Job seeker attraction to organizational justice mediated by organizational reputation

Abstract This paper seeks to examine the stipulation individuals’ perceptions of organizational justice, organizational reputation, and its effects to organization attractiveness. A total of 327 accounting and finance interns were assumed the role of job seekers. We wanted participants to evaluate organizations in which they are currently undergoing internship to increase the likelihood that they had experience during the internship and knowledge gained about the organization; thus, held informed opinions about organizational justice and reputation, and its attractiveness as a job seeker. We found the organizational justice influences job seeker attraction to an organization, even more intriguing as the relationship associated with organizational reputation. Moreover, organizations have to pay more attention particularly to the informational justice and distribution justice as the most influential variables of organizational justice to organizational reputation, in turn affects job seeker attraction. This study also empirically recognized the notion of signaling theory incorporated with brand equity to publicize a deeper explanation of the job seeker attraction process. This is the first study to show that organizational justice is an instrumental characteristic, organizational reputation is a symbolic characteristic, understanding from signaling theory and brand-equity approach and, the combination plays a substantial role in job seeker attraction concept.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Recruiting the best candidate is always challenging for an organization. More so, in the era of candidates that having high level of competency associated to high choosiness attitude. Discovering the strategic core value that be able to attract the best candidates applying job at organization is the right thing to do to deal with the scenario. This study found the organizational justice related to reputation of organization and then attract job seekers. Meaning, emphasizing on justice in organization and publicizing the practice contributes to multiple advantages to organization including establishing organizational reputation and attracting the best job seeker. What we do not know is whether organizational reputation that attracts job seekers to a particular organization continues to have an effect after they are hired.

Introduction
Over the last two decades, the signaling theory advocated a lens to understand attractiveness of job seeker to organizational characteristics (Rynes & Barber, 1990). Job seekers, mostly, have incomplete information of organizational characteristics. To overcome this lack of information, scholars have suggested to interpret information being received as signals about the organizations' working conditions (Turban, 2001). The signaling theory-based proposition suggests that organizational characteristics provide job seekers with information about what and how it would be like to be a member of an organization. This is because such characteristics can be interpreted as providing information about working conditions in that organization. For example, corporate social performance (Turban & Greening, 1997), ethnic identity (Kim & Gelfand, 2003), type of work (Turban et al., 1995), work environment (Trank et al., 2002) provide positive signals about the firm's working conditions. As Turban and Greening (1997) noted, people are more attracted to organizations they view as having values and norms they deem important.
The world of work is undergoing dramatic change due to factors such as globalization, technological innovation, and increasing demographic and cultural diversity in the workplace (Cascio, 2003). As a result, there are greater demands on the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personal attributes that organizations require of current and future employees. Therefore, to cope with the recent demand, research in job seeker attraction has discussed on the integration of signaling theory and other theory that may provide an improved understanding of the associations between an organization's recruitment activities and job seeker attraction outcomes (Celani & Singh, 2011). Researchers have supported the signaling theory integrated with other theory which providing deeply understand on job seeker's attraction (see Table 1).
The literatures enlightening relationship between variables lean on lens of theory. However, how does the theories interrelated has not yet thoroughly been discussed. For example, social-identity theory describes the role of organizational reputation to job seeker attraction; conservation of resources theory explains the role of perceive organizational support to job seeker attraction. Both examples omitted discussion on how a theory (e.g. social identity or conservative of resources theory) related to signaling theory to form the integration. As such, our first purpose of this study is to clarify the integration process of signaling theory with other theory, particularly with brand-equity theory in understanding job seeker attraction more deeply.
Meanwhile, the second purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating role of organizational reputation with the organizational justice as our central, mainly because scholars have only recently begun to investigate third-party individual's perception of organizational justice. The relevance of and scholarly interest in the concept have been demonstrated by recently reviewed papers by Skarlicki et al. (2015). According to scholars (e.g Crawshaw et al., 2013), justice is a universal concept that seems to be an important characteristic even to the outsiders (see Table 2). Being an important characteristic to outsiders, the concept is anticipated to influence job seekers (outsider) in selecting a place of work. Therefore, the characteristic named as the central of this study is the second purpose. In review, our concept rather emphasizes on the thirdparty organizational justice concept than the general concept of organizational justice, more accurate to understand outsiders from organization.

