“Best Places to Work” (BPTW) and similar competitions are a proliferating form of third party employment branding. Little is known, however, about how single or repeated third party employment branding occurrences relate to key human capital outcomes. Extending signaling theory by considering signal credibility and comparability, we use archival and survey data from 624 BPTW participants in 16 ...

recent studies have shown that firms that have adopted environmental standards and thosethat have obtained official quality certifications achieve higher labour productivity than firms that have notdone so. unlike previous studies, this paper analyzes the combined effect of implementing environmentalgood practices and obtaining quality certifications on apparent labour productivity using a samp...

Cloud computing by now has gained wide recognition in business and is becoming increasingly important for consumers. However, consumers experience uncertainties, such as security, privacy, and vendor lock-in. Certifications provide assurances and may mitigate uncertainties, making cloud service certifications a core focus of the European Union’s cloud strategy and various certification programs...

We develop a theory that examines how a particular type of third-party quality signal, certifications, influences an actor’s long-term reputation by addressing two different types of uncertainty. The first type deals with the degree to which the capabilities of an actor can be inferred over time based on known performance dimensions. We label this technical uncertainty. The second type deals wi...

Although the value of Information Technology (IT) certifications has been widely debated in the IT industry, academia has largely ignored the issue. This study intends to bridge such a gap. Anchored on human capital theory and previous literature, we build a comprehensive model to estimate the value of various IT certifications in terms of their contributions to IT professionals’ wages. We esti...

Cloud service certifications (CSCs) are proposed in practice as instruments to mitigate the prevailing uncertainties about cloud computing, but research on their efficacy in business contexts thus far is lacking. In addition, previous research on other types of IT certifications is consumer-focused and inconclusive in terms of certifications’ effects on factors that influence decisions, resulti...

The public and healthcare payers are increasingly looking to specialty designations and certifications to determine the quality of cancer centers. The Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) Certification Program is one way for cancer centers to demonstrate commitment to high-quality patient care. Achieving QOPI certification for the author's cancer center was driven by a nurse-led quality...

They have concluded that the consum er’s perception about high quality products are more associated to brand names than the certifications in labels. So this has consequences upon competitiveness of domestic food market. While large processors and retailers, as multinational firms, follow refined brand names and international standard systems several small local firms are very far from this qua...