Environmental Sustainability–Oriented Employer Branding and Employer Attractiveness: The Role of Moral Meaningfulness Across Career Stages

Abstract

ABSTRACT As organisations increasingly integrate environmental sustainability into strategic human capital management, understanding how environmentally oriented value commitments shape talent attraction remains important. Drawing on stakeholder theory, signalling theory and social identity theory, this study examines whether environmental sustainability–related employee value proposition attributes influence talent attraction through the moral meaningfulness of work and whether career stage conditions the relationship between moral meaningfulness and attraction. A three‐wave, time‐lagged survey of 242 part‐time higher education students with prior professional experience in the UAE shows that environmental sustainability–related employee value proposition attributes positively predict moral meaningfulness, which in turn predicts talent attraction. Moral meaningfulness significantly mediates the relationship between environmental sustainability–related employee value proposition attributes and talent attraction. Career stage significantly moderates the relationship between moral meaningfulness and talent attraction, with a stronger association among early‐career participants. However, the index of moderated mediation is not significant, indicating that the indirect effect through moral meaningfulness does not statistically differ across career stages. The findings clarify moral meaningfulness as a psychological mechanism linking environmental sustainability–oriented employer branding to talent attraction while identifying career stage as a boundary condition specifically for the moral meaningfulness–attraction relationship.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Business Strategy and the Environment, 2026 · DOI ↗