Paper title and abstract:

Making The World A Better Place With You? Recruiting Talent through Entrepreneurs’ Social Vision Communication

For-profit social ventures are proliferating. These ventures communicate social visions, presenting a future where the venture resolves particular environmental and/or societal issues. We study whether social vision communication helps ventures recruit talented people—a fundamental problem for growth. Prior research advocates social visions for fostering person-organization fit in large organizations. Challenging this positive stance, we argue that job seekers perceive ventures with social visions to offer lower advancement opportunities as social visions emphasize transcending self-benefit in favor of a common good.

We conducted two complementary studies to test our theory. Using data from a job board for startups, Study 1 shows that social visions attract less talent. Study 2 replicates this finding in a field experiment. It also uncovers the mechanism that social visions limit job seekers’ perceived opportunity for achievement, prompting higher salary demands. These findings advance research on entrepreneurship, human resources, and vision communication, and caution entrepreneurs against social vision communication as a recruitment strategy.

About Murat Tarakci:

Murat Tarakci is an Associate Professor of Innovation Management and the head of the Innovation Management section at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. His research mission is to incite innovative organizations well-poised to address the world’s grand challenges. Since innovations involve both organizations and their people with diverging aspirations entangled in cognitive and emotional biases, Murat’s research takes a behavioral and multilevel approach. Murat published in Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Operations Management. His research has also been featured in popular media outlets, including Financial Times and Harvard Business Review.

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This seminar was co-hosted by House of Innovation and the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship.