Social Influences on Organizational Attractiveness: Investigating If and When Word of Mouth Matters

By Greet van Hoye, Filip Lievens. 2007

186 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous recruitment studies have treated potential applicants as individual decision makers, neglecting informational social influences on organizational attractiveness. The present study investigated if and under what conditions word-of-mouth communication matters as a recruitment source. Results (N = 171) indicated that word of mouth had a strong impact on organizational attractiveness, and negative word of mouth interfered with recruitment advertising effects. Word of mouth from a strong tie was perceived as more credible and had a more positive effect on organizational attractiveness. For potential applicants high in self-monitoring, word of mouth had a stronger effect when presented after recruitment advertising. Finally, the effect of word of mouth on organizational attractiveness was partially mediated by the perceived credibility of recruitment advertising.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/573e6038db329f3bb91a71ea08bb1ab552f37f0b

Citations in the corpus

• The Instrumental-Symbolic Framework: Organisational Image and Attractiveness of Potential Applicants and their Companions at a Job Fair (2011, unknown): “In support of this assumption, Van Hoye and Lievens (2007) found that friends " evaluation of an organization had a stronger positive effect on potential applicants " perceived organizational attractiveness than acquaintances " evaluation.”