Understanding employer brand equity: The case for adopting holistic brand thinking and a contingency approach.

To cope with the challenging labor market to date, organizations are in search of renewed strategies for talent acquisition and retention to secure their viability and assure sustained competitive advantage. Employer branding is such strategy that refers to the promotion of an organization as a desirable employer towards current and potential employees (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004; Lievens, 2007). The prevalence of employer branding in many organizations to date, calls for a thorough understanding of how and when organizations can benefit most from their investments in employer branding. In this dissertation, two questions are central: 'How to optimize employer brand equity?' and 'How is employer brand equity affected by its context?'. To answer those questions, I go beyond common elementalistic conceptualizations of the employer brand in terms of a broad range of brand attributes (e.g. training opportunities, salary, competence, or masculinity) that reside in HR practices and organizational culture (Tumasjan et al, 2020; Lievens & Slaughter, 2016). Instead, I focus on the impact of branding strategies (e.g., enhancing clarity and brand congruity, Wilden et al., 2010), which corresponds more closely to the origin of brands and holistic 'brand thinking' (Jacoby, Speller, & Berning, 1974). This approach allows to open up new research areas that help to fully grasp the added value of employer branding apart from the effects contingent on HR practices and organizational culture (Mosley, 2014; Tumasjan et al., 2020). Moreover, in contrast to the universalistic approach in the current literature (e.g., Tumasjan et al., 2020), I argue that both individual and organizational contingencies will matter for achieving optimal employer brand equity. As such, this dissertation sheds light on individual differences with regard to employer preferences and on how employer brand equity depends on the organizational context (i.e., the role of human capital within an organization and the interaction with other organizational brands), that will help to provide a refined view on the value of employer branding. In all, I seek to contribute to the employer branding literature - and several related domains - through developing an advanced understanding of how to optimize employer brand equity and what role context plays in achieving employer brand equity. In doing so, I take a multidisciplinary perspective allowing to combine insights from a large variety of research streams (e.g., strategic HRM, branding, recruitment, social psychology, and industrial and organizational psychology) and adopt diverse research designs and analytical approaches.

Jaar van publicatie:2021

Toegankelijkheid:Closed