Recruiting Talent Through Entrepreneurs’ Social Vision Communication
研究发现,初创企业沟通社会愿景会减少46.3%的求职申请,因为求职者认为晋升机会有限,但高薪酬可抵消这一负面效应。
For-profit social ventures are proliferating. They often communicate social visions, presenting an ideal future where the ventures resolve environmental or societal issues. We study whether social vision communication helps a startup to recruit talent—a fundamental problem for growth. We argue that jobseekers are less likely to apply to ventures communicating a social vision as they perceive reduced career advancement opportunities. We conducted two complementary studies to test our theory. Study 1 enlisted data from a job board for startups to show that ventures communicating a social vision receive 46.3% fewer job applications. Study 2 replicated this finding in a field experiment that further reveals the underlying mechanism: social vision communication limits jobseekers’ perceived career advancement opportunities. Both studies show that higher remuneration can compensate the negative effect of social vision communication. Our findings advance research on purpose-driven organizations, human resources, entrepreneurship, and vision communication to caution entrepreneurs against social vision communication as a recruitment strategy. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1671 .