This paper investigates employer attributes and perceptions of industry reputation and industry attractiveness, and their impact on employees’ intention to stay in tourism and hospitality. Results show that desired reputation, training, and development value, and prosocial value significantly influence perceptions of industry reputation. Desired diversity and prosocial value have a positive relation to industry attractiveness, while training and development value is negatively related. Perceptions of the industry attractiveness are a major contributor to the intention to remain within the sector. This paper seeks to further the discourse concerning employer branding by introducing an employment value proposition perspective applicable across industries.

Marketers play an integral part in the strategic planning process of a firm, both concerning the role of marketing in the strategic discourse, as well as the marketers’ interaction between various levels of hierarchy within an organization. The top management team (TMT) formulates strategic decision and influences the implementation of tactical approaches. Organizations often also mirror their TMT. Organizational strategy plays a critical role in the marketing capability of an organization, as activities are decided based on strategy and organizational goals. A TMT needs to be structurally composed in such a way that the firm is functionally positioned to respond and adapt to challenges in the marketplace continuously. With this in mind, the paper develops a conceptual representation of the interface between marketing organization, strategic decision-making, functional TMTs, and organizational structure. We conceptually assess the impact of functional TMT composition on marketing organization and corporate-level strategy alignment. Our research question focuses on how functional TMT composition and decision-making impacts marketing organization and overall market orientation. At the crossroads between strategic organizational decision-making and leadership, the upper echelon theory and contingency theory serves as the theoretical foundations from which conceptual propositions are developed in the context of marketing organization and market orientation.

Employer branding, or the creation and communication of an identifiable identity as an employer, has become a buzzword that interests both practitioners and researchers. Employer branding is considered a key tool for attracting, developing, and retaining the best employees and is believed to be the answer to the so-called “war for talent”. The question of human capital is of the essence for all companies but is particularly prevalent for service organizations. For example, organizations in tourism and hospitality rely on their employees to deliver complex experiences, while balancing high customer expectations and resources available. Attracting and retaining the right frontline employees is crucial due to their unique role as brand ambassadors who deliver the brand promise in each customer encounter. At the same time, employers in tourism and hospitality have been struggling with a negative industry image and high employee turnover, which has intensified even more in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While employer branding has received a great deal of attention it still offers much research potential. Employer branding includes both current and potential employees, but most studies have focused on talent attraction rather than capturing perceptions of current employees. The majority of research has studied large companies with access to both expert knowledge and financial resources, and thus little is known about employer branding in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In addition, it is only recently the concept of co-creation entered the employer branding vocabulary, referring to the role of employees as active agents or partners to the brand rather than a mere target market. Co-creation has been thoroughly researched in the tourism and hospitality sphere, lending itself as a suitable context for addressing the gap relating to employee co-creation of the employer brand. Thus, the overall research purpose is to investigate how employer brands are perceived and built by employees. This is done with a focus on the tourism and hospitality context.

Based on the current gaps in the literature, the following research aims were developed: 

1. To explore employer brand management in SMEs

2. To explore the role of employees as both target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in the context of tourism and hospitality.

3. To investigate employees’ perceptions of their employer’s attractiveness, together with intentions to stay and recommend in tourism and hospitality. Special attention is paid to the role of creativity and innovation. 

4. To investigate which employer attributes are related to perceptions about the tourism and hospitality industry and the likelihood to stay. 

These aims were researched in four individual papers. To reach the overall purpose, a mixed methods approach was applied. The first two papers took a qualitative approach: the first paper used observational data, while the second used in-depth interviews. The two latter papers were quantitative in nature. 

This research contributes to two areas: the employer branding literature, as well as research on tourism and hospitality. In particular, it highlights employer branding as a co-creational practice and performance, where employees build the brand by participating in internal processes, representing the brand towards outsiders, and simply being part of the collective brand identity. The possibility to do innovative and creative work seems to be an important driver for staying with and recommending one’s current employer.  In terms of perceptions of work in tourism and hospitality, there are two levels to consider: the individual employer as well as the industry itself. The results emphasize the role of industry reputation and general industry attractiveness in retaining employees. 

This research also focuses on the roles and perspectives of current employees which has been lacking in the employer branding literature. The dissertation begins with defining the context of tourism and hospitality and current state of employer branding as an area, moving then to describing the identified gaps and landing in an overall research problem. The most relevant theories are discussed in the second chapter to lay the theoretical foundation together with a review on employer branding and employer brand equity. The second chapter also explains the concept of co-creation and the effects of the industry on the employer brand(ing) and concludes with a justification for the research aims. Chapter three explains the methodological choices for the dissertation and the individual papers and findings from the papers are described in chapter four. Finally, the fifth chapter presents the overall conclusions and implications for theory and practice.   

Purpose: The study aims to explore strategic employer brand management by combining experiences of multiple organizations. In particular, the purpose is to identify what strategic management processes managers consider relevant to employer brand management for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach: This study took an inductive approach, observing a practitioner project in Sweden. The data were gathered during four full-day workshops, where 14 SMEs from different industries were chosen to participate and to actively work their employer brand(ing) activities. Findings: The results show that organizations have difficulty understanding and comparing employer branding practices, and thus, evaluating their own brand. The major themes show that organizations have two focus points for their employer branding work: building strategic structures (processes) on one hand, and a collective identity that aligns with the brand values, on the other. However, organizations differ in these dimensions, affecting what needs to be done to become successful. Originality/value: This contributes to the limited knowledge about employer branding, human resources development (HRD) and SMEs. In addition, most of the previous studies have neglected to take into account the differences between organizations, approaching employer branding as a universal process. This paper summarizes different positions for employer brands that affect strategy: the unmanaged, the non-strategic, the impersonal and finally, the co-created. Co-creation can be facilitated with the help of constructive and collaborative HRD. Then, it can be turned into a dynamic capability that builds competitive advantage.

Kindness can strengthen your employer brand. The business environment is changing, and the value of kindness in the corporate world is garnering increased attention. Paying it forward is a way to pass acts of kindness on to others. This allows employees and business partners to go above and beyond formal expectations that not only benefit the individuals involved but also the businesses they represent. Paying it forward can potentially create competitive advantage for firms from an employer branding perspective (to attract and retain talent) and in the broader market sense. This behavior can strengthen the employer brand in numerous and effective ways, and managers must understand, engage in, and encourage such conduct. In this article, we discuss different examples, benefits, and risks of paying kindness forward on a micro-, meso-, and macro-level. After providing this foundation, we introduce practical guidelines for managers on how to foster a paying-it-forward mindset among employees and the broader organization. The guidelines were created using insights from interviews we conducted with stakeholders in a business ecosystem in northern Sweden.

This study explores the role of employees as both a target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in tourism and hospitality. Extant research has largely focused on the effects of external employer brands; however, studies on internal employer branding have been lacking. The research problem is addressed through the conceptual lens of employer brand equity. To provide empirical insights into employee experiences, exploratory in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 employees in hotels, restaurants, and retail stores in Northern Sweden. While employees constitute a target market for internal employer branding, they also co-create the employer value proposition. Employees act as brand members, representatives, advocates and influencers, increasing knowledge about the organization internally and externally. However, in practice, companies in the service sector seem to place more focus on the customer experience than on reminding the employees of the brand promise towards them. This study identifies and describes the role of employees in the employer branding process by developing a new conceptual framework. Thereby, it adds to the understanding of co-creation in employer branding, an under-researched area which has been suggested to become a new paradigm in the employer branding literature.