Influence of Business Commitment to Sustainability, Perceived Value Fit, and Gender in Job Seekers’ Pursuit Intentions: A Cross-Country Moderated Mediation Analysis

Adolfo Carballo-Penela, Emilio Ruzo-Sanmartín and Carlos M. P. Sousa
Additional contact information
Adolfo Carballo-Penela: Department of Business Management and Marketing, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Galicia-Spain) Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago, Spain
Emilio Ruzo-Sanmartín: Department of Business Management and Marketing, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Galicia-Spain) Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago, Spain
Carlos M. P. Sousa: Faculty of Business Administration and Social Sciences, Molde University College, 6410 Molde, Norway

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-18

Abstract: Recruitment messages can help organizations to attract talent by influencing job seekers perceived fit with the company. As sustainability issues have become more relevant for 21st century citizens, messages communicating companies’ commitment to sustainability can send information that could influence young job seekers perceived fit with their future organizations. This between-subjects study analyses the influence of six messages showing business commitment to sustainability on job seekers pursuit intentions, considering a sample of 265 job applicants from three countries (Spain, Kazakhstan, and Germany). We are particularly interested in studying the role of perceived value fit as a mediating mechanism, as well as the moderating role of gender. Results obtained from a between-subjects factorial design confirm that different actions showing business commitment to sustainability positively affect job seekers’ job pursuit intentions. Our findings also show that the importance of every message is different depending on the studied country. The obtained results confirm that recruitment messages showing business commitment to sustainability influence job seekers’ pursuit intensions by increasing the perceived fit between job seekers’ and business values. Finally, results show the moderating role of prospective employees’ gender in the proposed model.

Keywords: corporate sustainability; recruitment messages; job seekers; job pursuit intentions; gender; between-subjects; experimental design; environmental sustainability; social sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4395/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4395/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:11:p:4395-:d:363669

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().