Given the belief shared by scholars and practitioners that challenging “on-the-job” experience is the most effective tool for leadership and employee development, research on the effectiveness of developmental job experience (DJE) has proliferated in the last three decades since McCauley and colleagues’ (1994) pioneering study. In this study, we identify two important issues that have limited our understanding of DJE and address them by means of meta-analysis. First, research on the effectiveness of DJE has extended the criteria outcomes without systematically examining its differential relationships with a wide range of outcomes, which impedes a comprehensive understanding of this topic. Second, it is not clear whether the effectiveness of DJE is consistent across different ranks of employees despite the burgeoning research on DJE among non-managers. We address the two issues by providing a comprehensive examination of the relationships between DJE and employee outcomes, and testing whether these relationships vary between managers and non-managers. The meta-analytic results suggest that (a) DJE benefits more in developing than motivating employees, and that (b) DJE benefits managers and employees similarly in most outcomes except for change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior and objective career success. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions for DJE research.
