Recruitment is a mission-critical process for human resources management. Due to the high turnover rate and lack of specific skill requirements, the retail sector has an acute need to hire new employees to fill vacancies. Therefore, recruiting a relatively large number of new employees in a limited period of time is crucial for companies in the retail industry. Existing studies have suggested that by designing recruitment activities and utilising appropriate recruitment sources to promote and announce a job, employers are able to attract jobseekers to apply for jobs and join the organisation. The social communication theory highlights four major elements involved in any information communication: the information communicator (source), the information receiver (audience/jobseeker), the response (the receiver’s attitude towards the information received and the decision taken to apply or not) and the stimulus (the message/information content that is transmitted by the communicator). An individual’s ‘attitude’ towards the recruitment information can significantly affect their ‘intention’ of making a job application decision, and this intention can significantly influence their actual decision-making ‘behaviour’, such as accepting a job offer. Consequently, most of these studies focus on the effectiveness of the stimulus (e.g., how the design of the recruitment information content can attract more jobseekers).However, there are divergent results in the literature. For instance, numerous researchers have attempted to investigate how different recruitment information sources can impact jobseekers’ application and recruitment decisions. Some researchers claim that the formal, company-controlled, recruitment information sources, such as advertising and corporate websites, are less effective than informal. By contrast, other researchers indicate that formal sources are used and accepted more often by jobseekers because this information is regarded as considered to be more objective and reliable than the experience-based route (e.g., word-of-mouth). Some researchers suggest that employers should provide objective, hard information (confirmable information such as salary and location) and provide the message in the employer’s tone’ using company-controlled sources; thereby not to convey too much soft, experience-based information from employees. Only very limited research has considered the influences of receiver’s differences (individual differences) on the stimulus (content) and communications (source) as a moderator. The receivers’ differences could be the essential information that can be used to interpret the divergent findings in the literature. Psychologists have demonstrated that individual differences will influence personal values and will be translated into personal preferences. Decision-making research suggests that every decision-making process involves individuals’ decision habits and preferences. People tend to keep their decision habits and preferences throughout different decisions. Therefore, individual traits should be considered when seeking to understand how jobseekers evaluate information to make decisions. A well-known classification of individual differences that has been shown to affect decision-making preference is an individual’s decision-making style: maximisers (those who always try to find the best possible result and carefully evaluate all types of information from different sources) and satisficers (who aim for good-enough results and tend to save time resources). The present study aims to address the gap in the existing literature by exploring the possible reactions of different decision-making styles (maximiser vs. satisficer) in response to recruitment messages with different lengths, valences, forms and provider backgrounds that are provided from various sources. Study 1 and Study 2 are employed as groundwork studies to provide a deeper understanding of maximiser-style and satisficer-style retail-trade jobseekers’ traits. The results illustrate retail trade jobseekers’ job-information-seeking preferences and the relationship between an individual’s maximising tendency and other cognitive-based individual characteristics. The results suggest that employers should not exclude either maximiser-style or satisficer-style jobseekers because the current maximiser-style and satisficer-style employees demonstrated the same levels of job satisfaction with no particular group showed a higher or lower turnover intention. Based on the findings of Study 1 and Study 2, Chapter 5 starts with a scenario-based experiment (Study 3). This experiment assesses whether, when presented with a realistic job-information-searching scenario of receiving basic job information from a typical formal short job advertisement, maximisers and satisficers differ in their need for further information. It also explores whether further evaluation is required from informal information sources in relation to valence and tie strength. Study 3 leads to the reflection that staff ‘word-of-mouth’ (SWOM) messages were influential but could not be controlled by organisations. Study 4 expands the findings of Study 3 and tests whether employers can satisfy more maximiser-style and satisficer-style jobseekers’ information needs to encourage their perceived organisational attractiveness (OA) by providing more detailed formal job advertisement messages. The findings highlight that more details of hard information could effectively satisfy jobseekers’ information needs, even though a group of jobseekers still wanted to search for more experience-based information. However, the findings also show that more detailed messages only slightly increase maximisers’ perceived OA and do not increase satisficers’ perceived OA. By extending the findings of Study 3 and Study 4, three scenario-based experiments (Study 5.1, Study 5.2 and Study 5.3) are designed to test how employers can attract more maximiser-style and satisficer-style jobseekers by tailoring their recruitment messages. The results demonstrate that the SWOM-formed realistic job preview (RJP) messages with some negative information could best increase jobseekers’ perception of source credibility and OA. Furthermore, when maximisers and satisficers looked for different job positions they would perceive the source credibility differently if the background information of the information provider as different. A qualitative-based supplementary study (Study 6) is further conducted to delineate three issues that are not directly measured or not sufficiently clarified in the above-mentioned five studies. This complements Studies 3, 4 and 5 and theoretically enhances the understanding of how jobseekers refer to job recruitment messages and how they evaluate the job information. The results contribute to decision-making theory and social communication theory by demonstrating that the notion of maximisers and satisficers represents a significant and central individual trait in job-application information searching and decision-making in the retail trade. Furthermore, the findings suggest that an individual’s decision-making style is an influential moderator for the effectiveness of communication elements. This research also provides a fundamental basis for further studies to apply individual-differences in human resource management field.

