Consequences of Employees' Employer Brand Perceptions: Test of a Serially Mediated Path Model.
Date | 01 October 2023 |
Author | Biswas, Soumendu |
Introduction
While elements of compensation and career progression are viewed as among the most fundamental explanations for employment, these may not be enough for employees to be attracted to and/or remain with any specific employer (Chhabra & Sharma, 2014). Studies concerning the employer-employee relationships note that employees' perceptions of the various facets of their organization such as its culture, leadership, and human resource (HR) practices that constitute the employer brand, considerably contribute to their positive work-related attitudes (Eid et al., 2019). However, there have been calls for further research regarding the attitudinal consequences of employees' employer brand perceptions (EEBP) which may be strengthened through employees' perceptions of psychological empowerment (EPPE) particularly when employees observe that their employing organization gives them the ability to decide and act by themselves and provides them with a sense of self-assurance in discharging their roles and responsibilities (Bailey et al., 2016). The purpose of this research was to examine the perceptual and attitudinal outcomes of EEBP in terms of enhancing employees' positive and attenuating their negative job attitudes when intervened by suitable mediating constructs.
Literature Survey & Hypotheses
EEBP EPPE, & OI: Employee competence is a key asset for any organization and its retention can be achieved by fostering certain functional, economic, and/or psychological benefits provided by the employing organization as a part of its employer brand (Ambler & Barrow, 1996). Consequent to their appreciation of the value propositions provided by their employer's brand, employees find their work and work-life meaningful and their contributions impactful thus alleviating EPPE (Amor et al., 2020). As such, the first study hypothesis is advanced as follows.
Hypothesis 1 (H1). Employees' employer brand perceptions are favorably associated with employees' perceptions of psychological empowerment.
Furthermore, research indicates that when employees find their assigned professional roles as significant and compelling and are themselves psychologically empowered, they not only discern task significance but also identify themselves with the source of such tasks namely, their organization (Zhu et al., 2012). This is because EPPE elevates employees' sense of participation in decision-making and alignment with outcomes which in turn, increases their attachment and belongingness to their work and the organization (Treger & Alfes, 2019). With an agreeable EPPE derived from favorable value propositions implied by EEBP, the literature suggests that EPPE may be hypothesized as a proximal and EEBP as a distal antecedent of employees' organizational identification (OI) (Hofer & Gross, 2018). Accordingly, the next study hypothesis is postulated as follows.
Hypothesis 2 (H2). Higher levels of employees' perceptions of psychological empowerment are linked with higher levels of organizational identification.
OI, AC, &JT: In the context of positive attitudinal outcomes among employees, research concerning organizational processes especially, those related to HR practices, has been recurrently addressing the issue of OI (Gabbler et al., 2014). Indeed, studies indicate that affective commitment (AC) has been most often noted as a direct fallout of employees' OI (Pattnaik & Tripathi, 2020). One of the bases of such a propositions has been that employees' OI constantly encourages their pro-organizational, prosocial attitudes such as AC (Lv et al., 2020). To that extent, an employee's positive appraisal of his/her organizational membership manifested by his/her degree of OI furthers his/her need to prolong this bond through an analogous requital in the form of his/her AC (Bouraoui et al., 2019). Extant research argues that the non-fulfillment of organization-related expectations leading to organization-employee misalignment directly induces employees' detrimental attitudes particularly, their job tensions (JT) (Zafari et al., 2019). Conversely, OI, by nurturing person-organization fit, reduces unpredictability and this leads to a diminution of employees' JT (Mandalaki et al., 2019). This leads to the postulation of the following study hypotheses.
Hypothesis 3 (H3). Employees' organizational identification is positively connected with their affective commitment toward their organization.
Hypothesis 4 (H4). Employees' organizational identification has a negative connection with their j ob-related tensions.
The discussion above creates two additional study hypotheses as posited below.
Hypothesis 5(A) (H5(A)). Employees' perceptions of psychological empowerment act as a significant mediator between employees' employer brand perceptions and their organizational identification.
Hypothesis 5(B) (H5(B)). Employees' organizational identification intervenes to transmit the effects of employees' perceptions of psychological empowerment to enhance their affective commitment and attenuate their job-related tensions.
Based on the deliberations above, the study constructs and the relevant hypotheses are assimilated as a conceptual path model (PM) in Fig. I.
Sample & procedure
A random survey was carried out to collect data for this study from several Indian organizations. With exact data not available for the workforce population, the sample size was approximated using the method when the population is infinite (Cohen, 1988), and accordingly, the minimum recommended sample size was 784.
A step-by-step approach was adopted to collect data for this study. First, the yellow pages business directory of India was consulted to randomly select 45 organizations from all over the country. Then, the human resource (HR) department of these 45 organizations was contacted. Employees of 12 organizations took part in the study survey. Eight of these organizations belonged to the manufacturing sector and the remaining four organizations were from the services sector. About 1200 study questionnaires were distributed of which 810 filled and usable forms were returned. Thus, the response rate of this survey was 67.5 percent. All respondents were full-time managerial cadre executives.
The average age of the respondents was 34.42 years and their average work experience was 10.93 years. While 518 respondents belonged to organizations in the manufacturing sector, the remaining 292 were from the services sector. Further, 486 of the respondents were males and 324 were females. Moreover, 123 of the respondents were from the senior level, 362 from the middle level, and 325 from the junior level of managerial cadres of their respective organizations.
Measures
All the study constructs were measured using a...
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