Measuring attraction to organizations

Organizational attraction measures are commonly used as surrogate assessments of organizational pursuit. Despite the range in content often encompassed by such instruments, no research has systematically examined the assumptions underlying their use. The authors address this issue by empirically distinguishing items assessing attractiveness, prestige, and behavioral intentions and by modeling their effects on organization pursuit. Undergraduates (N = 305) were randomly assigned to recruitment literature from one of five well-known companies and were asked to respond to a series of items commonly used in past research. Analyses of the item responses suggested that three components of organizational attraction can be reliably distinguished and that their relation to organization-pursuit behavior corresponds to Fishbein and Ajzen's theory of reasoned action.