Organizational justice and job seeker attraction
The last published paper in this concept was about two decades ago. The study was done by Ployhart and Ryan (1997), with a total of 297 respondents applying for Ph.D. program at a university being tested to assure Model of Applicants' Reactions. The task involved participants answering mail questionnaires. Finding concluded that one of the dimensions of organizational justice, namely the fair process, had a significant relationship with job seeker attraction. However, the study also tested other aspects of recruitment outcomes including job choice and recommendation intention simultaneously. As such, this had made the reliability of the study questionable as principles of recruitment study demanded a separate study to investigate each of the outcomes (Uggerslev, 2012). Besides that, in the last 20 years, there were two new additions to the previously known two dimensions of organizational justice. Knowledge advancement had contributed to the quite recently developed concept which included the four dimensions of organizational justice (Colquitt, 2001). Overall, this present study is an initiative of an all-in study to understand the organizational justice with the new dimensions related to job seeker attraction.
Recently, researchers' interest on the concept has escalated after studies demonstrated that people from outside the organization were concerned about organizational justice (Hillebrandt & Barclay, 2017). For example, the way hotel management treats its staff significantly predicts guests' responses to the organization (Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara et al.,  Blader et al. (2013) looked into biases in organization which also showed significant impact to outsider's responses. Study also examined how social media can engage outsiders to respond to organizational wrongdoing (Kulik et al., 2012). Even organizational justice gossip that spreads beyond the organization fence significantly affects organizations' customers (Beersma & Van Kleef, 2012). Therefore, our study anticipates that organizational justice may help organizations to receive significant positive feedbacks from job seekers as one of the organization outsiders.
Thus, the following hypothesis is developed: H1:Perceived organizational justice is positively related to job seeker attraction.
H1a:Perceived procedural justice is positively related to job seeker attraction.
H1b:Perceived distributive justice is positively related to job seeker attraction.
H1c:Perceived interpersonal justice is positively related to job seeker attraction.
H1d:Perceived informational justice is positively related to job seeker attraction.
Specifically, sub-hypotheses linked to H1 are:

The Integration of signaling theory and brand equity
This study anticipates that organizational justice influences job seeker attraction which is grounded from signaling theory (Bustaman & Tambi, 2018;Ployhart & Ryan, 1997). The theory anticipates that organizational justice relates to signal working conditions in organization, in turn affects job seeker attractions. Recently, researchers have suggested that the organizational characteristic signals symbolic meaning of working condition in organization (Cable & Turban, 2001;Highhouse et al., 2007;. The concept is derived from the brand-equity concept of marketing study. The idea of embracing brand equity to understand job seeker attraction was emanated after researchers noticed that job seeker attraction's study was parallel to marketing study. Brand equity refers to the value of consumers' brand knowledge, or the set of beliefs that consumers hold about a brand (Aaker, 1996). The process is coined from Keller (1993) who drew upon widely accepted associative models of memory (Yi, 1990) that have conceptualized memory structure as associative networks comprised of nodes (stored information) and links (connections between nodes that vary in strength). The node becomes a source of activation for other nodes when new information is being encoded or when stored information is being retrieved from long-term memory, resulting in spreading activation (Yi, 1990). For example, a customer choosing a shoe found Adidas tag at the tongue of the shoe (node). The product is then associated to brand equity (activation) retrieving from customer memory; for example, product durability from the renowned company for sport attire (brand knowledge). In short, brand equity depends on the brand knowledge that has already been established with consumers. Establishing the appropriate brand knowledge in consumers' minds is a primary objective in developing brand equity (Kotler, 1994).
In job seeker attraction study perspective, researches have compared brand knowledge to employer knowledge. Researchers conceive that employer knowledge influences how job seekers process and react to information about the organization. Establishing the appropriate employer knowledge in job seekers' minds is a primary objective of recruitment as company brand equity depends on it. It means that establishing positive employer knowledge generates brand equity, in turn effectiveness of the organization recruitment. For example, job seeker searched for a job and found company information (nodes). The activation process started instantly whereby job seeker recalled her/his memory of the organization; for example, corporate social responsibility that the company was involved (employer knowledge). The positive employer knowledge is subsequently associated to company brand equity as a symbolic signal.
The concept has been supported from many researchers who asserted that brand-equity approach is not just associated with products and services information. Nevertheless, organizational information (employer knowledge) is also essential to generate a certain amount of trust and credibility (Baum & Kabst, 2014;Collins & Kanar, 2013). The organizational information such as corporate social performance (Jones et al., 2014), pro-environment recruiting messege (Behrend et al., 2009), media expose and media richness (Baum & Kabst, 2014) and others have shown that organizational information is significantly related to brand equity. Indeed, a positive employer's knowledge is just like a positive brand knowledge that will ultimately contribute to the organization's brand equity.

