A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND GUIDE FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ON APPLICANT ATTRACTION.

Applicant attraction is vital to the success of an organization. Despite its importance, however, research on the topic has tended to proceed in a relatively unorganized manner with inadequate grounding in relevant theoretical perspectives. We address this discrepancy through a summary and integration of theories related to attraction, and we demonstrate how three meta-theories have been explicitly and implicitly incorporated in prior research. We then present a theoretical model of applicant attraction based on these meta-theories with illustrations from examples of existing research literature, and we examine the boundary conditions of this model in order to illuminate future theoretical and research directions. Overall, this paper organizes the rather divergent thinking on attraction into a comprehensive model resulting in potential new directions toward a greater understanding of why individuals are attracted to organizations.