Rebranding Employment Branding: Establishing a New Research Agenda to Explore the Attributes, Antecedents, and Consequences of Workers' Employment Brand Knowledge

Abstract

Two primary approaches have been used to study employment brands and branding. First, there is a long history of the study of organizational attraction. Second, in the past 10–15 years, there has been growth in a hybrid stream of research combining branding concepts from the consumer psychology literature with I/O psychology frameworks of organizational attraction and applicant job search behavior. In this chapter, we take an entirely different approach and suggest that the theoretical models built around product/service brand knowledge can readily accommodate employment brands and branding without hybridizing the framework with I/O psychology. This merging of employment brand with product and service brands is accomplished simply by recognizing employment as an economic exchange between workers and employers and recognizing workers as cognitive and emotional beings that vary in their talents and have their own vectors of preferences for the employment offering. After developing a testable model of the components, antecedents, and consequences of employment brand knowledge, we review the existing employment brand and organizational attraction literature and identify multiple opportunities for additional research.

Citation

Gardner, T.M., Erhardt, N.L. and Martin-Rios, C. (2011), "Rebranding Employment Branding: Establishing a New Research Agenda to Explore the Attributes, Antecedents, and Consequences of Workers' Employment Brand Knowledge", Joshi, A., Liao, H. and Martocchio, J.J. (Ed.) Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 253-304. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-7301(2011)0000030008