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THE EFFECTS OF ANTICIPATED JOB EMBEDDEDNESS AND SOCIAL NEEDS ON ORGANIZATIONAL ATTRACTION

Koumbis, Venette N.

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, Psychology-Industrial/Organizational.
The present study explored whether anticipated job embeddedness, and particularly anticipated social links, would serve as a new predictor of organizational attraction in a web based recruitment environment. Anticipated job embeddedness was defined as the extent to which individuals expected they would be enmeshed or tied to various aspects of the organization, and entailed the three dimensions of anticipated social links, anticipated fit, and anticipated sacrifice. Anticipated social links reflected individuals’ expectations that they would work in teams, would be highly interdependent with other employees, and would participate in company-sponsored organizations and committees. Anticipated fit reflected individuals’ expectations that they would fit with aspects of their job and organization, and anticipated sacrifice reflected expectations that favorable conditions would be sacrificed if they ever left the company. This experiment required participants (N = 409) to envision themselves as job seekers, and were tasked to evaluate the content of a hypothetical organization’s recruitment website. The goal was for participants to determine, in a between-subjects design, whether the organization would be a desirable place to work. Two websites were created that depicted a fictional company, Octavian, Inc., and web content differed only in the extent to which Octavian encouraged or discouraged the development of on-the-job social links. On-the-job social links were cued via statements about teamwork, interdependence, and socializing. It was expected that anticipated embeddedness would mediate the relationship between website content (strong social links vs. weak social links website) and organizational attraction. Results found that on-the-job social links could be successfully cued, and the anticipated social links dimension (rather than anticipated embeddedness as a whole) mediated the relationship between website content and attraction. Social needs were expected to moderate this mediation such that the relationship between anticipated social links and attraction would be stronger for individuals higher in need for affiliation, need for dominance, need for achievement, and weaker for individuals higher in need for autonomy. These hypotheses were not supported, but interactive effects were found for need for affiliation and need for achievement. Implications of these results for research and practice were discussed.
Dennis Doverspike (Advisor)

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Koumbis, V. N. (2007). THE EFFECTS OF ANTICIPATED JOB EMBEDDEDNESS AND SOCIAL NEEDS ON ORGANIZATIONAL ATTRACTION [Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1184951571

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Koumbis, Venette. THE EFFECTS OF ANTICIPATED JOB EMBEDDEDNESS AND SOCIAL NEEDS ON ORGANIZATIONAL ATTRACTION. 2007. University of Akron, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1184951571.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Koumbis, Venette. "THE EFFECTS OF ANTICIPATED JOB EMBEDDEDNESS AND SOCIAL NEEDS ON ORGANIZATIONAL ATTRACTION." Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1184951571

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)