This master's thesis deals with the issue of information credibility, especially in case of the communication of information from media to the public. There are represented the most important concepts of the theory of information, media and communication. The main part presents a survey among Czech journalists and the public which was tasked to find out how these two groups of respondents see the media credibility according its type.

This dissertation attempts to analyze the impact of transparency and credibility of central banks on financial markets. While the topic of central bank's transparency has been extensively elaborated in literature, the linkage between institutional framework and empirical characteristics of transparency and credibility have not been adequately described. The study aims to overcome this absence and try to quantify transparency and credibility of central banks, as well as to analyze the relationship between them and their effect on interest rates and inflation expectations. The analysis is performed for nine major central banks: the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Sveriges Riksbank, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the U.S. Federal Reserve, and three central and eastern European central banks--the National Bank of Poland, the Hungarian National Bank and the Czech National Bank (CNB). The transparency index, based on survey, is constructed for all twelve central banks mentioned above, while measures of transparency and credibility that are derived from financial market instruments are performed only for the ECB, Fed and the CNB. Finally, we analyze the impact of transparency and credibility of the CNB on interest rates and inflation expectations. The analysis shows that central bank transparency has improved substantially in the last decade. The most transparent central banks in our sample are the Sveriges Riksbank and the Czech National Bank, followed by the Bank of England. A range of communication channels that improve the transparency of monetary policy, however, have little impact on central bank credibility. It is primarily policy-makers' verbal comments, monetary policy implementation and clarity that affect the predictability of monetary policy and contribute most to increasing its credibility. Therefore, the main reason of low credibility is confusing communication, which cannot be eliminated even by maximum openness of the central bank. The additional study of the Czech National Bank showed that during the European debt crisis, greater credibility of the CNB reduced the uncertainty in financial market and contributed to efficient formation of private agents' inflation expectations. Moreover, the results of the analysis show that inflation expectations in the Czech Republic are formed rationally, i.e. they are based on the CNB inflation forecast rather than on the actual values of inflation.

The current study examines the influences of blog type and blog message type on consumers’ perceptions of brand credibility and brand similarity. Additionally, the study seeks to understand the interaction effects of blog type and message type on brand credibility and brand similarity and on consumer engagement with a blog. The findings reveal that message type, specifically product message, is an important consideration when marketers want to illustrate similarities between the brand and consumers. Additionally, it was found that product messages should be considered when encouraging consumer engagement with a blog. However, blog type did not have an effect on consumer perceptions of brand credibility and similarity or consumer engagement.

Recommendations on breastfeeding in the United States suggest that infants should be exclusively breastfed for six months with continued breastfeeding in conjunction with complementary foods for at least one year. However, only 22.30% of women are exclusively breastfeeding when their infant reaches the age of six months, which indicates the existence of barriers hindering prolonged breastfeeding. In this study, I consider the factors related to information-seeking behavior that may influence breastfeeding rates. Specifically, I focus on the relationship between the sources a woman selects to receive information about breastfeeding and her level of breastfeeding self-efficacy, which has been shown to be a significant predictor of breastfeeding success. A sample of 222 breastfeeding women was recruited for participation in this study. Participants completed a mixed-methods survey, and the results of the survey were analyzed using applied thematic analysis, correlation, and regression analysis. Women who participated in this study used non-expert online information sources most frequently when searching for information related to breastfeeding. Criteria women used most frequently when choosing an information source included source affordances (e.g., convenience and quickness), information characteristics (e.g., variety of information and information quality), and source characteristics (e.g., source expertise). Hypotheses for this study posited a relationship between source characteristics (i.e., expertise, trustworthiness, goodwill, and social support) and breastfeeding self-efficacy; all hypotheses were supported, and expertise, trustworthiness, goodwill, and social support were found to have a significant positive relationship with breastfeeding self-efficacy. Source expertise was found to be the strongest predictor of breastfeeding self-efficacy among those that were measured for this study; however, it is not an individual significant predictor when modeled alongside the remaining source characteristics. Implications of this study stress the importance of access to quality information related to breastfeeding and continued research on the development of breastfeeding self-efficacy in various demographic populations and over the span of a breastfeeding relationship.

