Human Resource Managers’ Attitudes Toward Utility Analysis

Abstract

Although utility analysis (UA) could be an important tool to show the utility of human resource (HR) activities, little is known about its usage. Only Macan and Highhouse (1994) showed that it is used by nearly half of the surveyed US industrial/organizational psychologists and HR professionals. As an extended and refined update of this study, we surveyed Swiss HR managers about their UA usage. Furthermore, we tried to replicate the predictors of the attitude toward UA indicated by Macan and Highhouse’s exploratory results, and used previous theorizing to add predictors. The results revealed that only 8% HR managers used UA. The demand for utility information, the plausibility of UA, and the nonuse of other utility approaches were significant predictors.