Content area
Full Text
George C. Thornton, III and Deborah E. Rupp. Assessment Centers in Human Resource Management: Strategies for Prediction, Diagnosis, and Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006, 361 pages, $110.00 hardcover, $39.95 softcover.
Reviewed by Robert G. Jones, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO.
In the grand tradition of Moses and Byham (1977), we have a new comprehensive description and expert review of the literature on the practice and evaluation of the assessment center method. In this volume, we also have a continuation of the sort of advocacy for the method in general, and the classic behavioral reporting approach in particular, that Thornton and Byham and their colleagues have provided for 3 decades. This combination of review with advocacy is both a strength and a problem with the volume. Before getting to these strengths and weaknesses, here is a brief review of the book's contents.
The preface tells us that the intended audience for the book is users and potential users of the assessment center method. It is apparently not intended as a scholarly volume, though it certainly looks like one to the educated reader. The preface also states that the unifying theme for the book is "continuity and change"-assessment centers are still a single method but have undergone considerable change in response to external changes and innovative applications. This seems more like a description of boundary conditions than theme, and I think it turns out that the real theme is advocacy for the extension of the method.
The remaining contents provide in-depth descriptions of the method and its uses, with a discussion of validation issues toward the end of the volume. The first chapter provides a thorough description of the context and applications of the assessment center method. Three cases are presented in Chapter 2 to describe "typical" selection, diagnostic, and developmental assessment centers. Chapter 3 provides an interesting conceptual analysis of why these different applications can still be thought of under the concept of a singular assessment center method. Chapter 4 looks like an anomaly at first, as it provides...