Brand equity and job seeker attraction
Brand equity in the job seeker attraction concept has outlined three (3) essential dimensions (Cable & Turban, 2001). The first is familiarity with company, described as the ability of job seekers to identify company as a potential employer. The dimension related to job seeker has a more positive perception of companies that are familiar to them (Collins, 2007). The second dimension is organizational reputation which includes job seekers' perception of how people from their direct and indirect environment assess the company. Finally, employer image is defined as people's perceptions, attributes, and associations connected with the brand in their memories.
Fundamentally, the job seeker should have more concern on organizations' reputations because reputations are "bonding signals" that communicate an organization's competitive position as an employer under conditions of imperfect information (Cable & Turban, 2001;Swait et al., 1993). In other words, job seekers make trait inferences based on the information available about the organization, i.e., they associate organizational reputation with the organization (Highhouse et al., 2007;. Moreover, empirically, the concept has confirmed that employers' reputations are distinct and important components of job seekers' employer knowledge. For example, a study discovered that friends' evaluations of firms affect potential employees because they "validate" organizations as suitable employers (Kilduff, 1990). In addition, other studies have shown that peers evaluate an organization positively and their opinions serve a legitimizing function to job seekers (Cable & Turban, 2001;Jacoby et al., 1992). Therefore, our study is tapering into the organizational reputation of brand-equity dimensions associated with job seeker attraction, rather than employer familiarity and employer image.

Organizational reputation and job seeker attraction
In general, organizational reputation refers to a public evaluation of a firm relative to other firms (Cable & Turban, 2001;Fombrun & Shanley, 1990). More specifically, Cable and Turban (2001) and Fombrun (1996) defined corporate reputation as the "affective or emotional reaction-good or bad, weak or strong of the general public to the company's name." Earlier than that, organizational reputation is a particular type of feedback received by an organization from its stakeholders, which concerns on the credibility of the organization's identity claims (Whetten & Mackey, 2002). Other researchers define reputation as a particular type of feedback received by an organization from its stakeholders and is derived from perceptions of all stakeholders (Cretu & Brodie, 2007). Rindova et al. (2005) defined it as stakeholder groups (e.g. customers, investors, employees, job seekers) perceptions of an entity's social standing or overall relative appeal. In short, the definitions distinguish between two aspects of organizational reputation: the perceived quality of specific aspects of an organization and the general prominence of an organization in the public eye. Present study coveraged both perspectives of the measurement of organizational reputation.
The organizational reputation has three dominant conceptual streams that are frequently associated to job seeker study which consist of social expectations, corporate personality, and trust (Berens & van Riel, 2004). Firstly, social expectation entails expectations that focus on the behavior of organizations in the society. Items could be the quality of products and services, more on something good for the society (Berens & van Riel, 2004). A widely acknowledged term nowadays is corporate social performance (CSP). Turban and Greening (1997) is among the first scholars who tested the effect of CSP on the attractiveness of job seekers; and it is expected that firms engaging in socially responsible actions would have more positive reputations and would be perceived as more attractive employers.
Trust is a more difficult aspect of reputation, mainly because the concept predicts the behavior of the organization. In previous research, three underlying types of trust have been outlined, namely: reliability (the ability to keep a promise), benevolence (behave beneficial for both parties), and honesty (fulfills promised obligations).
Finally, corporate personalities focus on the different traits that people attribute to an organization (Lievens et al., 2005). According to these scholars, traits provide individuals with a more imagery view of the organization. Although traits are subjective and occasionally abstract, they are assumed to positively influence an individuals' perception of the attractiveness of an organization as an employer Lievens et al., 2005).
Indeed, the organizational reputation is a relatively very important concept for job seeker attraction, and this was discovered since more than two decades ago (Turban & Greening, 1997). In fact, the concept is the most influential variable to job seeker attraction (Lis, 2012). The understanding to what extent the concept influence job seeker attraction is universal, and has appeared in many studies across time and countries (Anderson et al., 2010;Cable & Turban, 2003;Rindova et al., 2005;Williamson et al., 2010). Therefore, is an important concept in understanding the attractiveness of job seekers.

