This study investigates how undergraduates cognitively construct the police employer brand and examines how these perceptions influence organizational attractiveness and application intentions. It develops a context-specific employer-brand framework by identifying the underlying perception dimensions and examining the mediating role of organizational attractiveness together with the moderating role of social desirability in shaping recruitment outcomes.
A two-wave exploratory sequential mixed-methods design was employed. In Wave 1, 286 undergraduates completed free-association tasks concerning spontaneous perceptions of the police as an employer. Semantic-network and inductive analyses of these qualitative responses informed refinement of the quantitative measurement framework. The revised instrument then underwent expert review and pilot testing. Approximately three months later, the refined seven-point questionnaire was administered to the same undergraduate cohort in Wave 2. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to evaluate the measurement model and test the proposed relationships among police employer-brand perceptions, organizational attractiveness and application intentions.
Semantic network analysis identified four cognitive communities: stability/security, professionalism/discipline, risk/pressure and public mission. Quantitative results showed that public mission/social impact and affability/service orientation were the strongest predictors of organizational attractiveness. Organizational attractiveness significantly mediated the relationship between overall employer image and application intention. Social desirability did not exhibit a significant direct effect on application intention; instead, it significantly moderated the relationship between organizational attractiveness and application intention, with the positive association becoming stronger among individuals reporting higher levels of social desirability.
This study extends public-sector employer-branding research by integrating cognitive mapping with structural modeling to explain how overall employer image is translated into application intention through organizational attractiveness. Rather than proposing a universal employer-brand model, the study develops and empirically validates a context-specific framework for policing, demonstrating that recruitment outcomes are driven primarily by value-oriented and relational employer-brand dimensions rather than by perceived occupational risk alone.
