Theoretical Expectancies: Replacing Classic Utility Tables with Flexible, Accurate Computing Procedures

A great deal of work has been done by industrial and organisational psychologists to express the utility of validated employee selection systems. Much of this work has focused on methods for estimating economic utility, to show how many dollars can be gained or saved by implementing a new selection procedure. These methods can be quite useful, yet it is often difficult for the sponsors of selection systems to appreciate the credibility of the resulting dollar value estimates. Many users of selection systems still need to see utility analyses that demonstrate the selection system's value in more tangible behavioural terms that can be anchored in familiar performance metrics or standards of the organisation. This article presents all the information needed to compute theoretical expectancies for improvement of job performance under three well‐known models, eliminating the need to rely on incomplete expectancy tables. The methods described produce highly accurate results for all possible input values, and can be implemented easily using a variety of widely available software tools.