How much weight do organizational personality inferences have on judgments of organizations?

Organizational personality inferences are the human-like attributes individuals ascribe to organizations. Extant research has shown that individuals reliably distinguish organizations on these traits and these inferences influence individuals’ judgments of organizations. Theory of Symbolic Attraction posits that the importance given to organizational personality when forming judgments depends on the needs of the person. This policy capturing study investigated how much weight individuals give to each personality factor when forming organizational judgments and tested propositions that social identity concerns moderate the weight given. Results were also compared to the aggregated effects from extant research. Organizational personality inferences directly affected organizational judgments, some of these effects were moderated by social identity concerns, and the pattern of results were different than past research.