Supervisors: Ann-Kristina Løkke Møller & Sarah Krøtel
Discussants: Pernille Smith & Panos Mitkidis

Abstract
A global talent shortage combined with strong competition from employers in the private and nonprofit sectors prompts a particular challenge for public organizations in attracting talent (Cordes and Vogel 2022; Keppeler and Papenfuß 2022; Theurer et al. 2018). Moreover, several scholars argue that the general society holds quite negative stereotypes about the public sector and its workers (e.g., Bertram, Bouwman, and Tummers 2022; Chen and Bozeman 2014; Marvel 2016). This might disadvantage public sector organizations in the war for talent. Today, literature on public sector stereotypes and biases is limited to documenting the mere existence of such stereotypes (e.g., de Boer 2020; Marvel 2015; Willems 2020), whereas the consequences of stereotyping are still unclear. With this study, we try to advance scholarship on public sector stereotyping by examining how generalized beliefs influence attraction to organizations in the initial phases of a job search. Using the social identity approach to argue that organizational membership is a way to express oneself, we examine if and how stereotyping affects employer attractiveness.

Focusing on administrative occupations that are typically filled by individuals with a university degree and represented across all sectors (e.g., analyst or project manager), we conduct a survey experiment in which we seek to mirror emails sent by recruitment platforms. Participants are presented with job opportunities including only occupations and sectors. From this list of jobs, they are asked to choose for which jobs they would continue to the actual job advertisement as an expression of initial attraction to the organization. Second, we measure participants’ stereotypical beliefs about occupations across different sectors in a stereotype valence score to capture how this influences the relationship between sector and initial attraction.

Everyone is welcome!