How graduating students perceive the staffing and recruitment industry : A study on corporate reputation

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this study is to measure and compare the corporate reputation of four staffing and recruitment companies, from the perspective of graduating students. Background: Corporate reputation is a concept that has interested researchers for the last four decades, and still the concept incorporates a number of varied definitions, contexts and measurement methods (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001). Along with definition ambiguity comes also measurement concerns such as whether to aggregate or disaggregate several perspectives into one general index of a company’s reputation. Most researchers agree that corporate reputation is a suitable concept when describing the perceptions that stakeholders have of a company, and that it can only be ascribed to one company. This study takes the perspective to investigate one external stakeholder group of staffing and recruitment companies - graduating students. The group is of interest because it can possibly become an internal stakeholder group - employees. Method: For this study a quantitative method has been applied and an investigation has been made through a survey. Methodology about measuring corporate reputation is discussed, and lay ground for the empirical data collection. An altered version of the Harris-Fombrun Reputation Quotient (RQ) is used, in order to achieve better fit of the instrument and to attain higher reliability and validity. Conclusion: The purpose of this study has been fulfilled by measuring corporate reputation from the perspective of graduating students. empirical data from 125 students has been collected, and four corporate reputations of staffing and recruitment companies have been measured. The findings are not valid for generalisability but enough to give a good estimation of the population of interest. In addition, a disaggregated analysis of the RQ components has confirmed the findings. Using the methodology of the theoretically based Harris- Fombrun Reputation Quotient further validates the findings. Graduating students perceive Academic Work in the most positive way, in respect to the other companies.