THE EFFECT OF ETHICAL SIGNALS ON RECRUITMENT ...

Applicant Attraction to the Organization
Applicant attraction to the organization was measured using Judge and Cable’s
(1997) three-item scale. A sample statement is: “rate your overall attraction to this
organization.” Participants answered on a scale from 1 (not attracted) to 7 (very
attracted). Alpha for the current study was found to be .96.
Perception of Organization as Ethical
In order to gauge whether the applicants perceived the organization as ethical,
they answered general questions about the organization and the people in it. The two
perceptions questions included, “Overall, to what extent do you perceive this
organization to be ethical?” and “Overall, to what extent do you perceive the people in
this organization to be ethical?” These questions were developed specifically for this
study and were answered on a scale of 1 (to a small extent) to 5 (to a large extent).
Cronbach’s alpha for the items was .87.
Self-Importance of Moral Identity
Self-importance of moral identity was measured using the 10-item scale
developed by Aquino and Reed (2002). Participants were asked to read a list of 9-items,
and then respond to a series of statements on a scale of 1-5 (strongly disagree to strongly
agree). A sample statement is: “it would make me feel good to be a person who has
these characteristics.” The alpha for these ten items was .86.
Cognitive Moral Development
Cognitive moral development was measured using the Defining Issues Test,
Version 2 (DIT2), which is based on Kohlberg’s model and has been found to have an
67