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The purpose of this study is to assess whether social capital explains level and quality of knowledge sharing in globally distributed execution. More specifically, the study examined how knowledge sharing in combined European–Asian teams of a globally operating engineering and construction company was affected by these teams’ social capital.

Social capital was approached via constructs covering its structural, relational and cognitive dimensions. Data for 325 employees were collected via an online questionnaire and analysed using multiple regression models.

The analyses confirm that components of social capital offer powerful explanations of both the level and the quality of knowledge sharing. The study also found many differences in how social capital affects the level versus the quality of knowledge sharing and also in how it works in the European versus the Asian situations. No social capital factor appeared to significantly predict both level and quality knowledge sharing in the European and Asian situations alike.

This study is novel in empirically establishing how knowledge sharing in globally distributed execution is affected by teams’ social capital as an integrative construct bringing together individual and group characteristics.

Employer branding (EB) has become a powerful tool for organizations to attract employees. Recruitment communication ideally reveals the image that companies want to portray to potential employees to attract talents with the right skills and competences for the organization. This study explores the impact of EB on employer attractiveness by testing how pre-existing employee preferences interact with EB and how this interaction affects employer attractiveness.

A quasi-experiment among 289 final-year students was used to test the relationships between EB, perceived employer image, person-organization (P-O) fit and employer attractiveness, and the potential moderating variables of pre-existing preferences, in this case operationalized as locational preferences. Students are randomly assigned to four vacancies: one with and one without EB cues in two different locations: Groningen and Amsterdam. The authors used standard scales for attractiveness, perceptions of an employer and person-organization fit. The authors test the relationships using a regression analysis.

Results suggest that if respondents have previous predispositions, then their preference can be enhanced using an EB-targeted strategy. Based on these results, the authors can conclude that EB and related practices can be successful avenues for organizations in the war for talent, particularly if they reaffirm previous preferences of potential employees.

The research is original in the way it provides empirical evidence on the relationship between EB and attractiveness, particularly when previous employee preferences exist. This is of value to employers using EB as a tool to influence employer attractiveness.