How Much Does a Company's Reputation Matter in Recruiting?

Abstract

Recently, the idea has emerged that a key to winning the talent war through recruitment is to place greater emphasis on an organization's reputation for social responsibility, not just the company's overall reputation or its reputation as a good employer. But, the authors argue, few studies validly examine the degree to which a company's social reputation or other aspects of its reputation are more or less important than other, more utilitarian job choice factors. When a survey task simply asks people to rate the importance of a laundry list of job attributes such as corporate social responsibility, it hides the marginal value of each attribute to the potential employee. The authors report o..