Mediating role of organizational reputation in studying organizational justice and job seeker attraction
As per study understanding, the organizational justice is thought to signal positive moral, values and norms of employer knowledge; thus, establishing the knowledge fundamentally will contribute to strong organizational reputation (Skarlicki et al., 2015). Subsequently, organizational reputation sends positive signals as inference from job seeker to make about, and it is associated with the organization to express a positive self-concept and social-identity theory (Banks et al., 2015;Kreiner & Ashforth, 2004). Rabl (2015) in an empirical study supported the theory which revealed the extent that these trait inferences contribute to maintaining and expressing a positive self-concept that fosters job seekers' attraction. In conclusion, organizational justice affects organizational reputation and it is drawn from social-identity theory. Our study postulates that job seeker attraction belongs to reputable organization as such that it will foster positive self-concept associated with the reputable company. In short, organizational justice is related to organizational reputation, and in turn influences job seeker attraction. Scholars have drawn on identity-based theory to develop hypotheses about the mediation effects of the positive self-concept to recruitment outcomes, but have not tested specific mechanisms (Banks et al., 2015;Behrend et al., 2009;Duarte et al., 2014;Jones et al., 2014).
Thus, the following hypothesis is developed: H2:Organizational reputation mediates the relationship between organizational justices and job seeker attraction.
H2a:Organizational reputation mediates the relationship between procedural justice and job seeker attraction.
H2b:Organizational reputation mediates the relationship between distributive justice and job seeker attraction.
H2c:Organizational reputation mediates the relationship between interpersonal justice and job seeker attraction.
H2d:Organizational reputation mediates the relationship between informational justice and job seeker attraction.
Specifically, sub-hypotheses linked to H2 are: Figure 1 portrays the relationship between organizational justice, organizational reputation and job seeker attraction derived from theory, concepts and logics as highlighted in the earlier discussion. The model might be used as a guideline to understand further the impact organizational justice mediated by organizational reputation to job seeker attraction.

