1
The moderating role of employee personality on the
relation between employer brand personality and
employer brand attractiveness.
2
The moderating role of employee personality on the
relation between employer brand personality and
employer brand attractiveness.
3 Management summary
This research is focusing on the moderating effect of the personality of an individual and the preference for a certain employer personality. It is executed in the Netherlands, where 55 people were participating in a questionnaire to indicate their preference for a certain employer brand personality. This is done by using two different conjoint choice experiments, in which people had to choose for eight times their most preferred job out of three options. The jobs were described by three different attributes, named salary, location and employer brand personality. In both choice experiments, the salary choices were €1900, €1950, €2000, €2050 and €2100. The possible locations were five large cities in The Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen and The Hague. The difference between both choice
experiments was existing in the description of the personality of the different employers. In the first choice experiment, the employer brand personality was described using the
measurement of Aaker (1997), who made clear that there are five dimensions of brand
personality. These are mentioned sincerity, exciting, competent, sophisticated and ruggedness. In the second choice experiment, participants had options for the different employer brands based on the personality of a CEO. These personalities are described by the Big Five, also called five factors, which are neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience,
agreeableness and conscientiousness. The different employer brands people had to choose from were five imaginative telephone brands.
This research was leading to several findings, which can have useful implications for
employers. First finding is that the personality of an employer is playing an important role for people to determine their job preference. This is the case by measuring it with the model of Aaker (1997) and in case of measuring it by CEO personality. What was also becoming clear, is that not all employer brand personalities have a positive effect on the preference to work for a specific company. Two employer brand personalities had a positive effect on preference, which are called exciting and competent. When an organization is an up-to-date and daring company or a reliable and successful company, it is important to communicate this to potential employees. In case of measuring employer personality by CEO personality, it became clear that three personality types of CEOs are important to create more job preference. These are agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. When a company perceives itself or its CEO as having one of these characteristics, it is important to
4 because otherwise the preference to work for your company will be lowered.
After these findings, the research was focusing on moderation effects of different personality traits on the preference for specific employer brands. First, some relations were found when measuring employer brand personality by the scale of Aaker (1997). It became clear that people that are scoring high on agreeableness are significantly higher preferring sincere employers. People scoring high on conscientiousness are more attracted to a competent employer brand and people scoring high on conscientiousness are more attracted to a sophisticated employer and negatively to an exciting employer. These effects found are interesting for employers, in which it is making clear what type of people have to be attracted for a certain employer brand personality. For example, if your organization is scoring high on sincerity because it can be described as honest and cheerful, in attracting new employees you can focus more on people that score high on agreeableness because these employees will have a higher person-organization fit.
In case of measuring employer brand personality by the personality of the CEO, people that are scoring high on emotional stability or conscientiousness had a negative utility for an agreeable CEO. This is indicating that these people do not want to work for a CEO in that case. It also became clear that open people are more attracted to an open CEO. In case of an open CEO in your company, it is important to communicate this to potential employees that will score high on openness. These employees will have to know their personality to
determine by themselves that this CEO will have the same personality traits and will therefore be pleasant to work for.
5 Table of contents
1. Introduction 7
1.1. Problem background 7
1.2. Theoretical and managerial relevance 8
1.3. Report structure 9
2. Literature review 9
2.1. Brand personality 10
2.2. Employer branding 11
2.3. Employer brand personality: two measurements 12
2.4. Employee personality 13
2.5. Employer attractiveness 15
2.6. Relationships between employer brand personality, employee personality 15 and employer brand attractiveness
3. Conceptual framework 18 4. Methodology 20 4.1. Conjoint analysis 21 4.2. Personality measurement 25 5. Results 25 5.1. Sample 25 5.2. Personality dimensions 25
5.3. Main effects model 26
5.4. Moderation model 29
6. Conclusions and implications 31
6 Abstract
This research was using conjoint analysis with moderation effects included to test whether there was an effect of different personality traits on the preference for a certain personality of an employer. In investigating this, the personality of an employer is measured in two different ways: by the personality scale of Aaker and by the personality of a CEO for that organization. The results are making clear that employer brand personality is important for potential
employees, in which respondents were choosing for different organizations based on a preferred employer brand personality. Moderating effects are existing between agreeableness and a sincere employer brand and conscientiousness and competent employer brands, which is in line with research in the field of product brands. In case of measuring the personality of an employer by the personality of the CEO, it turned out that there is only a positive interaction effect between an open personality and preference for an open CEO. A negative effect is found between both personality types emotional stability and conscientiousness and preference for an agreeable CEO.
Keywords
7 1. Introduction
Companies are operating in a ‘war for talent’. Effectively branding an organization as a potential or current employer can help a company compete in this war for talent (Chambers,
Foulon, Handfield-Jones, Hankin & Michaels 1998). In this way, it will be easier to attract skillful personnel. Maintaining and retaining them as well as attracting skilled persons are very important tasks and this has been transformed into talent management. Employment branding can be a tool for this talent management (Mandhanya & Shah 2010).
In the past years, branding is most researched in literature according to product brands. This research will focus more on branding in the employer context, with the focus on employer brand personality. More specifically, the goal of this research is to see if there is a relationship between the personality of an individual and the preference for an employer with a specific employer brand personality. Next to researching if there is a relationship between these two types of personalities, another goal of this research is to see whether this effect is differing when describing employer brand personality in abstract terms, or because of the personality of the CEO of an organization.
1.1. Problem background
During the last decades, lots of research has been done on employment and employment branding. Related to employment branding, the concept ‘brand personality’ can be important. According to Azoulay and Kapferer (2003), the personification of brands has happened frequently since celebrities started to endorse the brands. That brands have personalities or human characteristics is now well established in the literature (Swaminathan, Stilley & Ahluwalia 2009). In the context of brands, personification can be seen as ‘to transform into a character endowed with human-like characteristics’ (Cohen 2014, p.1).
