The Social Construction of Organizational Wrongdoing by the Media and Organizational Attractiveness

This thesis experimentally investigated how the intentional nature of unethical organizational actions affects job-seekers’ perceptions of organizational attractiveness. Subsequently, it examined whether these perceptions of organizational attractiveness can be influenced by the way in which the media socially construct those unethical actions. The data in this thesis was collected through a survey that employed experimental vignette methodology. Participants (N=152) were randomly assigned to one of four versions of the survey. Each version differed in terms of the intentional and unintentional organizational wrongdoing actions and in terms of the media’s neutral or condemning social construction of those wrongdoing actions. Participants exposed to survey scenarios with intentional organizational wrongdoing have reported significantly lower ratings of organizational attractiveness compared to participants exposed to scenarios with unintentional organizational wrongdoing. The moderating effects of the media’s social construction of organizational wrongdoing on organizational attractiveness were not conclusively proven in this thesis, however, the results imply that the media’s social construction of organizational wrongdoing does potentially have an effect on perceptions of organizational attractiveness. More research is undoubtedly needed in order to better understand the effects of the media’s social construction of organizational wrongdoing on organizational attractiveness.