Organizational attractiveness: An interactionist perspective.

Abstract

We adopted an interactionist perspective to investigate how the personality characteristics of self-esteem (SE) and need for achievement (nAch) moderated the influences of organizational characteristics on individuals' attraction to firms. Subjects read an organization description that manipulated reward structure, centralization, organization size, and geographical dispersion of plants and offices and indicated their attraction to the organization. Although subjects were more attracted to firms that were decentralized and that based pay on performance, results supported the interactionist perspective. Subjects with low SE were more attracted to decentralized and larger firms than high SE subjects. Subjects high in nAch were more attracted to organizations that rewarded performance rather than seniority. Finally, organisation size influenced attraction differently for individuals high and low in nAch