Aaker (1997) developed a scale with five constructs to measure brand personality, which is used a lot in previous research. Most of this research was in the field of marketing and was focused on product brands, so they were not focused on employer brands in a recruitment context. Because brand personality is part of brand equity (Hofstede, van Hoof, Walenberg, & de Jonge 2007), it is important to look at the personality of a brand. Prior research by
Mulyanegara, Tsarenko and Anderson (2009) made clear that consumers who are dominant on particular dimensions of The Big Five have buying preferences for brands that are congruent with their own personality. These Big Five factors are named neuroticism,
8 are describing an individual’s personality (McCrae & Costa 1992).
Next to the assumption that consumers prefer brands that are congruent to their own personality (Mulyanegara, Tsarenko & Anderson 2009), other researchers support the idea that brand personality is a vehicle of consumer self-expression and can be instrumental in helping a consumer express different aspects of his or her self (Aaker 1997; Escalas & Bettman 2005). Both researches are dealing with brands in the meaning of product brands, which are bought by consumers. Several researchers argue that an employer brand has a personality and that it may be positioned in much the same way as a product brand. (Ambler & Barrow 1996). For this reason, it is interesting to look at links between the personality of a person and the preferences for an employer brand.
1.2. Theoretical and Managerial Relevance
This research is relevant for employers, who have to recruit employees. The employers are the organizations that have an employer brand and that are interested in attracting employees that are fitting to the organization. According to Ewing, Pitt and De Bussy (2002), employment advertising will grow in importance exponentially in the medium term, to the point where it is no longer a secondary consideration. It will become a primary objective to simultaneously attract new employees and retain existing staff. For this reason, because of the ‘war for talent’ as described above (Chambers et al. 1998), and in order to position the employer brand, it is relevant to search for reasons why potential employees are going to work for specific
employers. For an employer, it is important to find the most appropriate employee, as outlined by Moroko and Uncles (2008). They mention that the employer branding process is about the attraction and retention of ‘the best’ employees. According to the researchers, “best
employees” refers to those who can add value to the company and are able to deliver on the company’s brand promise. By information about the link between brand personality and employee personality, organizations will be better able to attract suitable employees because they will have more information about the types of people that has to be attracted for a specific job. This knowledge is also useful in determining the target group for job advertisements.
9 relationship between an individual and the preference for an organization to work by the concept of the person-organization fit. While these findings are important, it is more about the fit between the beliefs and values of an individual with the culture, norms and values of an organization. This is making clear that it is not addressing a relationship between the actual personality of an individual and the personality of the employer brand and organization. Therefore, this current research can be an addition to this existing theory.
If there would be found a link between the personality of an individual and the employer brand personality of an organization, it is interesting to assess if this link is different when different personality measurements are used to assign personalities to organizations. Therefore, the employer brand personality will be measured by the scale of Aaker (1997), which can be seen as measuring in abstract terms, and by the personality of the CEO. In that way, it is possible to determine if people are really attracted to the personality of the
organization or more to the personality of an individual CEO within the organization.
1.3. Report structure
In the following chapters the different steps of the research will be explained. First, previous findings on the topics in this research are described in the Literature review. This chapter will end with the description of the hypotheses. The next chapter will describe the conceptual model and the equations that are used in this research. Chapter four will consist of a
description of the methodology. This chapter will be followed by the results chapter, in which the analyses will be performed and the most important findings of this research will be
described. After the results chapter, a conclusion will follow in which also implications are formulated. The last chapter is consisting of a description of the limitations of this research, which will lead to suggestions for further research.
2. Literature review
In the past years, different researches have been published in the context of employment and the attraction of employees that fits the organization. As mentioned above, Moroko and Uncles (2008) were mentioning that the employer branding process is about the attraction and retention of ‘the best’ employees. This might be done by looking for a link between
10 person-organization fit, which was the leading concept in the research of Morley (2007). Person-organization fit can be defined as ‘the compatibility between people and organizations that occurs when: (a) at least one entity provides what the other needs, or (b) they share similar fundamental characteristics, or (c) both’ (Kristof 1996, p.4). For this research, (b) would be most important: the sharing of similar fundamental characteristics, which will be personality characteristics.
The concepts named brand personality, employer brand personality and employer brand attractiveness are most important in this research. These are researched a lot in the past years. To get a clear understanding of these concepts, these are outlined below.
2.1. Brand personality
According to Allen and Olson (1995), creating a brand personality involves the
personification of a brand. They defined brand personality as the specific set of meanings which describe the ‘inner’ characteristics of a brand. Later, brand personality is defined as the set of human characteristics associated with a brand (Aaker 1997). This definition is clearer, but various researchers developed additions to this definition. Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) developed a new definition for the brand personality. Their proposed definition is ‘the unique set of human personality traits both applicable and relevant to brands’ (p.153). By using only the traits that are applicable and relevant to brands, some typical human characteristics will not be used to describe brands. Because this current research is about the link between an individual’s personality and brand personality, it will be important to include all possible personality characteristics of a brand. Therefore the definition of Aaker (1997) will be used in the remaining part of this research.
11
Brand personality Characteristics
Sincerity Down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerful Exciting Daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date Competence Reliable, intelligent, successful
Sophistication Upperclass, charming Ruggedness Outdoorsy, tough
Table 1: Brand personalities of Aaker (1997) and their characteristics
‘charming’. Ruggedness can be explained by the terms ‘outdoorsy’ and ‘tough’. In Table 1 the different characteristics of the brand personalities are summarized.
Next to defining the construct of brand personality, some research is done on the effects of brand personality on several other constructs. These findings can be found in Appendix 1.
2.2. Employer branding
Branding is traditionally found within the marketing sphere (Edwards 2009). In marketing, the concept brand can be defined as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of
them which is intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competitors” (Kotler 1991).
