THE EFFECT OF ETHICAL SIGNALS ON RECRUITMENT ...

I conducted a principal component analysis in order to understand the structure
of the ethical signal variables (organizational practices and recruitment practices) at
Time 2. Principal component analysis is a “psychometrically sound procedure” that
generates results similar to other techniques of factor analysis (Field, 2005, p. 631). See
Table 2 for complete results. Time 2 organizational practices were originally measured
with three items. Results revealed that one item, “During my internship, I have seen this
organization in the news (newspaper, internet, television, etc. regarding their
participation in unethical activities,” should be dropped. I relied on Bennett and
Robinson’s (2000) criteria for retaining items (minimum factor loading of .40 and a
difference of at least .10 between factors). The remaining items were: “When I began
working for this organization, I was required to sign a code of ethics” and “During my
internship, I have seen this organization participate in Corporate Social Responsibility
activities.” The alpha for this scale was .68, and the participants answered on the same
Likert scale from 1 to 5. Items are listed in Appendix A.
Recruitment Practices
The recruitment practices scales were also created for this study. At Time 1, the
recruitment practices scale originally consisted of four items. After conducting another
principal component analysis (Table 1), however, one item was dropped following
Bennett and Robinson’s (2000) criteria, using a minimum factor loading of .40 and a
difference of at least .10 between factors. This resulted in the elimination of “During the
interview, the recruiter asked me about my ethics.” The remaining items were: “During
the interview, the recruiter did or said something that I consider unethical” [reverse],
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