Measuring Attraction to Organizations

2003/12/01 by Scott Highhouse, Filip Lievens, Evan F. Sinar · 834 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Attraction #Attractiveness #Employer Branding and e-HRM #Gender Diversity and Inequality #Organizational behavior #Personality Traits and Psychology #Prestige #Psychology #Social psychology #Theory of reasoned action

paper · doi:10.1177/0013164403258403

published in Educational and Psychological Measurement 63(6), 986-1001 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2003/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03

Abstract

Organizational attractionmeasures are commonly used as surrogate assessments of organizational pursuit. Despite the range in content often encompassed by such instruments, no research has systematically examined the assumptions underlying their use. The authors address this issue by empirically distinguishing items assessing attractiveness, prestige, and behavioral intentions and by modeling their effects on organization pursuit. Undergraduates ( N= 305) were randomly assigned to recruitment literature from one of five wellknown companies and were asked to respond to a series of items commonly used in past research. Analyses of the itemresponses suggested that three components of organizational attraction can be reliably distinguished and that their relation to organization-pursuit behavior corresponds to Fishbein and Ajzen’s theory of reasoned action.

Cited by

• Applicants' and Employees' Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moderating Effects of First‐Party Justice Perceptions and Moral Identity
• A meta-analysis on reactions to algorithmic decision-making in human resource management
• Applicant Reactions to Digital Selection Methods: A Signaling Perspective on Innovativeness and Procedural Justice
• CER as a workforce strategy: investigating how and when corporate environmental responsibility promotes organizational attractiveness
• Job Switching Motives and Employer Attractiveness: A Comparative Analysis of Sector Switchers and Non‐Sector Switchers
• Celebrating the “Invisible”: The Role of Organizational Diversity Approaches on Attracting and Retaining LGBTQ + Talent
• Examining the Draw of Diversity: How Diversity Climate Perceptions Affect Job‐Pursuit Intentions
• Hospital-physician relations: the relative importance of economic, relational and professional attributes to organizational attractiveness. [europepmc]
• Selling and Smooth-Talking: Effects of Interviewer Impression Management from a Signaling Perspective. [europepmc]
• Age-Differential Effects of Job Characteristics on Job Attraction: A Policy-Capturing Study. [europepmc]
• A Lexical Approach to Identifying Dimensions of Organizational Culture. [europepmc]
• Government Calling Revisited: A Survey-Experiment on the Moderating Role of Public Service Motivation in Assessing Employer Attractiveness. [europepmc]
• Objective and bias-free measures of candidate motivation during job applications. [europepmc]
• Response to a crisis and applicant attraction: Signaling employer brand personality and organizational trust through warm and competent COVID-19 responses. [europepmc]
• Occupation-specific recruitment: An empirical investigation on job seekers' occupational (non-)fit, employer image, and employer attractiveness. [europepmc]
• Employer Attractiveness of EMNEs: The Role of CSR in Overcoming Country-of-Origin Image Constraints in Developed Host Countries. [europepmc]
• The power of e-recruitment and employer branding on Indonesian millennials' intention to apply for a job. [europepmc]
• Are serious games an alternative to traditional personality questionnaires? Initial analysis of a gamified assessment. [europepmc]
• Examining the role of social comparison perceptions on identity-safety for Black Americans in organizations. [europepmc]
• Do Applicant Reactions to Gamified Cognitive Ability Tests Differ Between High- Versus Low-Stakes Settings? [europepmc]
• Interactive influence of work-life balance benefits, employee recommendation, and job attributes on employer attractiveness and job pursuit intentions: two experiments. [europepmc]
• Recruiting for high reliability: attracting safety-minded applicants through language on company webpages. [europepmc]
• Teachers' Perceptions of Shared Leadership and Their Relationship with Organizational Attractiveness and Identification: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach. [europepmc]
• Celebrating the “Invisible”: The Role of Organizational Diversity Approaches on Attracting and Retaining LGBTQ + Talent [europepmc]

Related

• THE PEOPLE MAKE THE PLACE
• The Impact of Employer Branding on Organizational Attractiveness: A Dual-Study Examination of Mediation and Moderation Mechanisms
• Exploringthe Relationship Between Corporate Social Performance and Employer Attractiveness
• Considering Rational Self-Interest as a Disposition: Organizational Implications of Other Orientation.
• Identifying organizational identification as a basis for attitudes and behaviors: A meta-analytic review.