According to Peters (1999), branding was originally used to differentiate tangible products, but over the years it has been applied to the differentiation of people, places and firms. Also Edwards (2009) argues that the concept of branding seems to become an important issue for human resource academics, who make use of the concept employer branding. These
statements are making clear that branding is not only for goods or services, but that it can also be applied to firms and employers. Backhaus and Tikoo (2004) are supporting this by making clear that employer branding suggests the differentiation of the characteristics of an employer from those of its competitors.
12 and that the employer brand has to be aligned with the corporate and customer brand. This is making clear that the employer brand is important in the context of recruitment.
2.3. Employer brand personality: two measurements
After taking a closer look at the brand personality and the employer brand, it is important to look at the combination of these two constructs: employer brand personality. This can be measured in abstract terms, which is done by the model of Aaker (1997). It is also possible to measure it in terms of CEO personality. First, similarities and differences between the product brand and the employer brand are described to make clear that the brand personality model of Aaker (1997) is applicable to employer brands.
An employer brand has, just like a traditional brand, personality and positioning. Therefore, employment branding is concerned with building an image in the minds of the potential labor market that the company, above all others, is a ‘great place to work’ (Ewing et al. 2002). Also Ambler & Barrow (1996) argue that an employer brand has a personality and that it may be positioned in much the same way as a product brand. The personality concept might be more important in the context of employer brands than in the context of product brands, because employers are becoming part of the personality of an individual, for example by someone’s curriculum vitae.
According to Backhaus and Tikoo (2004, p.503), employer bands are ‘developed to be consistent with the firm’s product and corporate brand’. This is because of the existence of some similarities between the employer brand and the product brand. The differences between both are that the employer brand is employment specific and is characterizing a firm as an employer, where a product brand is product specific and does not have to deal with
employment. Another difference found by Backhaus and Tikoo (2004) is that the employer brand is both internal and external directed, where the product and corporate branding efforts are primarily directed at an external audience. Although these differences are found, the overall idea of both brand personalities is the same. Therefore, the model of Aaker (1997) will also be applicable to the employer brand personality and will be used in this model.
13 (Azoulay and Kapferer 2003). A CEO of an organization can be used to realize this
personification. This is also mentioned in the article of Aaker (1997, p.348), were is mentioned that ‘personality traits come to be associated with a brand in a direct way by the people associated with the brand (…); the company’s employees or CEO; and the brand’s product endorsers’. Also Fleck, Michel and Zeitoun (2014) mentioned that a CEO can
represent or personify a brand and that that the CEO will automatically come endowed with a great deal of brand equity.
By using both indicators of employer brand personality, it will be possible to determine if there are differences when personality is determined by a person within the organization or by abstract terms. The personality of a CEO will be measured in the same way as the personality of an employee, because both are just individuals with the same set of character traits.
2.4. Employee personality
The personality of an employee can be seen as the personality of an individual person, that can be described by several character traits. As mentioned by Bloch et al. (1997, p.649), ‘personality is the set of relatively stable and general dynamic, emotional and affective characteristics of an individual’s way of being, in his/her way to react to the situations in which s/he is. (…) Personality is [more often than not] described in terms of traits’.
In this research, the Big Five model of personality will be used to describe the personality of an employee. According to this model, personality can be described by five dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness (Norman 1963; Digman 1990; Wiggins 1996). The Big Five model is also called the Five Factor Model (Costa & McCrae 1992a; 1992b). According to Zhao and Zeibert (2006), research of Costa and McCrae (1992a; 1992b) has provided the most developed
operationalization of the Five Factor Model. Also Mulyanegara, Tsarenko and Anderson (2009) mentioned that the model of Costa and McCrae (1992a) is one of the primary benchmarks in the theory of personality.
14 People who score low on neuroticism can be characterized as self-confident, calm, even tempered, and relaxed (Zhao & Seibert 2006). These traits can also be described as being emotional stable. This is the opposite of neuroticism and is used in several researches to describe these characteristics (Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann, 2003).
The second dimension, extraversion, is described by Costa & McCrae (1992a, p.5) as ‘the dimension underlying a broad group of traits, including sociability, activity and the tendency to experience positive emotions such as joy and pleasure’. According to Wiggins (1996), extraversion can be associated with warmth, gregariousness and assertiveness. Next to these, also activity, excitement seeking and positive emotions can be associated with extraversion (Costa & McCrae 1992a; 1992b). People who score high on extraversion tend to be cheerful and seek excitement and stimulation.
Next, openness to experience can be associated with fantasy, aesthetics and feelings (Wiggins 1996; Costa & McCrae 1992a; 1992b) and also with actions, ideas and values (Costa & McCrae 1992a; 1992b). According to Zhao and Seibert (2006), openness to experience is a dimension that characterizes someone who is intellectually curious and tends to seek new experiences and explores novel ideas. Individuals that are high on openness can be described as creative, innovative, imaginative, reflective and untraditional. People low on this
dimension can be described as conventional, narrow in interest and not analytical.
The fourth dimension of the Five Factor Model, agreeableness, can be described by the terms trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty and tender-mindedness (Costa & McCrae 1992a). It is a dimension of interpersonal behavior. People that are high on
agreeableness are trusting, sympathetic and cooperative; people that are low on this dimension are cynical, callous and antagonistic (Costa & McCrae 1992a).
Finally, conscientiousness can be defined as ‘a dimension that contrasts scrupulous, well-organized, and diligent people with lax, diswell-organized, and lackadaisical individuals (Costa & McCrae 1992a, p.6). According to Wiggins (1996) and Costa and McCrae (1992b),
15
Employer brand personality in abstract terms (Aaker 1997)
Employer brand personality measured by CEO personality (McCrae 1992a)
Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, Ruggedness
Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness Table 2: Differences in personality measurements
hard work and motivation in the pursuit of goal accomplishment of an individual (Zhao & Seibert 2006).
To maintain a clear overview of the differences between the employer brand personality measurements and the personality of an individual person, Table 2 will provide an overview.
