Audience visibility and the employer brand: how instrumental and symbolic attributes shape employee satisfaction across evaluative contexts
Cam Tu TranPurpose
This study investigates the context-dependent nature of the relationship between employer brand attributes and employee satisfaction across publicly visible and confidential evaluation contexts within Vietnam's financial services sector.
Design/methodology/approach
A dual-source comparative design was employed, combining digital-trace data with structured survey evidence. Study 1 analyzed 3,285 standardized Glassdoor reviews, representing a publicly visible evaluation context. Study 2 surveyed 507 employees, representing a confidential evaluation context. The study's cross-context comparison was based on a harmonized analysis of four employer-brand attributes available in both datasets: compensation and benefits, career opportunities, work-life balance and organizational culture. Employee satisfaction was used as the outcome variable. The regression models were estimated separately, and their standardized coefficients were compared descriptively.
Findings
All four attributes were positively associated with employee satisfaction in both datasets, while their relative importance differed across evaluative contexts. Organizational culture, a symbolic attribute, had the largest standardized coefficient in the publicly visible review context, whereas compensation and benefits and career opportunities occupied the leading positions in the confidential survey model.
Originality/value
Drawing on social exchange theory as an explanatory lens and impression management theory to interpret differences associated with audience exposure, the study proposes audience visibility as a plausible boundary condition. By comparing publicly visible online reviews with confidential survey responses, the study further shows that these two data environments provide complementary rather than interchangeable representations of employer evaluation.