The importance of legitimacy A qualitative study of how companies work to maintain employer branding practices

Abstract

This paper investigates the relatively new, and increasingly popular, phenomenon of employer branding. The purpose is to examine how small and medium enterprises work on a managerial level to attract new potential employees. The method of research is a qualitative, single case study, performed at a medium-size company within the IT-consulting industry. The data was collected by conducting observations and 19 interviews. As for the analytical tool, we applied the lens of institutional work. Our findings indicate that several activities are performed in order to compete and attract new potential employees in a highly competitive market. We illustrate this by defining the activities, and how these can be categories within different sets of practices. This is done to highlight how they relate to each other and work together, with the result of maintaining and strengthening the institutionalised practice of employer branding. Altogether, our findings contribute to both the literature on institutional work as well as to employer branding literature, as the study reveals that legitimacy and employer branding is closely connected. Moreover, this paper can have practical implications for pract