2.5. Employer attractiveness
A definition of employer attractiveness is found by Berthon, Ewing and Hah (2005), who stated that employer attractiveness can be defined as ‘the envisioned benefits that a potential employee sees in working for a specific organization’ (p.156). As can be found in the
conceptual framework that will be presented after describing the hypotheses, in this research employer attractiveness will be measured by the utility for a specific job offer, which can lead to the choice of a specific job.
2.6. Relationships between employer brand personality, employee personality and employer brand attractiveness
Based on previous research, which is focusing especially on product brand personalities, four main hypotheses are described that are formulated and described below.
- Hypothesis 1a: Perceived employer brand personality will have an effect on the utility and attractiveness of a certain job.
An employer brand can provide value to a firm through its effects on the attitude and behaviors of the employees (Tavassoli, Sorescu & Chandy 2006). This is indicating that the employer brand could be important in determining the attractiveness of a job. Slaugther (2004) is indicating that trait inferences about the personality of an organization may
16 competence will have a positive effect on the utility and attractiveness of a certain job. This expected effect is described by Hypothesis 1b:
- Hypothesis 1b: An exciting and competent brand personality will have a positive effect on job attractiveness.
Next to these hypotheses, also one main hypothesis is determined for the moderating effect of personality on the relationship between the personality of a brand and job attractiveness.
- Hypothesis 2: Employee personality is moderating the effect of perceived employer brand personality on job attractiveness, such that people with a higher score on a certain personality will be more attracted to a specific employer brand personality.
The exact moderating effects are presented by Hypothesis 2a, 2b and 2c. As mentioned above in the literature review, the relationship between the personality of an employee and the attractiveness of an organization can be described by the person-organization fit. Research on person-organization fit concerns the antecedents and consequences of compatibility between people and the organizations in which they work (Kristof 1996). This compatibility can occur when there is a sharing of similar fundamental characteristics. Personality can be seen as a fundamental characteristic of a person and of an organization, so therefore there is a
relationship expected between the personality of an individual and of an organization. Also Tom (1971) describes by the Subjective Factor Theory that the choice of an organization is based highly on personal and emotional basis instead of on objective factors. The same research is stating that organizational preferences may be determined by the relationship between an individual’s self-concept and the organizational image.
Previous research also found evidence for a relation between the brand personality
17 parts in which the expectations are in line with the findings of Aaker (1997) on product
brands:
- Hypothesis 2a: People that score high on agreeableness will be more attracted to an employer with a more sincere employer brand personality.
- Hypothesis 2b: People that score high on extraversion will be more attracted to an employer with a more exciting employer brand personality.
- Hypothesis 2c: People that score high on conscientiousness will be more attracted to an employer with a more competent brand personality.
Next to these hypotheses, also a third hypothesis is specified. As described above, employer brand personality is measured in two different ways. The first way is in terms of the five components of the model of Aaker (1997), which are sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. The second way is by the personality of the CEO of an organization. Because the personalities of the CEOs are described by traits that are direct applicable to an individual, the expectation is that people can make a more direct link with a CEO. In contrast to the expected moderating effects in case of measuring brand personality by Aaker (1997) as described by Hypothesis 2, here the expectation is that all five factors of personality are linked to a preference for the same personality of a CEO. For these reasons, the assumption is that people can better identify with an organization when employer brand personality is described by CEO personality. Therefore, the moderating effects of someone’s personality traits are expected to be stronger in case of measuring by CEO personality. The expected relationships are translated into the following two hypothesis:
- Hypothesis 3: Employee personality is moderating the effect of CEO personality on job attractiveness, such that people with a higher score on a certain personality will be more attracted to a similar CEO personality.
18 3. Conceptual framework
After determining the hypotheses, these are integrated into two conceptual frameworks that can be found in Figure 1 and Figure 2. The first framework is based on measuring employer brand personality by the scale of Aaker (1997) and the second framework is based on
measuring this construct by the personality of a CEO. These frameworks and the description below is based on research by Eggers, Eggers and Kraus (2014), who were also analyzing moderating effects with the use of conjoint analysis.
As can be seen in the framework, the overall utility for a specific job offering is determined by V. This is based on random utility theory, in which the overall utility U of individual i for an object j is a latent construct that includes two components. These components are the systematic component (V) and an error component (ε), in which ε is catching all the effects that are not systematic and are not accounted for (Manski 1977):
(1)
In this research, choice-based conjoint analysis is used. Here participants choose their most preferred option out of a subset of alternatives. These alternatives are described by attributes that each have different levels. These levels are varied systematically in the conjoint
experiment to reveal their impact on the systematic utility component V. In a general choice context, it can be assumed that the overall utility V is a linear combination of the part-worth utilities β of the employer brand B and the other job attributes Location L and Salary S:
(2)
As mentioned earlier, in the first model the different employer brands are differing in their employer brand personality by sincerity (sin), excitement (exc), competence (com),
19 Figure 1: Conceptual model 1; Employer brand personality measured by Aaker (1997)
personalities can be neuroticism (neu), extraversion (ext), open to new experiences (ope), agreeableness (agr) and conscientiousness (con). Because participants will differ in their perception of these different levels, the model is accounted for these differences by alternative-specific covariates: (3.1) (3.2)
20 Figure 2: Conceptual model 2; Employer brand personality measured by CEO personality
In order to test the moderating effect (η) of the personality of an individual, interaction effects between personality (pers) and the brand specific covariates can be added for both models:
(4.1) (4.2) 4. Methodology
21 4.1. Conjoint analysis
To measure the preference of the respondents for a certain job, a choice-based conjoint analysis is performed. Conjoint analysis is a practical set of methods for predicting consumer preferences for multi-attribute options in a wide variety of product and service contexts (Green & Srinivasan 1990). According to Eggers, Eggers and Kraus (2014), choice-based conjoint analysis has several advantages. Using choices instead of ratings is beneficial,
because choices are an integral part of people’s everyday life and are natural manifestations of a person’s preference. According to the same research, CBC is considering the effect of competition, which is driving respondents to make trade-offs in order to make their decision.
