Abstract Recruitment research has traditionally focused on how positive signals about organizations influence job seekers' perceptions and attraction to them, despite the fact that job seekers often encounter a mix of positive and negative information about prospective employers. We conducted three experimental studies, with a follow‐up supplementary study, to explore the effects of negative signals on organizational attractiveness and whether positive signals can offset these effects. Drawing from signalling theory, we conceptualized two types of crises – national security threat accusations and product failure scandals – as negative signals and examined their effects on job seekers' perceptions of attractiveness to multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their job pursuit intentions in these enterprises. We further investigated if MNEs' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as positive signals could mitigate the negative effects of these crises on job seekers' perceptions of MNEs. Our results confirmed the anticipated negative signalling effects of organizational crises on MNEs' attractiveness. We also found that CSR efforts did not effectively counteract these negative effects. We offer a more nuanced understanding of signalling effects in recruitment and underscore the limitations of CSR as a positive signal in the face of organizational crises.
Lai et al. (Thu,) studied this question.