How Employment Offering Enhances Employees’ Intentions to Recommend the Organization as an Employer? The Role of Social Identity and Communications Distinctiveness

Abstract

Despite the interest for employer branding among practitioners, academic research on the topic is still limited. The purpose of the present research was to study the influence of the employment offering diffused by an organization through its communications on its employees’ intentions to recommend the organization. More precisely, the present study aimed at examining the effect of the interaction between employment offering and communications distinctiveness on employees’ recommendation intentions and the mediating role of social identity, i.e. organizational identification and pride, in this relationship. One-hundred eighty-seven employees of a large international group of the bank industry responded to the questionnaire. Results indicated that, when the employment offering depicts favorable employment conditions and these communications are perceived as distinct from other organizations’ communications, employees are more proud of their organization and consequently more willing to recommend it as an employer. By contrast, organizational identification did not mediate the influence of the interaction of employment offering by communications distinctiveness on recommendation intentions. Implications of these findings are discussed.