A diagramming-based approach to conduct preliminary literature review on employer branding

A diagramming-based approach to conduct preliminary literature review on employer branding

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: Diagramming-based literature review is a newly launched academic topic by this writer. This kind of literature review makes use of mind map, system map and cognitive map to render alternative knowledge structures on a research theme under examination. In this paper, the writer makes use of diagramming-based literature review to study employer branding. The study covers both the academic literature as well as reported employer branding activities in Hong Kong. Besides producing some literature review findings on employer branding, this study indicates the practical value of diagramming-based literature review, especially for preliminary literature review in dissertation projects, as also reported in the previous works on this topic.

Keywords: cognitive map, diagramming-based literature review, employer branding, employer branding activities in Hong Kong, literature review, mind map, system map

To quote this paper, please use: Ho, J.K.K. 2016. “A diagramming-based approach to conduct preliminary literature review on employer branding” Joseph KK Ho e-resources June 20 (url address: http://josephho33.blogspot.hk/2016/06/a-diagramming-based-approach-conduct.html)

Introduction

In the subject of managerial intellectual learning as developed by Ho (see Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page), the practical value of diagramming has been recognized from the very beginning. More recently, investigation effort has been specifically made on diagramming-based literature review (Ho, 2016a; 2016b). This paper is again a diagramming-based literature review exercise. It is employed to review the topic of employer branding. The objectives of this study are as follows:

Objective 1: to develop the diagramming-based literature review technique in managerial intellectual learning via hands-on practice.

Objective 2: to enhance intellectual knowledge in employer branding, with some reference to the Hong Kong context.

This study is intended to generate some academic and pedagogical value on managerial intellectual learning, literature review and employer branding.

Ideas underlying employer branding

The employer branding topic originated in the 1990s (Bondarouk et al., 2013). In particular, according to Berthon et al. (2005) and Sengupta et al. (2015), the term employer branding appears to be coined by Ambler and Barrow (1996). Academic and practical interest in the employer branding topic has been fostered by (i) “growing competition within the labour market for talents by companies”, (ii) recognition of the power of branding, (iii)  recognition of the impact of employee engagement and human resource practices (Mosley, 2007; CIPD, 2007). Initially explored by the academic marketing community, then by the human resource one, employer branding is branding-based[1] human resource activities targeted at current and potential employees (Edwards, 2010). Basically, employer branding is “the process of promoting a company, or an organization, as the employer of choice to a desired target group, one which a company needs and wants to recruit and retain….and helps secure the achievement of the company’s business plan”. It can similarly be understood as “a long-term strategy of an given company, aimed at both building a unique and desirable employer identity and managing the expectations of prospective and current employees, in order to gain competitive advantage” (Bondarouk et al., 2013). Another key term in employer branding, an employer brand, is described as “the identity of a company as an employer of choice” (Mossevelde, 2014) and more specifically defined as “the package of functional, economic, and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company” (Barrow and Mosely, 2006: xvi). For Backhaous and Tikoo (2004), employer brands should be developed to be “consistent with the firm’s product and corporate brand”. Academics suggest that employer branding is (i) an internal marketing concept[2], (ii) a part of corporate branding and (iii) a progressive branding-based human resource development approach (Bondarouk et al., 2013; Kucherov and Zavyalova, 2012). A few academic articles on employer branding can be found in Personnel Review (Emerald), Organization Studies (Sage), Strategic HR Review (Emerald), Journal of Product & Brand Management (Emerald), Journal of Services Marketing (Emerald), Human Resource Management (Wiley) and Marketing Letters (Springer). All in all, these academic papers are sparsely scattered in a number of academic journals in marketing and human resource management fields. Nevertheless, so far, empirical research on employer branding remains limited (Edwards and Edwards, 2013). The following are the main ideas from the academic literature on employer branding, grouped into five related research themes (The key ideas are in bold):

Research theme 1: on ingredient notions of employer branding

Idea 1.1.                    The branded product is “a unique and particular employment experience”, which a company carefully clarifies and manages to create value and influence for it (Edwards, 2010).

Idea 1.2.                    Employer brand attributes can be divided into four groups, (i) economic attributes (e.g., salary and employment stability), (ii) psychological attributes (e.g., corporate culture and interpersonal relations), (iii) functional attributes (e.g., work content and career growth opportunities) and (iv) organizational attributes (e.g., corporate brand reputation and company’s history) (Kucherov and Zavyalova, 2012).

