Search results

In this chapter, we review relational demography literature underpinned by the similarity–attraction paradigm and status characteristics and social identity theories. We then develop an uncertainty reduction model of relational demography, which describes a two-stage process of uncertainty emergence and reduction in a workgroup setting. The first stage depicts how structural features of the workgroup (workgroup composition) and occupation (the legitimacy of its status hierarchy) induce two forms of uncertainty: uncertainty about group norms and uncertainty about instrumental outcomes. The second part of the model illustrates employees' choice of uncertainty reduction strategies, depending on the type of uncertainty they experience, and the status of their demographic categories. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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.

Matt Bloom, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Management Department at the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Before receiving his doctorate he worked as paramedic, psychiatric technician, and then as a consultant for Arthur Young & Company and American Express. Matt's current research interests center on well-being at work and include exploring topics such as what work is like when people experience it as a calling and what conditions help people to be at their cognitive and emotional best at work. He is currently undertaking a program of research to study well-being among people in the caring professions.

Rosemary Batt is the Alice Hanson Cook Professor of Women and Work at the ILR School, Cornell University. She is a Professor in Human Resource Studies and International and Comparative Labor and Editor of the ILR Review. She received her BA from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from MIT. Her research focuses on comparative international studies of management and employment relations, with particular attention to globalization and the restructuring of service industries, and its impact on low wageworkers. She coordinated the Global Call Center Research Project (http://www.globalcallcenter.org). Her current work focuses on the impact of financialization on management and employment relations. Her work has appeared in such journals as the AMJ, British Journal of Industrial Relations, the European Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, Industrial Relations, IJHRM, and Personnel Psychology. She is coeditor of the Oxford Handbook on Work and Organization and coauthor of The New American Workplace, Cornell University Press (http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/directory/rb41/).

M. Ronald Buckley holds the JC Penney Company Chair of Business Leadership and is a professor of management and a professor of psychology in the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from Auburn University. His research interests include, among others, work motivation, racial and gender issues in performance evaluation, business ethics, interview issues, and organizational socialization. His work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Management.