THE EFFECT OF ETHICAL SIGNALS ON RECRUITMENT ...

concluded empirically regarding job choice. This is an important, yet relatively
unexplored variable in ethics and recruitment. Although recruitment outcomes such as
attraction inform the current research and address the research questions, future research
should be conducted on actual job choices. Applicants may perceive one organization as
more ethical, but choose another because of certain preferences (i.e., salary) (Hunt &
Vitell, 1986). Such relationships could not be explored fully in the current research due
to unavailability of applicant job choices.
Another methodological limitation in this research is that I only measured
perceptions of the organization as ethical (the mediator) in Time 3. Data on perceptions
from Times 1 and 2 would have provided a much deeper understanding of why ethical
signals affect recruitment outcomes, especially over time. A more longitudinal
perspective would have permitted a more thorough analysis of perceptions, how they
change over time, and how this change affects recruitment outcomes. Future research
should examine mediators such as perception of the organization as ethical over time.
The current research spanned about 6 to 9 months, but this research would benefit from
examining ethical signals, and applicant reactions to them over even longer periods of
time. This is especially true given that ethical standards change over time and situations
(Ferrell & Gresham, 1985). In the context of the current study, it would have been
interesting to measure ethical signals and perceptions of ethical behavior 6 months to a
year after working there. Future researchers could learn more about how long ethical
recruitment practices affect employees (i.e., do they still think about events that
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