Idea 1.3.                    A company makes claims on unique employment experience to current and potential employees (i.e., employment offering), which suggest differentiation of the company’s characteristics as an employer (Edwards, 2010).

Idea 1.4.                    Aspects of an employment offering include functional, economic and psychological benefits; for an organization, employment offering can be complex to establish (Edwards, 2010). Drawing on Sartain and Schumann (2006), the elements of the employment offering to be marketed to targeted employees can be called “employer value propositions”. The relevance of these value propositions need to be introspected by companies from time to time (Sengupta et al., 2015).

Idea 1.5.                    Employer attractiveness (EA) has been proposed to be an antecedent of employer brand equity; EA is defined as “the envisioned benefits that a potential employee sees in working for a specific organization (Berthon et al., 2005).

Research theme 2: on basic scope of employer branding

Idea 2.1.                    Employer branding involves managing a company’ image, with corporate values and guiding principles as its key image features (Martin and Beaumont, 2003).

Idea 2.2.                    Employer branding involves the organizational identity of a company; the organizational identity “can help guide employee behavior”, which, in turn, establish the organization’s identity itself (Ashforth and Mael, 1996).

Idea 2.3.                    Employer branding involves efforts to promote its employment offering to current and potential employees, likely to employ extensive communication campaigns (Edwards, 2010).

Idea 2.4.                    Employer branding, drawing on the notion of organizational identification[3], encourages current employees to identify with their employing companies (Edwards, 2010). Such encouragement can take the form of companies being supportive of their employees (Sluss et al., 2008).

Research theme 3: on employer branding method and strategy

Idea 3.1.                    Employer branding practice is theoretically grounded on the resource-based view that “human capital brings value to the firm, and through skilful investment in human capital, firm performance can be enhanced (Backhaus and Tikoo. 2004).

Idea 3.2.                    Employment offerings are recommended to be designed to align with current and potential employees’ value preferences so as to retain and attract them (Sengupta et al., 2015).

Idea 3.3.                    Employers need to be aware of factors, e.g., positive company reputation and employment experience, which make them attractive to current and potential employees (Edwards, 2010). On the other hand, presentation of an overly positive employment offering can lead to unrealistic expectations in new joiners and subsequently higher intention of them to leave (Edwards, 2010).

Idea 3.4.                    Employment experience offered to employees can be formulated in a more structured way in terms of the psychological contract notion[4] (Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004). For example, it has been hypothesized that companies “with a higher degree of symbolic personality characteristics will have a stronger emphasis on relational and ideological psychological contract content that make up features of the employment experience with their employment brand” (Edwards, 2010).

Idea 3.5.                    It has been suggested by Sengupta et al., (2015) that “satisfied employees are the best source of employer branding”.

Idea 3.6.                    The employer branding process is composed of three parts (Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004): (i) formulate value proposition, (ii) conduct external marketing, and (iii) conduct internal marketing. It has also been postulated to involve 5 steps: (i) understand your organization, (ii) create a compelling brand promise for employees, (iii) develop standards to measure the fulfillment of the brand promise, (iv) ruthlessly align all people practices to reinforce the brand promise, and (v) execute and measure (Hewitt Associates website as mentioned in Berthon et al., 2005).

Idea 3.7.                    External marketing of the employer brand strives to establish the company as “an employer of choice” while internal marketing of it works at creating “a workforce that is hard for other firms to imitate” (Backhaus and Tikoo. 2004).

Idea 3.8.                    It is now recognized by human resource professionals that social media is a powerful platform for promoting employer brands in terms of improved company visibility and responsiveness (Bondarouk et al., 2013).

Research theme 4: on employer branding participants

Idea 4.1.                    The “target audience” of employer branding comprises current and potential employees, competitors in the labour market and labour market intermediaries, e.g., recruiting firms and the professional Human Resource community (Kucherov and Zavyalova, 2012).

Idea 4.2.                    For effective employer branding, a company’s human resource and marketing functions need to collaborate together with a strategic mindset (Biswas and Suar, 2014).

Idea 4.3.                    Some companies have created the job of employer brand managers whose responsibility is to “create, implement and manage the employer brand” (Edlinger, 2015). Specifically, this may require the employer brand managers to “coordinate an employeer-employee dialogue and manage the co-creation of employer brands” (Edlinger, 2015).

