Blaming or taking responsibility? Job seekers’ evaluation of employers’ response to wrongdoing
通过三个情景实验发现，求职者更偏好主动承担责任的雇主，即使不当行为由个别员工造成；这种偏好会因雇主承诺改善员工绩效或求职者自主动机高而减弱。
Despite growing interest in the psychological processes underpinning job choice, research has not examined how job seekers react to organizational responses to employee wrongdoing. Crisis communication literature suggests that defensive responses, wherein blame is shifted to the culpable employee, can minimize reputational damage. While focusing on various external stakeholders, extant research overlooks job seekers facing uncertainty in selecting the right employer. Drawing upon Situational Crisis Communication Theory, persuasion theory and organizational justice research, we investigate how employers’ responses (accommodative vs defensive) to employee wrongdoing influence job seekers’ intentions to apply for a job at the organization involved. Over three scenario-based experiments conducted with 648 U.S. job seekers, we show that job seekers prefer employers that are accommodative, accepting responsibility for the wrongdoing, even when a single employee is explicitly culpable. Mediation analysis confirms that accommodative responses lower manipulative intent inferences, which in turn affect expectations of positive treatment from the prospective employer and subsequent willingness to apply. The preference for accommodative responses, however, diminishes when the employer promises investments to improve employee performance and among job seekers with high autonomous motivation. The article contributes to human resource management research by explaining how employers’ responses to wrongdoing influence job seekers’ decisions.