In this research, respondents had to fill in two parts of the questionnaire in which two different conjoint experiments were used. In both cases, participants were viewing eight choice sets in which they had to choose for their most preferred job out of three choices. Three types of attributes were used, which are called salary, location and company. The levels of the different attributes are described below and can be found in Table 3. An example of a choice set can be found in Appendix 2.
Salary is one of the attributes in the research, because lots of researches that were done in the past are mentioning the fact that salary or payment is a primary job attribute (Bigoness 1988; Jurgensen 1978). Previous research also revealed that pay has a significant influence on job
22 attractiveness and subsequent job choice decisions (Rynes 1987; Rynes, Schwab & Heneman 1983). According to the Dutch organization CBS (statline.cbs.nl), the average income of a one-person household in the Netherlands in 2013 is 22100 Euros a year. This is around 2000 Euros a month, so this amount is taken to use as the average salary in our choice set. The five different options for salary were 1900, 1950, 2000, 2050 and 2100 Euros a month.
The other attribute, called location, is also chosen because previous research made clear that it can be seen as an important attribute. Like payment, also location was an attribute in the study of Jurgensen (1978). Also Turban, Eyring, and Campion (1993, p.73) are stating that ‘location might be an important attribute to college recruits choosing among jobs in different locations’. In this research, five Dutch cities were used: Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Groningen, The Hague and Utrecht.
Next to salary and location, actually the most important attribute for this research is called company brand. Although the levels of salary and location where the same in both parts of the survey, the levels of this attribute were differing between the choice experiments. In the first choice experiment, the company was described by the different employer brand personality dimensions of Aaker (1997). The research used five different non-existing telephone brands, of which the names are based on the brand personalities of Aaker (1997) that can be found in Table 1. The first telephone brand is called Sincere Telephones and has the characteristics of a sincere personality: down-to-earth, honest, wholesome and cheerful. The second brand, Exciting Telephones, is described by characteristics of an exciting brand: daring, spirited, imaginative and up-to-date. Competent Telephones is the third non-existing brand and is described by the characteristics of a competent brand personality: reliable, intelligent and successful. The fourth brand, Sophisticated Telephones, is described as upperclass and charming. This is in line with a sophisticated brand. The last brand, Rugged Telephones, is described by the characteristics of a rugged brand personality. These are outdoorsy and tough.
23
Company CEO Personality Description in survey
Sincere Telephones
Kay Whitmore High agreeableness Let groups work together as a team and share information.
Exciting Telephones
Lee Iacocca Strong extraversion Outspoken and dominant.
Competent Telephones
Frank Cary High
conscientiousness
Attent to every complaint about the company during ‘open door’ sessions.
Sophisticated Telephones
Roberto Goizueta High openness Challenges existing traditions and does several ‘unthinkable’ things. Rugged
Telephones
Ron Miller High neuroticism (Low emotional stability)
Clear about what he wants, temper tantrums when he did not get what he wanted.
Table 4: CEOs for the different companies and description
To choose the best CEO for a certain personality characteristic, the research of Peterson, Smith, Martorana and Owens (2003) is used. In their research, lots of different CEOs are described and rated on the Big Five personality dimensions. An overview of the CEOs used for the different companies and the used description in the survey can be found in Table 4.
For Sincere Telephones a CEO that is high on agreeableness is chosen. This is because Aaker (1997) stated that sincerity and agreeableness are linked. The CEO that is used for high agreeableness is Kay Whitmore. According to the article of Peterson et al. (2003), Kay Whitmore had the highest score on agreeableness. In the same article there is stated that ‘highly agreeable leaders may encourage their management groups to work together as a single "team" and share critical information with each other in reaching a group consensus’ (p.15). Therefore, that description was used to describe the CEO with high agreeableness for Sincere Telephones.
For Exciting Telephones, a CEO with strong extraversion is used. Also in this case this is because Aaker (1997) mentioned that exciting product brand personality and an extravert personality of an individual are linked. According to Peterson et al. (2003), a CEO with strong extraversion is Lee Iacocca, who had a score of 8.7 out of 9.0 on this dimension. The authors also mentioned that ‘Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler from 1979-1990 is an example of a very public corporate figure who exhibits strong extraversion in that he was one of the most outspoken and dominant CEOs in modern corporate history’ (p.16). Therefore, in the survey ‘outspoken and dominant’ are used to describe the CEO of Exciting Telephones.
24 is not alive anymore, he scored very high on conscientiousness, which is linked by Aaker (1997) to a competent brand personality. Because I assumed that most participants are not aware of the fact that he is not alive anymore and because it is not really about the person in his daily life but more about his personality for a specific brand, this is not of high relevance. The research of Petersen et al. (2003) described Frank Cary as an example of a conscientious CEO: ‘Frank Cary who was CEO of IBM in the 1970s was widely admired for his willingness to attend to each and every complaint he heard about the company or a manager during his "open door" sessions’ (p.14). Therefore, in the survey we have described his characteristic by attending to every complaint about the company during ‘open door’ sessions.
For Sophisticated Telephones Roberto Goizueta, previous CEO of Coca-Cola, is used. Peterson et al. (2003) found that he scored the highest on openness to new experiences (6.1 out of 9.0). In the same article, Goizueta is described as ‘an excellent example of openness. He was the leader who challenged existing traditions and did several "unthinkable"
things’(p.17). These characteristics are also mentioned in the survey as the characteristics of an open CEO.
In the literature, there is no evidence for a link between a sophisticated brand personality and an open individual personality, but the brand is now described by the characteristics of a person and not anymore by the characteristics of a sophisticated brand. Therefore, this is not assumed as a problem.