Methodology
A total of 327 accounting interns participated in our study after informed that research ethical application has been approved by UMREC with reference number is UM.TNC2/UMREC-292. The respondent demographics are as follows: 78 percent female; 45 percent Malay, 44 percent Chinese, 10 percent Indian, and 1 percent others. Participants who aged below 22 years old are 23 percent while 22 years old and above are 77 percent. There are only two courses involved which are accounting with 56 percent and 44 percent for finance course. The tenure in their organization ranged from 1 to 7 months (M [SD] = 5.36 [1.58]), at big four Malaysia accounting companies: 32 percent for Ernst & Young, 23 percent for KPMG, and 22 percent for Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Design and procedure
A total of 327 participants from Malaysia's big four accounting firms were identified and completely answered the questionnaire. The firms were selected for two specific reasons. Firstly, the firms provide privilege opportunity and space for internship with accounting and financial disciplines. According to ManpowerGroup (2015), the disiplines have been categorized as Critical Occupational List (COL) whereby Malaysia's employers have difficulty to filling job vacancy because of choosiness attitude. Our study is specifically designed to advance the understanding of undergraduates in the particular field, which is one way to assist employers in recruitment process. Moreover, the big four firms' procedural for hiring interns is relatively strict, high pre-conditions and criteria, that convinced the quality and competency of job seekers at the firms. Meaning to say, our finding will be highly valued and appreciated by the employer as it is related to specific group of competent job seekers. Therefore, interns from the firms become participants of our study.
The participants answered the questionnaire while they were at the organization. We wanted participants to evaluate organizations in which they are currently undergoing internship to increase the likelihood that they had experience during the internship and knowledge gained about the organization, thus held informed opinions about organizational justice and reputation, and its attractiveness as an employer. The participants assumed as job seekers were instructed to answer attractiveness and organizational reputation in the respective section. The section required participants to express their feelings regarding the organization where they are undergoing internship. The participants also have to answer organizational justice items by evaluating interned company in a different section. Finally, they answered the demographic items. This study realized that the use of common respondent for all the variables could possibly increase common method variance (CMV); hence, affecting the study's internal validity (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Thus, a psychological separation was created between the independent, modiator, and dependent variables to minimize the possibility of CMV as suggested by Podsakoff et al. (2003). We presented different variables in separate sections to ensure that it did not appear as interrelated. This was done to reduce the likelihood of them in trying to associate the variables of the study and provide favorable responses as probably expected by the researcher.

Measures
Six questions related to demographics were included in this section; i.e. gender, ethnicity, age, experience, study course and interned company. This section was allocated at the last part of questionnaire design simply because to avoid negative feelings about the provision of personal information impacting on the answering behaviour or participation (Lietz, 2010).

Job seeker attraction
Participants expressed their interest to apply for a position at interned company through five (5) items from Highhouse et al. (2003) which measured the attractiveness of potential job seekers (Cronbach's α = 0.88 in the study). The items were as follows: "For me, this company would be a good place to work," "I would be interested to apply job in this company," "This company is attractive to me as a place for employment," "I am interested in learning more about this company," and "A job at this company is very appealing to me" (1 = strongly disagree up to 7 = strongly agree).

Organizational justice
Our study defines the dimension of organizational justice as per general understanding. Organizational justice dimensions in the early research explored employees' perceptions of the distributive and procedural fairness of specific organizational policies and decisions (Greenberg, 1988). Research integrating procedural and distributive justice found consistent support for a twofactor conceptualization of organizational justice (Greenberg, 1990). Beginning in the late 1980s, organizational justice researchers expanded beyond the traditional procedural and distributive types of justice, and began to explore the interactional side of organizational justice (Greenberg, 1993). Recent research suggests that justice perceptions are aptly conceptualized along with four dimensions-distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational (e.g., Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001;Colquitt, 2001;Colquitt et al., 2001;Cropanzano et al., 2007). The contemporary model has received more than 4000 citations since it was released in the year 2001 (Colquitt, 2001). Colquitt (2001) tested the model to undergraduates and employees. The study specifically referred to outcomes from undergraduate data which was likely similar with the present study concept. The outcome of the study revealed the model best fitting was four-factor model which was distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice. The worst fitting model was the one-factor model. Assessing whether the fit of a model was significantly better than other models was traditionally done using a chi-square difference test. For example, the difference in chi-square between the three and four-factor models was 195.90, which was distributed as chi-square with (413-406 = 7) degrees of freedom. The fact that this value was statistically significant would suggest that the fourfactor model was significantly better than the three-factor one. However, the chi-square difference test was only appropriate in comparing "nested" models. One model was nested within another if the model was a special case of the other (e.g. a more restricted version of it). There were some debates about whether a four-factor model was a more restricted version of a three-factor model because a new latent variable had been introduced. Thus, model comparison can be made using the 90% confidence interval of the RMSEA. This comparison shows that the four-factor model is significantly better than the three-factor model because their confidence intervals do not overlap (RMSEA: 0.055, CFI: 0.92, IFI: 0.92). Thus, the present study employs four dimensions of organizational justice to investigate the construct's relationship with job seeker attraction.
The constructs measuring organizational justice indirectly asked participants to evaluate the prevalence of 20 known antecedents of justice which has been employed in the present study. Response options ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.

