clinebell & Stecher, 2003). However, the appeal of these tests to some is

harshly criticized by others: Type-based tests generally have poor predictive validity (Furnham & Crump, 2005; Gard-

ner & Martinko, 1996; Gulliford, 1991; Pittenger, 2005), low discriminant validity (Fisher, Hunter, & Macrosson,

2001), and methodological issues due to forced-choice answer formats (Converse et al., 2008; Harland, 2003). This

leads to a paradoxical situation (Lewis, 2000; Lewis & Smith, 2014) wherein personality tests are popular among

HRD professionals but at the same time are one of the most critiqued instruments, too (Boyle, 1995; Pittenger,

2005). It is unclear how HRD practitioners deal with the tensions that arise from this paradox. To inquire more deeply

into the practice of HRD professionals who apply personality tests in developmental settings, we will first elaborate

on the test industry before looking at studies that have analyzed HR practitioner reactions to tests.

Test industrydata show that the personality-testingindustry overall is an expandingmarket: With about 2,500 per-

sonality testsadministered a few million times everyyear, they generate approximately$500 million per annum in test

license and certification revenue for test publishers in the United States (Weber& Dwoskin, 2014). It is also a dynamic

market in which psychological associations try to regulate test use and agree on norms among psychologists (DIN,

2002; Evers, 1996;Kersting, 2008), while at the sametime nonpsychologists look toimprove professionalizationin the

HRD field (Carliner& Hamlin, 2015; Chalofsky, 2007;Lee, 2001; Short, 2006). As differentstakeholders have different

interests, tensions exist between HRD professionals and professional associations, as well as between psychologists

and nonpsychologists using personality tests in HRD. Previous exploratory research indicated that professionals place

more value on perceivedease-of-use than on psychometrics (Lundgren, Kroon, & Poell, 2017).Also, professionals and

publishers relabel the word “test”with more positive-sounding terms,such as “tools for self-reflection and instruments

for personal stocktaking”(p. 215) when psychological tests are used for development rather than selection. This indi-

cates that some professionals may have developed strategies that prevent their entanglement with personality tests

from being negatively perceived by test takersand client organizations. HRD professionals' meaning-making (Mezirow,

1991; Schön, 1983) and organizational sensemaking (Greeno, 1997; Maitlis & Christianson, 2014;Weick, 1995) hence

seem to play a crucial role in the personality-testing industry as they introduce personality tests into organizations or

connect test publishers and their products with test takers. The question arises how HR practitioners in general and

HRD professionalsin specific react to and createmeaning from their personalitytest use.

A number of studies have analyzed HR practitioner reactions to psychological testing in general. In an empirical

study conducted with HR practitioners, Benit and Soellner (2013) wanted to find out why personality and intelligence

tests are less-widely adopted in Germany, compared with other European countries. The researchers collected survey

data from 116 companies and found that nearly 20% of those practitioners used personality tests in developmental

176 LUNDGREN ET AL.