25 4.2. Personality measurement
As mentioned above, the Big Five model of personality (openness to experience,
conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and extraversion) is used in this research. To measure the personality of a participant, this research has made use of a method to measure personality by Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann (2003). They introduced ten dimensions on which a person has to rate his- or herself on a Likert-scale from one to seven. The complete list of dimensions on which people had to rate themselves can be found in Appendix 4.
5. Results
In this chapter the results of this research are presented. First the participants are described. After that, an analysis of the personality measurements is provided. Next, the main effects model is presented in which the estimates for the model with the attributes location, employer brand and salary are visualized. By using this model, the first hypothesis can be tested. Later, a description of the moderation effects model will be presented. Here the effects of different personality traits on the utility for employer brand personality is tested, which is in line with Hypothesis 2 and 3. Finally, the fourth hypothesis is tested by comparing the model in which employer brand personality is measured by the model of Aaker with the model in which employer brand personality is measured by the personality of a CEO.
5.1. Sample
As mentioned before, for this research a questionnaire is been used that consisted of two different choice experiments in which people had to choose from three options and some questions about personality and descriptive information. The survey is sent out via the internet and participants are mostly reached via Facebook. The first part of the questionnaire was completely filled in by 69 respondents, but the second part only by 55. Therefore, it was only possible to use these 55 respondent outcomes. The sample consisted of 34,5% male and 65,5% female respondents. The minimum age of the respondents was 17 years old, the maximum 52. The average age of the participants was 24,31. Of the respondents, 80% indicated that they were students. Therefore the sample of respondents can be seen as a student sample with an average age of 24,31 years old.
5.2. Personality dimensions
26
Question Big Five trait α
I see myself as calm, emotionally stable Emotional stability
0,892 I see myself as anxious, easily upset (reversed)
I see myself as extraverted, enthusiastic Extraversion 0,661 I see myself as reserved, quiet (reversed)
I see myself as open to new experiences, complex Openness 0,397 I see myself as conventional, uncreative (reversed)
I see myself as dependable, self-disciplined Conscientiousness 0,392 I see myself as disorganized, careless (reversed)
I see myself as sympathetic, warm Agreeableness 0,262 I see myself as critical, quarrelsome (reversed)
Table 5: Personality questions and their reliability as Big Five Factor
Because the α is higher than 0,6, the questions for extraversion (Eigenvalue=1,520) and the questions for emotional stability (Eigenvalue=1,810) are taken together to measure these two aspects of personality. The six questions that respectively had to measure openness,
agreeableness and conscientiousness, were not reliable enough to be taken together.
Therefore, for each of these dimensions one question will be used. For all three personality types this will be the question that is not reversed-coded. Therefore, openness will be measured by ‘open to new experiences and complex’, agreeableness by ‘sympathetic and warm’ and conscientiousness by ‘dependable and self-disciplined’.
5.3. Main effects model
Because the questionnaire consisted of two different choice experiments with difference between the measurement of brand personality by the five constructs of Aaker (1997) or by the personality of a CEO, there are two different models estimated which can be compared. The models are estimated on an aggregate level using a Maximum Likelihood procedure. First, these models are estimated while only using the estimates for the product attributes only, which is in line with Equation 3.1 and 3.2. For the levels of the three attributes location, brand and salary, effect coding is used. The estimation results are visualized in Table 6.
27
Model 1 Model 2
Brand personality measure
Aaker scale CEO personality Log-likelihood -422,704* -348,957* R² 12,6% 27,8% R²adjusted 10,1% 25,3% Location Location Amsterdam 0,05 (0,11) -0,14 (0,12) Rotterdam -0,51* (0,13) -0,38* (0,13) Den Haag -0,26* (0,12) -0,20 (0,13) Groningen 0,51* (0,11) 0,48* (0,12) Utrecht 0,20 (0,11) 0,24* (0,12) Employer brand Employer brand Sincere Telephones 0,58* (0,10) 1,28* (0,12) Exciting Telephones 0,04 (0,11) -0,76* (0,15) Competent Telephones 0,38* (0,10) 0,74* (0,11) Sophisticated Telephones -0,31* (0,12) 0,33* (0,11) Rugged Telephones -0,69* (0,13) -1,59* (0,21) Salary Salary 1900 -0,36* (0,12) -0,49* (0,14) 1950 -0,23* (0,12) -0,21 (0,12) 2000 0,12 (0,11) 0,05 (0,12) 2050 0,24* (0,11) 0,40* (0,12) 2100 0,23* (0,11) 0,25* (0,12)
Table 6: Estimation results main effect models *Significantly different from 0, p< 0,05. Standard errors in parantheses
In both cases, Groningen is the most preferred city (βmodel1=0,51, βmodel2=0,48) and Rotterdam is the least preferred (βmodel1=-0,51, βmodel2=-0,38). What is most relevant for this research are the outcomes for the employer brands. In both cases, Sincere Telephones is the most preferred brand (βmodel1=0,58, βmodel2=1,28) and Rugged Telephones the least (βmodel1=-0,69, βmodel2=-1,59).
From the model estimated above it is becoming clear that employer brand personality in both cases has a significant effect on the utility and in that way on the attractiveness of an
employer. Because of this finding, hypothesis 1a can be accepted.
28 does not has a significant utility (β=0,04, p>0,05). A competent brand personality has a
significant positive effect on attractiveness (β=0,38, p<0,05). Therefore hypothesis 1b can be partially accepted. Next to these, it is becoming clear that also a sincere brand personality has a positive effect (β=0,58, p<0,05) and that sophisticated 0,31, p<0,05) and rugged (β=-0,69 p<0,05) brand personalities have a significant, negative effect on job attractiveness.
