Employer branding management as a strategic and organizational control tool

In this paper, the target is to define a possible frame in order to interpret employer branding techniques as control and regulation mechanisms. Control in organizations has long been a topic of interest for researchers and practitioners alike, who generally recognize that control mechanisms are needed to ensure that organizations may achieve their goals. It has been carried out a field work on the Italian Aeronautical Metadistrict, that generates annual revenues equal to EUR 8.7 billion and employees 36,300 people, of whom approximately 10% are employed in the space sector. Through this field work the intention aim is to understand if and how employer branding may create, enforce and set up internal and shared meaning and values. In particular, stemming from the empirical research’s evidences, this paper tries to conceptualize employer branding as a factor to persuade and influence the way organizational actors enact in a socially constructed context. In this effort, the aim is to understand how managers may affect meanings, values, goals, opinions through an effective action on employer branding, that can play a crucial role in affecting sense-making processes, meanings, interpretations of the symbolic environment.