<p>Fierce competition for talents and asymmetric distribution of information are the</p><p>two main reasons that make employer branding necessary for knowledge intensive</p><p>companies. Why is this especially important for knowledge intensive companies?</p><p>These companies rely on an excellent base of human resources as the</p><p>employee is forming the perception of the client in terms of credibility, quality</p><p>and reputation. So how can you filter out and attract the best people? And are all</p><p>talents attracted by the same patterns? The idea of this research is, that as the</p><p>characteristics of employees cannot be determined in advance, it is important to</p><p>initiate a pre-selection by communicating a certain industry-image that functions</p><p>as a signal of expectations the company has. This signaling via external positioning</p><p>makes it easier for the prospect employee to select a job that fits to his/her</p><p>identity and reduces hopefully the number of applications the companies get</p><p>without decreasing the overall quality. The focus of this work lies on corporate</p><p>culture, its visibility in different processes and interactions and its importance in</p><p>the employee attraction process. The interrelations between involved constructs</p><p>like organizational identity, image and attraction are worked out and a framework</p><p>of external positioning is elaborated. The two participants on the market: high</p><p>potentials and management consulting companies are analyzed concerning their</p><p>needs and expectations from each other as employee and employer. The main</p><p>outcome of this work is three different possibilities for consultancies to position</p><p>themselves: efficiency, transfer of experience and creativity. They lead to different</p><p>communications strategies as they highlight different aspects of the work as a</p><p>consultant. Methodologically the interesting and demanding issue of this work is</p><p>the integration of organizational theory concerning organizational culture and</p><p>marketing theory regarding branding into one model.</p><p>The method used is reflexive and interpretative as it takes primary and secondary</p><p>data and the social constructions of the researcher into account and actively uses</p><p>it to construct something new.</p><p>The empirical data is gathered by a written questionnaire and the sample was limited</p><p>towards the biggest players in the consultancy industry namely A.T. Kearney,</p><p>Booz Allen & Hamilton, McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group</p><p>and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:hh-1852 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Thomas, Ramona |
| Publisher | Halmstad University, School of Business and Engineering (SET), Högskolan i Halmstad/Sektionen för Ekonomi och Teknik (SET) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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