In model 2, of which the main results are also visualized in Table 6, it is becoming clear that agreeable CEOs (β=1,28, p<0,05), conscientious CEOs (β=0,74, p<0,05) and open CEOs (β=0,33, p<0,05) had a significant, positive effect on employer brand attractiveness. These were the CEOs of respectively Sincere Telephones, Competent Telephones and Sophisticated Telephones. A CEO scoring high on extraversion ((β=-0,76, p<0,05) or neuroticism (β=-1,59, p<0,05), turned out to have a significant negative utility and thereby negative preference.
What is notable from Table 6 and visible in Figure 3, measuring employer brand personality by CEO personality will lead to larger ranges in the betas than in case of measuring brand personality by the scale of Aaker. This will also indicate a higher relative importance for the employer brand personality in determining the attractiveness of a job. The models are giving an opportunity to measure the importance of the attributes, which can be seen in Table 7. Both models with different ways to measure employer brand personality are indicating that the employer brand personality is the most important attribute to choose a job. In case of measuring employer brand personality by CEO personality, the relative importance of
employer brand personality will be 62,1%. This is only 43,9% in case of measuring employer personality by the abstract terms of Aaker. This is indicating that the employer brand
personality not only has a significant effect on the utility and attractiveness of a job, but that it also can be seen as the most important attribute in this research.
Figure 3: Utilities different employer brands
29
Attribute Model 1 Model 2
Location 35,3% 18,7% Company 43,9% 62,1% Salary 20,8% 19,2% Table 7: Relative attribute importance 5.4. Moderation model
For all these five personality traits a moderation analysis is conducted to explore what the effects of these personality variables are on the choice of an employer brand personality. This is done by adding interaction effects between the certain personality types and employer brands, as described by Equation 4.1 and 4.2 in the Conceptual Model section. For the two factored variables the factor scores are used to be multiplied by the effect codes of the different brand personality levels. For the three individual questions the standardized values will be multiplied by these effect codes.
Table 8 is presenting the results of the moderation analysis when measuring employer brand personality by the model of Aaker (1997), in line with Equation 4.1. For the sake of brevity, only the significant moderating effects are visualized here. The main effects and the non-significant effects can be found in Appendix 5, where the complete moderation results are presented. The adjusted R² of this model is 14,8%, which indicates that this model fits better than the main effects model that had an adjusted R² of 10,1%. A likelihood ratio test is showing that the moderation model is performing significantly better because
p(85,378)<0,005.
Hypothesis 2a, 2b and 2c were all three suggesting effects of different personality traits on preference for a specific employer brand personality described by the model of Aaker (1997). Therefore, for testing these hypothesis only the moderation estimates of Model 1 will be used. Hypothesis 2a is suggesting that people that are more agreeable are more attracted to a sincere company. As can be seen in Table 8, this hypothesis can be accepted (β=0,33, p<0,05).
30 Log-likelihood -380,015* R² 21,4% R²adjusted 14,8% Model 1 Aaker Extraversion Emotional Stability
Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness
Sincere - - - 0,33* (0,12) -
Exciting - - - - -0,44* (0,13)
Competent -0,27* (0,13) - - - 0,30* (0,12)
Sophisticated 0,43* (0,15) - -0,43* (0,16) - 0,51* (0,16)
Rugged - - - - -
Table 8: Moderating effects Model 1 (Employer brand personality measured by model Aaker (1997) *Significantly different from 0, p< 0,05.
Standard errors in parantheses
Log-likelihood -329,927* R² 31,7% R²adjusted 25,1% Model 2 CEO Personality Extraversion Emotional Stability Openness Agreeable-ness Conscien-tiousness
Sincere (Agreeable CEO) - -0,39* (0,14) - - -0,42* (0,13)
Exciting (Extravert CEO) - - - - -
Competent (Conscientious CEO)
- - - - -
Sophisticated (Open CEO) - - 0,34* (0,14) - -
Rugged (Neurotic CEO) - - - - -
Table 9: Moderating effects Model 2 (Employer brand personality measured by CEO Personality *Significantly different from 0, p< 0,05.
Standard errors in parantheses
significant effect of conscientiousness on the utility for a competent employer brand (β=0,30, p<0,05). Conscientiousness also has a significant positive effect on the utility for a
sophisticated brand (β=0,51, p<0,05) and a significant negative effect on the utility for an exciting brand (β=-0,44, p<0,05).
To test the third hypothesis, which is stating that employee personality is moderating the effect of CEO personality on job attractiveness, Equation 4.2 is used to estimate the results for Model 2. The significant effects of the second moderation model can be found in Table 9. In Appendix 5, the second column is showing the complete moderation model belonging to Table 9 can be found. Also here a likelihood ratio test is showing that the moderation model for CEO personality is performing significantly better than the main effects model
31 for an agreeable CEO (β=-0,39, p<0,05). Also conscientiousness is having a negative and significant effect on the utility for an agreeable CEO (β=-0,42, p<0,05). An open employee personality is positively related to an open CEO (β=0,34, p<0,05), so this moderating effect is assumed. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 can be accepted for only one personality dimension.
To test the fourth hypothesis, which is stating that the moderating effects will be stronger in case of measuring employer brand personality by CEO personality, both moderating models can be compared. Because for the second model, which is based on CEO personality, model fit is worse than the main effects model and because only three significant moderating effects are found, the moderation effects are not stronger in case of measuring employer brand personality by CEO personality. Therefore, Hypothesis 4 cannot be accepted.
After testing these hypothesis, Table 10 is summarizing which hypotheses are accepted and which hypotheses could not be accepted.
Hypothesis Accept/ reject
1a. Perceived employer brand personality will have an effect on the utility and attractiveness of a certain job.
1b. An exciting and competent brand personality will have a positive effect on job attractiveness.
Accepted
Partially accepted
2. Employee personality is moderating the effect of perceived employer brand personality on job attractiveness, such that people with a higher score on a certain personality will be more attracted to a specific employer brand personality.