Research theme 5: on employer branding impacts

Idea 5.1.                    Companies with employer brand enjoy more economic benefits than companies without employer brand in terms of lower staff turnover rate and higher human resource investment rate (Kucherov and Zavyalova, 2012). Similarly, benefits of having a strong employer brand can be reduced HR costs, improved labour relations, higher employee retention and loyalty, improved quality of job applicants, and lower salary to employees in comparison to other companies with a weaker employer brand (Bondarouk et al., 2013; Kucherov and Zavyalova, 2012).

Idea 5.2.                    Employer branding produces two main assets, i.e., brand associations[5] and brand loyalty (Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004). The former increases a company’s attractiveness to potential employees while the latter boosts employee productivity (Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004). Likewise, for Aaker (1991), employer branding comprises 3 components: (i) employer brand equity, (ii) brand loyalty and employee engagement and (iii) talents attraction and retention.

The five research themes were identified in this literature review process. These themes and their associated ideas together portray the general intellectual landscape on the subject of employer branding in terms of overall research priority and specific notions drawn from other management disciplines. Thus, they underline the intellectual interests of academics who have participated in employer branding research. Additional information on employer branding can be found in the Literature on employer branding Facebook page (re: the Bibliography). The next section will take a look at employer branding activities in Hong Kong, where this writer is located. Such information sheds more light on the practical interests on employer branding in the Hong Kong business community. After that, a diagramming-based literature review on employer branding is conducted, using this literature review findings.

Employer branding activities in Hong Kong

Via Google search and the South China Morning Post website search, five main observations on employer branding activities in Hong Kong are made. They are:

Observation 1 (on employer branding surveys): Survey on top employer brands in Hong Kong: Some surveys on attractive employer brands in Hong Kong have been made, including (i) one on tertiary education students (Staff writer of marketing-interactive.com, 2015), (ii) a survey on best employers in Hong Kong reported by Wong (2007), (iii) an employer branding survey with senior executives in Asia (including Hong Kong)  by Heidrick & Struggles (Yang, 2015) and (iv) the Randstad Award survey, covering 25 countries, including Hong Kong (Randstad.com.hk, 2016).

Observation 2 (on employer branding awards): Employer branding award-granting: Awards on employer branding have been granted annually by the Employer Branding Institute, some to companies in Hong Kong, e.g., Asia’s Best Employer Brand Award (2015) to Pfizer Hong Kong (Pfizer.com.hk, 2015), 6^th Asia Best Employer Brand Award (2015) to Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong Holdings (hthkh.com, 2015) and the “Best Employer Branding” award at the Hong Kong Awards 2008 (nws.com.hk, 2008).

Observation 3 (on employer branding conferences and seminars): Conferences and seminars on employer branding: Examples include (i) Conference on “Attracting the best leaders: executive recruitment & employer branding” 2013, organized by HR Magazine (dataworld.com.hk, 2013), (ii) the HR Summit & Expo Hong Kong 2017 (hrsummit.com, 2016) and HR roundtables on employer branding, organized by ChapmanCG (ChapmanCG, 2015) and (iii) speeches on employment branding at the 2008 Annual Conference of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management (Li, 2008).

Observation 4 (on recruiting staff involved in corporate employer branding): Recruitment of staff for employer branding: Examples of job vacancies in Hong Kong involved in employer branding can be found in Linkedin.com (jobs/employer-brand-jobs) and recruit.net (Employer Branding Jobs in Hong Kong).

Observation 5 (on employer branding-associated management consulting services): Management consulting on employer branding. Examples of management consultants offering employer branding consulting services to clients in Hong Kong include Beacon Consultants (beaconexecutive.biz, 2010) and Kellyservices.com (Kellyservices.com, 2016).

Moreover, the writer has tried Google Scholar to search for academic works on employer branding in the Hong Kong setting but was no able to find one, see Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1: Google scholar search result on “Employer branding Hong Kong” on June 19, 2016.

Based on the five observations made, it can be said that interest in employer branding practices is quite pervasive in the Hong Kong business community, including the HR one. The understanding gained from reviewing the academic literature and business activities related to employer branding in Hong Kong can now be employed to work on a diagramming-based literature review. This is done in the next section.

