Journal of Management Vol. 42 No. 7, November 2016 1904–1933 DOI: 10.1177/0149206314522298 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav 1904 Pay Attention! The Liabilities of Respondent Experience and Carelessness When Making Job Analysis Judgments Frederick P. Morgeson Michigan State University Matthias Spitzmuller National University of Singapore Adela S. Garza Independent Consultant Michael A. Campion Purdue University Job analysis has a central role in virtually every aspect of HR and is one of several high perfor- mance work practices thought to underlie firm performance. Given its ubiquity and importance, it is not surprising that considerable effort has been devoted to developing comprehensive job analysis systems and methodologies. Yet, the complexity inherent in collecting detailed and spe- cific “decomposed” information has led some to pursue “holistic” strategies designed to focus on more general and abstract job analysis information. It is not clear, however, if these two dif- ferent strategies yield comparable information, nor if respondents are equally capable of gener- ating equivalent information. Drawing from cognitive psychology research, we suggest that experienced and careless job analysis respondents are less likely to evidence convergence in their decomposed and holistic job analysis judgments. In a field sample of professional managers, we found that three different types of task-related work experience moderated the relationship between decomposed and holistic ratings, accounting for an average ΔR 2 of 4.7%. Three other more general types of work experience, however, did not moderate this relationship, supporting predictions that only experience directly related to work tasks would prove to be a liability when making judgments. We also found that respondent carelessness moderated the relationship Acknowledgment: This article was accepted under the editorship of Deborah E. Rupp. Corresponding author: Frederick P. Morgeson, Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, 632 Bogue St., Room N475, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. E-mail: fred@morgeson.com 522298JOM XX X 10.1177/0149206314522298Journal of ManagementMorgeson et al. / Job Analysis Judgments research-article 2014 at PURDUE UNIVERSITY TSS on November 15, 2016 jom.sagepub.com Downloaded from