2a: People that score high on agreeableness will be more attracted to an employer with a more sincere employer brand personality. 2b: People that score high on extraversion will be more attracted to an employer with a more exciting employer brand personality. 2c: People that score high on conscientiousness will be more
attracted to an employer with a more competent brand personality.
Partially accepted
Accepted
Rejected
Accepted
3. Employee personality is moderating the effect of CEO personality on job attractiveness, such that people with a higher score on a certain personality will be more attracted to a similar CEO personality.
Partially accepted
4. The moderating effect will be stronger in case of measuring employer brand personality by CEO personality, such that people can better identify with an organization when employer brand personality is described by the personality of a CEO.
Rejected
32 6. Conclusions and implications
This research was executed on 55 participants who were mainly students and for the highest amount female. By estimating two different models it was possible to measure the preference for certain employer brands. This is done with the use of conjoint analysis, in which
participants were participating in two different choice experiments. In both choice
experiments there were three attributes called location, company and salary. The companies were described by a specific employer brand personality. In the first choice experiment, the company was measured by the employer brand personality measurement of Aaker (1997). In the second choice experiment the personality of the employer brand was measured by giving each brand a CEO with a certain personality.
By executing this research, some findings about employer brand personality were found. The most important implication of the main effects model is the fact that employer brand
personality is playing a large, significant role on the utility and thereby attractiveness for a specific job. In previous research, brand personality was used to describe product brands, but this research is extending previous knowledge by making clear that employer brand
personality is also important in choosing a specific job or employer. This information is important to employers and can lead to a preference for the offered job.
Another finding related to this, was that two of the brand personalities described by Aaker (1997) had a positive effect on job preference, which are called exciting and competent. Thereby, participants indicated that they would prefer the most to work for an up-to-date and daring or a reliable and successful company. When a company perceives itself as having one of these characteristics, it is important to communicate that to potential job applicants to attract them to your company. When measuring employer personality by CEO personality, it will be important to have a CEO that scores high on agreeableness, conscientiousness or openness because these personalities have a positive effect on job preference. Therefore, attracting these CEOs and communicating about them to potential employees will lead to interested job applicants.
33 attribute importance of 43,9%, in the second model this was 62,1%. Because employer brand personality will be perceived as more important when it is measured by CEO personality, this is indicating that potential employees are paying more attention to a specific employer brand personality when it is measured by the personality of the CEO. This is a useful finding for future job descriptions, because this is making clear that the personality type of a CEO is linked to the personality of an organization. This linkage can influence the preference of potential employees, so for an employer it is important to keep that in mind while providing information about the job offering.
After finding that employer brand personality is an important job attribute, two moderation analysis are performed to test the effect of several personality traits on the utilities for the different brand personalities. Here, it became clear that people that are scoring high on agreeableness are significantly higher preferring sincere employers. People scoring high on conscientiousness are significantly more attracted to a competent employer brand to work for. People scoring high on conscientiousness are also significantly more attracted to a
sophisticated brand and negatively to an exciting brand. These effects found are interesting for employers, in which it is making clear what type of people have to be attracted for a certain employer brand personality. For example, if your organization is scoring high on sincerity because it can be described as honest and cheerful, in attracting new employees you can focus more on people that score high on agreeableness because these employees will have a higher person-organization fit. In previous research, a moderating effect was only found for links between personality traits and preference for product brands (Mulyanegara, Tsarenko & Anderson 2009).
34 personality by the model of Aaker (1997), because than potential employees can better
identify themselves with an organization.
Concluding, evidence is found for the importance of the personality of a potential employer. Unfortunately, it was not possible to accept the existence of all interactions between peoples’ own personality and the preferred personality for their employer. Therefore, in the chapter below some limitations will be described and suggestions for further research will be described based on these limitations.
7. Limitations and suggestions for further research
Although this research has some contributions to existing literature by making clear that employer brand personality is important for the choice of an employer, there still are some limitations. These limitations can be taken into account in further research.
The first and most important limitation of this research was laying in the fact that three of five personality measures were not reliable enough to be taken together. Therefore, for these factors only one question is used, which was leading to some lost information because three personality questions of the survey were not used further. The questions were based on research by Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann (2003), who are stating that the measurement reached adequate levels on the criteria against which it was evaluated. These criteria were convergent and discriminant validity, test-retest reliability and patterns of external correlates. Also they are stating that this instrument is recommended when a short instrument is needed. For this reason, it was used in this research, because people already had to fill in a lot and it was important to keep the personality part as short as possible. Although it was an addition to existing research to link personalities to employer brand personality, it will be a good idea when further research is extending this research. In that way, also moderating effects of other personalities on other employer personalities might be found. For example, this can be done by researching the effect of personality on employer brand personality preference by using different personality measurements. To do so, for example the questionnaire of John and Srivastava (1999) can be used, in which respondents have to rate themselves on 44 personality measurements. This is leading to more information about personality.
35 location and position were the other attributes. In combination with these attributes, employer brand personality had the highest relative importance. This was the case in both models, so in case of measuring employer brand personality by the model of Aaker (1997) and also in case of measuring this construct by the personality of the CEO of a company. This is a useful finding, but it will also be interesting to control if this is also the case when other attributes are used. These attributes might be advancement opportunities or the extent to which the work that has to be executed is challenging, because these were the most important attributes in the research by Bigoness (1988).
Linked to using other attributes, it might also be a good idea to do this research with the focus on another city. In this research, which was conducted from the University of Groningen, lots of participants will be out of the neighborhood of Groningen and therefore people have the highest utility for a job in Groningen. To make sure that people are making different choices, it will be interesting to conduct the research with more participants out of the rest of the Netherlands.
During the moderating analysis, one finding was that there were almost no moderating effects in the second model, in which the employer brand personality is measured by CEO
personality. In this research, the choice for CEO personalities was based on previous research by Peterson et al. (2003). This choice is made to make sure that the CEOs used are scoring high on specific personalities and because there were descriptions mentioned that were
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