Date of Completion

10-6-2015

Embargo Period

10-5-2016

Advisors

Janet Barnes-Farrell, Kevin Nolan

Field of Study

Psychology

Degree

Master of Arts

Open Access

Open Access

Abstract

Organizational affiliations serve a social identity function for employees because others will typically infer information about them based on their place of employment. To the extent that job seekers are concerned about these inferences, they will attempt to maintain a positive social identity by joining organizations they believe are viewed as favorable by the public. Research has examined whether social identity needs interact with organizational personality perceptions (i.e., a type of symbolic inferences) but with some inconsistent findings. I argue that the existing organizational personality taxonomy may suffer from bandwidth correspondence issues that may be attenuating large interaction effects. In the first study of this investigation, I conceptualize an alternative taxonomy as well as develop a scale of organizational personality perceptions grounded in humanness theory (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005) that better reflects job seekers’ identity needs relevant to organizational attraction. In the second study, I examine whether social identity concerns moderate the relations between humanness personality perceptions and recruitment outcomes. Results showed strong psychometric properties and construct validity of the humanness organizational personality measure. Additionally, social identity concerns predicted participants’ job choice behaviors and interacted with humanness personality perceptions to influence recruitment outcomes. The findings suggest that given one’s social identity concerns, perceptions of an organization’s personality in humanness traits matter for important recruitment attitudes and behaviors.

Major Advisor

Dev Dalal

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