Organizational Crises and Potential In-Group Members’ Anticipated Social Identity

This study examines how potential employers shape potential employees’ social identity before joining the organization. Drawing on social identity theory and signaling theory, we argue that potential in-group members (potential employees) follow a routine similar to that of in-group members (employees) when assessing the value of organizational membership for their self-concepts. Our study uses organizational crises as identity-threatening events to investigate whether and how they influence potential employees’ anticipations about social identity, as well as their perceptions of the organization’s attractiveness. Empirical evidence from our scenario-based experiments with 1,617 individuals conducted in the United Kingdom and the United States shows that identity changes occurring from organizational crises decrease organizational attractiveness and that anticipated self-continuity and anticipated self-esteem mediate this relationship. The effects become stronger with increasing crisis responsibility.