Have you heard? Testing the warranting value of third-party employer reviews

Abstract

The present work advances warranting scholarship by considering the effect of online reviews (in response to organizational self-claims) on organizational attributions offline. An experiment exposed undergraduates (N = 148) to a company’s social media profile, in which a third-party had provided either a positive or negative review of the organization as an employer. Analyses reveal review valence affected perceptions of organizational attractiveness, which subsequently predicted application intentions; and further that effects of positive reviews were moderated by the review’s warranting value. Findings are discussed with respect to warranting theory and practical implications.

Keywords:

• Applicants
• Facebook
• Impression Formation
• Linkedin
• Recruiting
• Social Media

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the editor, Dr. Nick Bowman, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful contributions to this article, and particularly the analyses of H2 and H3, which ultimately made the work far better. The author would also like to thank Dr. Rebecca A. Hayes and The Trashmen for helping to encourage this work and the development of stimuli material.

Disclosure Statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/yfc5m/

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/yfc5m/