Employees or Consumers? The role of competing identities in individuals’ evaluations of corporate reputation
| Published date | 03 September 2018 |
| Pages | 1261-1284 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-04-2017-0116 |
| Date | 03 September 2018 |
| Author | Petya Puncheva-Michelotti,Andrea Vocino,Marco Michelotti,Peter Gahan |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Employees or Consumers? The
role of competing identities in
individuals’evaluations of
corporate reputation
Petya Puncheva-Michelotti
Rennes School of Business, Rennes, France
Andrea Vocino
Department of Marketing, Deaking University, Burwood, Australia
Marco Michelotti
Rennes School of Business, Rennes, France, and
Peter Gahan
Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the manners in which the employee and consumer
identities interact to shape individuals perceptions of corporate reputations in well-established market
economies (Australia and Italy) and transition countries (Bulgaria and Russia).
Design/methodology/approach –The study utilises a within-subjects repeated measures design. The data
were collected from 892 subjects in Australia, Italy, Bulgaria and Russia. The hypotheses were tested using
structural equation modelling.
Findings –In established market economies, individuals tend to have very distinct identities as employees or
consumers, and make different evaluations of corporate reputations depending on the chosen identity.
In contrast, in transition countries, the consumer identity prevails over the employee identity and therefore
job seekers tend to “follow”their consumer values in forming value judgements of companies.
Originality/value –The study makes two key contributions to current debates in employer branding and
stakeholder management research. First, it contributes to theory and practice in employer branding by
developing and testing a model of the interaction between consumer and employee identities in defining
individuals’perceptions of corporate reputations. Second, it contributes to stakeholder theory by
investigating consumption and job-search from an integrated perspective rather than as separate and
unrelated processes.
Keywords Consumerism, Quantitative, Social identity, Stakeholder management, Employer branding,
Job seekers, Transition markets
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Corporate reputation is a valuable intangible asset that directly influences firms’
competitiveness (Roberts and Dowling, 2002). A key concern within the corporate reputation
literature has traditionally been to understand how stakeholders form such assessments of
corporate reputation and how organisations seek to manage it (Backhaus et al., 2002;
Rindova and Fombrun, 1999).
Prior research suggests that stakeholders’evaluations of corporate reputation is
fundamentally based on a common set of organisational qualities and dimensions, largely
reflecting the view that there are common norms in society that define the meaning of
acceptable and desirable corporate behaviour (Deephouse and Carter, 2005; Money and
Hillenbrand, 2006). Scholars have also claimed that these assessments are directly
influenced by group interests associated with one specific stakeholder role and other social
identities (Crane et al., 2004; Crane and Ruebottom, 2011; Donaldson and Preston, 1995).
Personnel Review
Vol. 47 No. 6, 2018
pp. 1261-1284
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-04-2017-0116
Received 13 April 2017
Revised 11 October 2017
13 November 2017
Accepted 2 December 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
1261
Individuals’
evaluations of
corporate
reputation
This body of work has been mainly conceptual in character with a dominant focus on the
role of individuals’bonds to groups based on demographic, occupational, family or political
affiliations. Similarly, research on employer branding tends to focus on the organisational
characteristics valued by individuals as job seekers (Ambler and Barrow, 1996; Gomes and
Neves, 2011; Tanwar and Prasad, 2017). Consumption is only considered as an experience
and a source of information about an employer (Collins, 2007; Rosengren and Bondesson,
2014; Lievens et al., 2005), rather than an identity defining the attributes individuals value in
organisations (Reed, 2004). Consequently, the interaction between different social identities
such as those of consumers and employees in the assessment of corporate reputations has
remained largely unexplored.
Against this background, the primary aim of this study is to analyse how individuals’
awareness of their consumer and employee identities influence their evaluations of the
reputations of firms. Specifically, we investigate the extent to which the consumer identity
may influence the employee identity in shaping individuals’evaluations of corporate
reputations. We examine these questions within countries with a well-established market
tradition, such as Australia and Italy, and former planned economies, such as Russia and
Bulgaria. We are particularly interested in understanding whether individuals in formerly
planned economies integrate their stakeholder identities in the same way as individuals in
well-established market economies, where differences in the social meaning of roles as
consumers and employees are assumed to be well entrenched (Hörschelmann and Stenning,
2008; Patico and Caldwell, 2002).
The study makes two key contributions to current debates in employer branding and
stakeholder management. First, it contributes to theory and practice in employer branding
by developing and testing a model of the interaction between consumer and employee
identities in defining individuals’perceptions of employer reputations. Second, it contributes
to stakeholder theory by investigating corporate reputations from a holistic perspective.
We do so by drawing on social identity theory (SIT) and by emphasising the value of
consumer identities in influencing job seekers’perceptions of employer reputations.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1 Corporate reputation management
Companies’reputations are shaped by value judgements (positive or negative) on multiple
organisational attributes, dimensions or antecedents held by individuals and groups (Walsh
et al., 2009). These judgements result from the comparison between stakeholders’
expectations of how a firm should behave on some specific dimensions and their
impressions of the performance of a firm on these dimensions (Donaldson and Preston,
1995). While there is a general recognition that there are common reputation dimensions
relevant to all stakeholders, these may bear different weights and contributions in shaping
stakeholders’final impressions of corporate reputation (Wartick, 2002; Money and
Hillenbrand, 2006). As a result, managing corporate reputation according to multiple groups
of stakeholders may prove difficult, as they often have different or even competing
expectations of organisations.
This problem becomes even more challenging if we consider that a single person can
belong concomitantly to multiple stakeholder groups, such as those of consumers and
prospective employees (Cardador and Pratt, 2006; Maignan and Ferrell, 2004).
Being concomitantly a consumer and an employee are forms of social identities common
to individuals living in modern market-driven societies (Giddens, 1991). Therefore, the
strategies that a company uses to attract consumers may also have implications for its
ability to attract other groups of stakeholders, such as quality employees (Sen et al., 2006).
Individuals who may hold multiple identities, such as those of prospective employees,
consumers and investors, tend to respond positively to CSR initiatives in all three
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