Diagramming on employer branding ideas

Using mind mapping, cognitive mapping and system mapping to conduct literature review on a research theme such as housing market and employability, especially at the initial stage of a dissertation project stage has been reported in Ho (2016a; 2016b). Such a diagramming-based literature review complements an essay-form literature review. So far, this kind of diagramming approach has been employed in preliminary literature review wherein specific research objectives and questions have not been formulated yet. Typically, at the early research stage, the researcher has expressed interest in a broad research theme, e.g., housing market and employability. This interest prompts him/her to conduct an initial literature search and review so as to form an overall view on the intellectual landscape of the research theme. It is expected that, subsequent to this preliminary literature review, and with the help of diagramming techniques, the researcher is in a much more informed situation to formulate research objectives and questions that have both academic and practical values. [It is well understood that literature review is an ongoing activity throughout a research project.] Having clarified the nature of diagramming-based literature review, the writer now takes up the task to produce a mind map (Buzan and Buzan, 1995), a system map (Open University, 2016) and a cognitive map (Eden et al., 1983) on employer branding. These three maps are based on the literature review findings, notably on research themes and ideas on employer branding made and reported in the previous section. Producing these three maps constitutes the diagramming-based literature review exercise.

The first map, a mind map on employer branding, is shown in Figure 1 as follows:

The five themes and associated notions that make up the five branches with attached nodes of the map mind are adopted from the literature review in the previous section of this paper. With a mind map (re: Figure 1), the knowledge structure of the umbrella concept of employer branding is revealed in tree form. The second map, a system map, is provided below as Figure 2:

Regarding Figure 2, the components of the system map are made up of five key employer branding topics. This map is useful for highlighting these topics for presentation purpose. The arrows in the system map are added by the writer to underline the relatedness of these employer branding topics. There are also labels in Figure 2 to indicate the key themes that these employer branding topics belong to. In the writer’s view, these labels enable presentation audience to more easily grasp the presentation topics. The signs of labels and arrows in Figure 2 are not used in the original version of system map as introduced in the Open University website (Open University, 2016).  This writer found these two symbols useful for making the presentation of ideas clearer with the system map from his own experience of doing diagramming-based literature review. The third map, a cognitive map, is now provided in Figure 3.

Regarding Figure 3, some selected employer branding notions are related with each other to exhibit a somewhat systemic knowledge structure on employer branding. The arrows in Figure 3 indicate the direction of amplifying influences between variables in the cognitive map. For readers who are receptive to systemic phenomena, they would have no problems to study Figure 3. As to those who are not, they should find the mind map (re: Figure 1) easier to interpret than the cognitive map (re: Figure 3).

Reflection on the diagramming-based literature review exercise

Like the previous two diagramming-based literature review studies (Ho, 2016a; 2016b), the writer finds the diagramming-based literature review valuable to facilitate reviewing research topics. This review facilitation takes the form of visually imposing alternative forms of knowledge structure (i.e., tree-form and network-form) on the research theme under review. These visual knowledge structures make the preliminary literature review findings easier to remember and comprehend. These maps are also useful to convey literature review findings to other readers. At the same time, they encourages a systemic way to study the literature review findings. Moreover, constructing these maps are not time-consuming and do not require much time to learn as these maps only make use of a limited numbers of mandatory symbols to produce. [It is also understood that the underlying methodologies associated with these mapping techniques are more sophisticated, especially for mind mapping and cognitive mapping.] Lastly, it is clear that the diagramming-based literature review is employed to complement, not to replace, the essay-form literature review.

Concluding remarks

This preliminary literature review portrays a sketchy picture on the intellectual landscape of employer branding. This is first done in the essay form-literature review and then with the diagramming-based approach. The findings should be of use to those who are interested in the employer branding topic (re: objective 2 of this paper). The illustrative account of how to perform diagramming-based literature review should be valuable to those who are (i) learning literature review skills, most likely for doing dissertation projects and (ii) the managerial intellectual learning subject (re: managerial intellectual learning Facebook page in the Bibliography) (re: objective 1 of this paper). In short, this paper offers some academic and pedagogical values to those who are learning the topics of employer branding, literature review and managerial intellectual learning.

Bibliography

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[1] A brand can be conceived as “a mixture of attributes, tangible and intangible, symbolized in a trademark, which if managed properly, creates value and influence” (Swystun, 2007). It was originally employed to differentiate tangible products; by now, it has also been applied to differentiate people, places and companies (Peters, 1999).

[2] Internal marketing has been defined as “the task of successfully hiring, training and motivating able employees to serve the customer well” (Kotler, 1994).

[3] Organizational identification has been defined as “the perception of oneness with or belongingness to the organization” (Ashforth and Mael, 1989: 22).

[4] A psychological contract can be conceived as “an individual’s beliefs regarding the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between that focal person and another party” (Rousseau, 1989: 123).

[5] Brand associations refer to “the thoughts and ideas that a brand name evokes…” (Aaker, 1991).