Employer branding in the Belgian Army: The importance of instrumental and symbolic beliefs for potential applicants, actual applicants, and military employees

By Filip Lievens. 2007

358 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study conceptualizes employer brand as a package of instrumental and symbolic attributes. Using a sample of 955 individuals (429 potential applicants, 392 actual applicants, and 134 military employees), we examine the relative importance of instrumental and symbolic employer brand beliefs across different groups of individuals: potential applicants, actual applicants, and military employees (with less than three years of tenure). Results show that instrumental attributes explain greater variance in theArmy's attractiveness as an employer among actual applicants compared to potential applicants or employees. In all three groups, symbolic trait inferences explain a similar portion of the variance. In addition, in all three groups, symbolic trait inferences explain incremental variance over and above instrumental attributes. Implications for employer branding practices and image audits are discussed. ©2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Gender Studies, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5a92c7e32e2f133b59cf4b95a7424f66fd2c347d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Greet van Hoye
2. Saartje Cromheecke
3. Turker Bas
4. Filip Lievens
5. A. Saks
6. Linn Viktoria Rampl
7. Peter Kenning
8. V. Bellou

In Gender Studies

1. Greet van Hoye
2. A. Saks
3. Saartje Cromheecke
4. Turker Bas
5. Filip Lievens
6. Linn Viktoria Rampl
7. Peter Kenning
8. V. Bellou

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Greet van Hoye
2. A. Saks
3. Filip Lievens
4. Saartje Cromheecke
5. Turker Bas
6. Peter Kenning
7. Linn Viktoria Rampl
8. V. Bellou

Citations in the corpus

• Employer brand trust and affect: linking brand personality to employer brand attractiveness (2014, background): “Research in this area suggests that employer brand attractiveness can be explained not only through functional attributes such as compensation or advancement opportunities, but also through brand personality traits (Lievens, 2007; Lievens and Highhouse, 2003).”
• Third Party Employment Branding: Human Capital Inflows and Outflows Following “Best Places to Work” Certifications (2016, background): “…has found incremental effects of symbolic characteristics, which in our studypertain to thirdparty certifications of the employment brand, beyond instrumental characteristics such as tangible benefits, training opportunities, or work–life policies (e.g., Lievens, 2007; Lievens & Highhouse, 2003).”
• Organizational culture as a predictor of job satisfaction: the role of gender and age (2010, background): “Moreover, as Lievens (2007) concluded, the extent to which the organization is considered to be a respectable employer seems to be a mechanism for ensuring employees’ job satisfaction and in turn their willingness to remain at the organization.”
• Identifying Dimensions of Attractiveness in Employer Branding: Effects of Age, Gender, and Current Employment Status (2012, background): “There is a cornucopia of literature focusing on employer attractiveness and employer branding (Barber et al., 1994; Lievens, 2007; Davies, 2008; Agrawal and Swaroop, 2009; Moroko and Uncles, 2009; Mandhanya and Shah, 2010; Wilden et al., 2010; Ong, 2011; Priyadarshi, 2011; Shahzad et al., 2011).”
• Attracting applicants through the organization's social media page: Signaling employer brand personality (2019, background): “…perceptions of warmth and competence we started from conceptually related employer brand personality dimensions: sincerity and cheerfulness for warmth, competence and prestige for competence (Lievens & Highhouse, 2003; Lievens, 2007; Lievens et al., 2007; Lievens et al., 2005; Van Hoye, 2008).”
• The Instrumental and Symbolic Dimensions of Organisations' Image as an Employer: A Large‐Scale Field Study on Employer Branding in Turkey (2013, methodology): “First, both instrumental and symbolic image dimensions are associated with job seekers’ and applicants’ attraction to the organisation as an employer (Lievens, 2007) as well as with employees’ organisational identification and recommendation intentions (Lievens et al.”
• The Instrumental-Symbolic Framework: Organisational Image and Attractiveness of Potential Applicants and their Companions at a Job Fair (2011, positive): “…the instrumentalsymbolic framework (Lievens & Highhouse, 2003), there were also some noteworthy differences, in line with previous research reporting differences in the perception and importance of instrumental and symbolic image dimensions across different groups of stakeholders (Lievens, 2007).”