象征性信息还是功能性信息更有效?——雇主品牌对初次求职者的影响研究

Is Instrumental or Symbolic Information More Effective?——A Study on Employer Brand and Job Pursuit Intention

近年来,雇主品牌成为组织与人力资源管理领域新兴的热门议题,"功能性—象征性框架"是已被学术界广泛引用的雇主品牌内容结构框架。本研究采用组间准实验研究方法,基于四组共300个初次求职者有效样本的实验数据,讨论了雇主品牌、行业吸引力、认知闭合需要对求职倾向的影响。结果发现,对初次求职者而言,在求职预选择阶段,雇主品牌的功能性因素和象征性因素对求职倾向的影响无显著差异;行业吸引力和初次求职者的认知闭合需要在雇主品牌对求职倾向的影响过程中调节作用均不明显;雇主品牌、行业吸引力、认知闭合需要在对求职倾向的影响过程中存在显著的三元交互效应。本研究修正了现有关于雇主品牌"功能性—象征性"信息对于求职倾向影响机制的观点,对企业雇主品牌塑造具有一定的实践启示。

In the Internet economy era, the competition among the enterprises relies on excellent talents more and more. In recent years, employer branding, as a tool of attracting and retaining the talent, has been an important topic in organization and human resources management research. As the research about employer brand move along, the ＂instrumental-symbolic＂ structure has been widely ac- cepted as an employer brand construct. However, some important divergences about the influencing mechanism of employer brand on job pursuit intention, including the effect difference between instrumental information and sym- bolic information, the moderating effect of industry attractiveness and the need for cognitive closure during employer branding. These divergences have become the ＂bottleneck＂ of employer branding research. They are also the key is- sues that the employer branding practices call for answers. Through quasi-standard experiment between groups, the study explored the influential effect among employer brand,industry attractiveness,need for cognitive closure and job pursuit intention. Consistent with prior relative re- search （e. g. Berthon et al. , 2005; Lievens ＆ Highhouse, 2003 ）, we used final-year undergraduate and graduate students as the sample. The study collected the 300 valid samples that are distributed into 4 groups. Consistent with previous research ,positive effect between employer brand and job pursuit intention was found in the study. However, different from prior findings, the study found, 1 ） there is no significance effect difference be- tween the effect of instrumental and symbolic factors to job pursuit intention during pre-selection phase of job-see- king; 2）industry attractiveness or need for cognitive have no significant moderating effect on the relations between employer brand and job pursuit intention;3 ） significant ternary interaction effect exists among employer brand, in- dustry attractiveness and need for cognitive closure on job pursuit intention;4） employer branding are partly inde- pendent from its industry attractiveness. Generally, the current study modified and expanded the research about the influencing mechanism of employer brand on job pursuit intentions. The findings and conclusions also had managerial implications for organizations employer branding to attract the talents. According to the findings of the study, the employer can choose to provided instrumental information or sym- bolic information of employer brand to attract provided by employers have similar effects for job-seekers. The organi- zations can shape an attractive employer brand, even though its industry is less ＇attractive. In addition, the effective employer branding should take into account the overall image of the enterprise （ e. g. , industry attractiveness） and the individual characteristics （e. g. , the need for cognitive closure）. In order to attract the excellent applicants ef- fectively, targeted employer branding strategy is needed. Based on the study, future research directions could include testing and revising the findings based on further empirical study with a sample of working people, comparative study about the effect of employer brand among differ- ent groups, e. g. the applicants who are in pre-selection/selection/employment stage. Meanwhile, in order to make the findings more systematic, further research is called for to explore the relationship between instrumental factors and symbolic factors are alternative or complementary.