The Social Psychology of Organizations.

Social Psychology of Organizations

Employer branding represents a firm's efforts to promote, both within and outside the firm, a clear view of what makes it different and desirable as an employer. In recent years employer branding has gained popularity among practicing managers. Given this managerial interest, this article presents a framework to initiate the scholarly study of employer branding. Combining a resource‐based view with brand equity theory, a framework is used to develop testable propositions. The article discusses the relationship between employer branding and organizational career management. Finally, it outlines research issues that need to be addressed to develop employer branding as a useful organizing framework for strategic human resource management.

Conceptualizing and researching employer branding

Understanding the attraction of virtual communities is crucial to organizations that want to tap into their enormous information potential. Existing literature theorizes that people join virtual communities to exchange information and/or social support. Theories of broader Internet use have indicated both entertainment and searching for friendship as motivational forces. This exploratory study empirically examines the importance of these reasons in assessing why people come to virtual communities by directly asking virtual community members why they joined.

The responses to the open-ended question “Why did you join?” were categorized based upon the reasons suggested in the literature. Across 27 communities in 5 different broad types, 569 different reasons from 399 people indicated that most sought either friendship or exchange of information, and a markedly lower percent sought social support or recreation. The reasons were significantly dependent on the grouping of the communities into types. In all the community types information exchange was the most popular reason for joining. Thereafter, however, the reason varied depending on community type. Social support was the second most popular reason for members in communities with health/wellness and professional/occupational topics, but friendship was the second most popular reason among members in communities dealing with personal interests/hobbies, pets, or recreation. These findings suggest that virtual community managers should emphasize not only the content but also encourage the friendship and social support aspects as well if they wish to increase the success of their virtual community.

Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online

Building on existing studies suggesting that corporate social performance (CSP) is important in the job choice process, the authors investigate job seekers’perceptions of importance of CSP and expl...

Exploringthe Relationship Between Corporate Social Performance and Employer Attractiveness

This article forwards a framework illustrating the role of social identification in the construction of brand equity for services marketers. Services markets are proposed to exist along an identification continuum based upon levels of consumer commitment and emotional involvement. We illustrate the impact of social identification by focusing on one service industry, the sports marketplace, an industry typified by exceedingly high levels of identification between consumer and market offering. The authors examine four characteristics of the services environment (group experience, history/tradition, physical facility, rituals) that marketers can leverage to enhance consumers’ identification with a service and, ultimately, increase brand equity.

Building Service Brands via Social Identity: Lessons from the Sports Marketplace

This study examines two advertising strategies— documentation and visualization—on several measures of ad effectiveness across two different types of service offerings (utilitarian and hedonic). Fo...

Robert Baer

Papers

Building Service Brands via Social Identity: Lessons from the Sports Marketplace

An Investigation of Visualization and Documentation Strategies in Services Advertising

Customers Complain-Businesses Make Excuses: the Effects of Linkage and Valence

Organizational Characteristics and Employee Excuse Making: Passing the Buck For Failed Service Encounters

Comment: Measuring Consumer Involvement in Products: Comment on Traylor and Joseph