College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

Summer 8-17-2012

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Suzanne T. Bell, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Douglas F. Cellar, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Erich C. Dierdorff, Ph.D.

Abstract

The current study investigated whether different strategies for attracting and maintaining applicants should be used in order to effectively recruit talent from different cultures, which had not been previously researched. It was predicted that culture would have a direct impact on what attracts individuals to apply to an organization, what causes them not to submit an application, and the length of time between submitting an application and being invited to interview. Additionally, it was predicted that culture would interact with perceptions of job posting content, application length, recruiter perceptions, and time delays in predicting job pursuit intentions and changes in organizational attraction. This study utilized two independent sets of archival survey data from nine countries; one included reactions to an application process within 24 hours of submitting an application online, while the other included reactions to the post -application experience one month after submitting an application online. In determining the effects of culture, Hofstede’s cultural dimension scores for Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Time Orientation, and Masculinity were applied to survey respondents based on their country of residence.

In studying the direct effects of culture, Z-tests and ANOVAs were used to test differences between means and proportions of cultural groups. Findings here indicated that cultures differed most in terms of why individuals applied to organizations, lending insight int o what job aspects to highlight when recruiting individuals from different cultural backgrounds. Although Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was initially proposed as the strategy for assessing the moderation effects, unconditional means models showed low between country variance, which prompted the use of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to study recruitment effects at the individual level. Results indicated that including enough information about the job when advertising opportunities plays the biggest role in pursuit intentions during the generating applicants phase, while recruiter perceptions are strongly related to recruitment outcomes when maintaining applicants. Further testing of these variables indicated that change in organizational attraction partially mediated the relationship between recruiter perceptions and pursuit intentions. Practical implications as well as contributions of the research to the recruitment literature are discussed.

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