Exploring the Mediating Effect of Organizational Identification on Applicants’ Reactions and Recommendation Intentions
Why respectful treatment during the selection process strengthens organizational identification—and shapes applicants’ recommendation intentions.
At a glance
The study in four points
Applicant reactions examined from the applicant perspective.
- 0198 actual applicants
Survey participants recruited through LinkedIn.
- 02Three reaction dimensions
Process fairness, outcome fairness, and interpersonal treatment.
- 03One unique predictor
Interpersonal treatment uniquely predicted organizational identification.
- 04A meaningful mechanism
Identification predicted recommendation intentions and carried the indirect effect.
Research question
What connects applicant reactions with recommendation intentions?
Applicant-reactions research examines how applicants perceive and respond to the selection process—not only whether organizations make accurate selection decisions.
Applicants notice whether a process feels fair, whether they are treated respectfully, whether decisions make sense, and whether communication is clear. Those experiences can influence offer acceptance, reapplication, word of mouth, and willingness to recommend the organization.
This study proposed that organizational identification helps explain why those reactions become consequential outcomes. Identification is a perceived sense of oneness or belonging with an organization. It can begin before formal membership, while applicants anticipate what joining would mean.
Principal finding
Interpersonal treatment predicts organizational identification.
When process fairness, outcome fairness, and interpersonal treatment were modeled together, interpersonal treatment was the only applicant-reaction dimension that contributed unique predictive variance to organizational identification.
Organizational identification then significantly predicted recommendation intentions. The indirect effect of interpersonal treatment on recommendation intentions through identification was significant, indicating complementary partial mediation.
“The psychological employment relationship may begin before the employment contract.”
The result does not make fairness irrelevant. Fair procedures and defensible outcomes remain essential. It suggests that technical fairness alone may not establish identification. Applicants also need interpersonal evidence that they are respected, valued, and treated as potential organizational members.
Empirical pathway
How treatment becomes advocacy
→
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Indirect effect: β = 0.202, p = .006, 95% CI [0.074, 0.355]
Practice
Seven actions for organizations
Design selection around applicant dignity. Treat respect, warmth, responsiveness, and tone as design requirements—not optional courtesy.
Make AI involvement understandable. Explain where AI is used, what it evaluates, and how humans oversee consequential decisions.
Personalize high-investment rejection. The further an applicant progresses, the more thoughtfully the organization should close the relationship.
Measure identification and trust. Ask whether applicants felt valued and able to anticipate organizational membership.
Train interviewers as relationship builders. Every interviewer represents the employer brand through behavior.
Preserve applicant relationships. Qualified rejected applicants and offer decliners are a future talent community, not discarded transactions.
Connect applicant, employee, and alumni strategy. These are stages of one continuing relationship with the organization.
AI-enabled selection
The next research question is trust.
As AI becomes part of screening, assessment, interviews, and decision support, applicants must evaluate not only whether a process feels fair but whether an automated decision agent is worthy of trust.
Future research extends this thesis across human, AI, and hybrid selection processes. It asks whether applicants distinguish an AI system’s ability and consistency from the benevolence, integrity, and accountability required for consequential selection decisions.
Limitations and dissertation agenda
From an initial finding to a stronger causal and cross-cultural test.
This thesis offers evidence from 98 actual applicants, but its conclusions should be considered alongside two important limitations: the relatively small sample and the reliance on self-reported measures collected at one point in time. Self-reporting may introduce common-method bias, and a cross-sectional design cannot fully establish how applicants’ reactions, trust, and identification develop over time.
Larger samples
Increase the number and diversity of participants to improve statistical power, precision, and generalizability.
Longitudinal research
Follow applicants across application, assessment, decision, and post-decision stages to observe how trust and identification change.
Vignette experiments
Systematically vary human, AI, and hybrid selection procedures to test their causal effects on organizational justice, trust, and organizational identification.
Japan–U.S. comparison
Examine how cultural context shapes responses to AI, interpersonal treatment, trust, and the formation of organizational identification.
The dissertation will test not only whether applicants trust an organization’s selection process, but how that trust helps them decide: “Is this an organization I can identify with?”
Japan application
From isolated applications to lifetime talent relationships
Japan’s constrained talent market makes transactional recruiting increasingly costly. Organizations pay substantial fees to reach applicants while frequently losing the value of relationships they have already developed.
Talent pools for former applicants, alumni networks, reemployment recruitment, and continued employment for senior workers all reflect a common principle: organizational relationships can exist before, during, and after formal employment.
Complete research
Read and cite the thesis
Liu, W. (2026). Exploring the Mediating Effect of Organizational Identification on Applicants’ Reactions and Recommendation Intentions. Claremont Graduate University.
Academic review
Approved by both faculty readers
Comments reproduced from the readers’ correspondence with William.
“Excellent job with the revision! Your thesis looks very good. In particular, your discussion is excellent—you raise good theoretical and practical implications and excellent future research suggestions… I have signed off on this version. Well done!”
Stephen W. Gilliland, PhDFirst Reader · University Professor · Director, Justice and Organizational Behavior LabUniversity profile ↗
“It is wonderfully written, clear, and makes an important contribution to the literature. As second reader, I am not going to ask for any changes, and I am happy to sign off on it ‘as is.’”
Michelle C. Bligh, PhDSecond Reader · Professor of Organizational Behavior · Interim President, CGUUniversity profile ↗