Employment branding in the knowledge economy

By Michael T. Ewing, Leyland F. Pitt, Nigel M. de Bussy, Pierre R. Berthon. 2002

346 citations recorded by the source corpus.

For most of its existence advertising has focused on attracting customers. More recently, enlightened organisations have recognised the need to expand their communications efforts to incorporate all stakeholders, not only end-users. The marketing literature has begun to address stakeholder theory, as well as advertising's indirect and internal audiences, but more as a secondary consideration or by-product of consumer marketing. However, the anticipated permanent shortage of skilled workers in the new economy creates unique challenges for knowledge-based organisations in particular, who will increasingly need to differentiate themselves in order to successfully attract talented employees. As a result, more and more firms may turn to advertising to create ‘employment brands’ and thereby offer an enticing vocational proposition that is compelling and differentiated. In response to this emerging trend, this article begins by introducing stakeholder theory into a marketing framework. We then classify existing approaches to employment branding by identifying three basic types of employment advertising strategies. In closing, managerial implications are discussed, an agenda for future research is proposed and conclusions are drawn.

Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffc1b63dcdfa7e5ba8c07146839bf90dff2a26f8

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In Management of Technology and Innovation

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Employer branding: strategic implications for staff recruitment (2010, background): “In summary, despite increasing competition in employment markets, little research has explored the mechanisms by which potential employees evaluate prospective employers, and the employee-based brand equity inherent in these evaluations (Ewing et al. 2002; Schmidtke 2002; Sutherland, Torricelli & Ka”
Employees as internal audience: how advertising affects employees’ customer focus (2010, background): “Yet, “advertising is probably the most visible, recognizable and memorable element of organizational communication” (Ewing et al. 2002, p. 5), and is perhaps the most controllable element of external organizational communications.”
Corporate brands: what are they? What of them? (2003, background): “This has particular significance for recruitment of personnel and the development of human resources in an organisation (Balmer and Wilkinson, 1991; Ambler and Barrow, 1996; Macrae, 1996; Knox and Maklan, 1998; Keller, 1999; Balmer, 2001b, Harris and DeChernatony, 2001; Ewing et al., 2002).”
Employer brand trust and affect: linking brand personality to employer brand attractiveness (2014, background): “This is an aspect which may not have been addressed by organisations with priority in the past, as research on job advertisements has shown (Ewing et al., 2002).”