I myndighetsarbete inom socialt arbete används ofta klienternas egen berättelse som grund för bedömning. Detta görs bland annat i asylprocessen, där de sökande får redogöra för varför de är i behov av asyl. Det finns flera skäl att söka asyl på, varav ett är skyddsgrundande behandling i den sökandes medborgarland. En av skyddsgrunderna är sexuell läggning. Den sökande får under asylprocessens utredning berätta om varför de söker asyl på skyddsgrunden, varpå migrationsverket fattar beslut om asyl beroende på deras bedömning av den sökandes trovärdighet och tillförlitlighet. Denna uppsats behandlar hur berättandet om sexualitet bedöms av migrationsmyndigheter för asylsökande HBTQ+-personer. Detta genomförs med utgångspunkt i det teoretiska begreppet bekännelse. Syftet med studien är att diskursanalytiskt undersöka hur migrationsmyndigheter använder bekännelsen i bedömning av asylsökande HBTQ+-personers sexualitet. Studien har en socialkonstruktivistisk vetenskaplig ansats och i studien används diskursteori som teoretisk ingång. Vidare används de teoretiska begreppen diskurs, bekännelse och makt. Studien är en kvalitativ dokumentstudie med domstolsbeslut och utredningar från migrationsverket som empiriskt material. Dessa har analyserats med Laclau och Mouffes diskursteori som metod. De huvudsakliga slutsatser som studien utmynnar i är att det är de sökandes asylberättelser och inte deras sexualitet som bedöms utifrån begreppet trovärdighet. Trovärdighet används godtyckligt som måttstock i bedömningen av huruvida de sökandes asylberättelser passar in i den västerländska diskursen om sexualitet.

Selected fundamental-theological aspects of the Haré Krishna movement. In this work we try to give an overview of the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Haré Krishna movement, ie the history, anthropology and theology of religious organizations selected by us. The whole thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter we are talking about fundamental theology and synthetically imagine its history, the state and the most important fundamental questions of theology, such as: imagine of a man in the Roman Catholic Church, God's revelation, fundamental Christology and ecclesiology fundamental. In this chapter we also transfer as divine revelation, Jesus Christ and the Church. In the following, the second chapter we talk about the Haré Krishna movement and symmetrical to the first chapter in this section deal with the image of man in the Haré Krishna movement, divine revelation, Krishna and Prabhupada and ISKCON as an institution that Prabhupada founded. In the last third chapter of this work fundamentally-theologically-evaluate the credibility of anthropology, divine revelation, Krishna, Prabhupada and ISKCON. In conclusion, this thesis will then only recall why we wrote this thesis.

This article investigates the antecedents and consequences of source credibility within the context of the relatively new but growing phenomenon of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) endorsers. The study results indicate that source credibility is a central determinant of a CEO endorsers’ ability to effect desired outcome states. Results also indicate that the effect of message source credibility on purchase intentions, though strong, is not direct because beliefs about critical product attributes mediate the effect of a message source’s credibility on behavioural intentions. The results of the study also indicate that models of source credibility derived from the celebrity endorser literature do not generalize to the CEO endorser context. Specifically, the attractiveness and expertise of the message source had no significant impact on receivers’ perceptions of credibility.

Donald Trump’s tweets have become prevalent in today’s society. Because college students use social media so often, it would be incumbent for the researcher to examine the impact Donald Trump’s tweets might have on these young adults’, civic engagement and how the tweets may be affecting his perceived credibility and expertise. The researcher administered a questionnaire to 350 college students from a private medium sized west coast university using various modified scales examining credibility, expertise and civic engagement. Civic engagement was measured using an adapted version of several civic engagement instruments. The researcher used a correlation analysis to offer answers for the proposed research questions. It was found that Donald Trump’s tweets have a significant positive impact on the way college students perceive him to be credible while also effecting their perception of his level of expertise. The tweets did not indicate a correlation to civic engagement, but further research concluded that specific tweets have the ability to have a significant negative correlation on civic attitudes and behaviors. The correlation analysis also found that there was a significant negative correlation between which form of media students use the most and their civic engagement. A regression analysis was performed to see if the tweets had predicting power on college student perception of his credibility and expertise. The tweets demonstrated predicting power. A regression analysis was done to see if the tweets had predicting power on college student civic engagement; the regression results showed no significant predicting power between the two. These results suggest that tweets from a United States President have a significant influence on how he is perceived to be credible, the perception of his level of expertise and how his tweets may be affecting civic engagement on college campuses.

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