Abstract
During the initial phase of the recruitment process, job applicants base their attraction and job choice decisions on the organization's espoused values that manifest themselves through the organization's use of positive images and signals. Based on this limited amount of data, applicants develop a perceived notion of how well they would fit within that organization. When applicants become employees of that organization and discover a mismatch between their perception of the espoused values and the reality of the basic assumptions of that culture, the results may be detrimental to the employee as well as to the organization. The researcher wanted to test his theory and examine the potential outcomes of the discovery of employees of a mismatch between an organization's espoused values and the basic assumptions that exist within the organization. The researcher believed that one of these outcomes was employee turnover. This study used the positivistic multiple case study method to test his theory. The researcher interviewed a total of 17 participants from a variety of occupations and industries from the Midwest region of the United States. This study was able to contribute to the research on recruitment and person-organization (P-O) fit. While the findings supported the researcher's theory that employees leave organizations because of a mismatch between initial perceptions of espoused values and the basic assumptions of the organizational culture, additional replications of this study may be necessary to have a theoretical generalization.