Managing organizational attractiveness after a negative employer review: company response strategies and review consensus.

Online negative reviews about organizations as employers can have a negative impact on potential applicants' organizational attractiveness. However, due to a lack of research, organizations do not know how to manage attitudes after a negative review. Based on attribution theory and signalling theory, we conducted two experimental studies investigating the effect of two response strategies to a negative review on organizational attractiveness: a denial and an accommodative response. The results of a first study show that a denial results in higher organizational attractiveness compared to not responding and that this effect is explained by lower review credibility and higher organizational trustworthiness. No difference was found between an accommodative response and no response in terms of organizational attractiveness. A second study shows that when consensus information (conceptualized as high agreement amongst a large number of reviews) was added, company responses did not influence organizational attractiveness, regardless whether reviewers agreed about the organization as a good or a poor place to work. Overall, the findings imply that responding to a negative employer review can influence potential applicants' perceptions, but when there is high agreement amongst a large number of reviews, an organization's ability to manage organizational attractiveness through responding seems limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]