Organizational reputation
The variable is measured using five (5) items adopted from Highhouse et al. (2003). The items were designed to assess the degree to which organizations are perceived as being well regarded and reputable. The study Cronbach's alpha is 0.83. The items are as follow: "Employees are probably proud to say they work at this company," "This is a reputable company to work for," "This company probably has a reputation as being an excellent employer," "I would find this company a reputable place to work." and "There are probably many who would like to work at this company". Response options ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.

Result
Our study analyzes data using SmartPLS 3.0. Adhering to the principles and procedurals of the tool is essential in producing reliable and accurate result; thus, we decided to follow testing procedures suggested by Hair et al. (2014). We also employed statistical remedy for CMV by conducting Harman's one-factor test. We considered the unrotated factor solution by including all 30 items of all the 6 variables (procedural justice, distributive justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice, job seeker attraction and organizational reputation) rated by the participants. The analysis resulted in a four-factor solution with a total variance of 82.4% and the first factor explained 46% of the variance. Thus, the two underlying assumptions did not meet, i.e. no single factor emerged, and the first factor did not capture most of the variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Therefore, these results suggested that CMV is not an issue in our study.

Measurement model: assessment of CFA
Firstly, our study identified whether each study constructs is reflective or formative measurement. The identification is important because each type requires different measurements. All constructs indicated reflective characteristic; move on, internal consistency reliability, indicator reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were calculated in our measurement model.

Internal consistency reliability
Present study demonstrated correlations, means and standard deviations before analysed on the internal consistency reliability (see Table 3). To assess internal consistency, our study examined composite reliability (Chin, 2010) using PLS Graph (see Appendix 1). The findings revealed that composite reliabilities (CR) ranged from 0.897 to 0.942 (See Table 4, Figures 2 and 3) and were therefore well above the recommended cut-off of 0.70 which indicated internal consistency and all constructs were within accepted limits and reliable (Chin, 2010;Hair et al., 2014).

Factor loading
The purpose of assessing factor loading is to evaluate the extent to which an indicator or a set of indicators is consistent with what it intends to measure (Urbach & Ahlemann, 2010). An examination of the factor loadings showed that factor loadings ranged from 0.739 to 0.909, except for three items (pro3, pro4, and inter4), which exceeded the recommended thresholds of 0.708 (Chin, 2010) as shown in Table 4. Although the items pro3 (0.699), pro4 (0.685) and inter4 (0.677) were below than the thresholds, we weighed the average variance extracted (AVE) scores before any further action was executed. Our study's AVEs for procedural justice and interpersonal justice were 0.555 and 0.714 respectively. Loading values that equal and greater than 0.5 are acceptable, and if the summation of loadings result has high loading scores, it contributes to AVE scores of greater than 0.5 (Byrne, 2016). The conclusion is that those items (pro3, pro4, and inter4) are remained in respective constructs that are procedural justice and interpersonal justice as the items contributed to AVE scores greater than 0.5 (see Table 4).

Convergent validity
Convergent validity indicates the extent to which items converge in their representation of the underlying construct they are purported to measure (Chin, 2010). Convergent validity is considered satisfactory when the AVE for the construct is 0.50 or more. In this research, the AVEs ranged from 0.555 to 0.765 (see Table 4), which suggested that the construct explained more than half of the variance of its indicators (Chin, 2010). Also, the factor loadings for each construct had a narrow range (Chin, 2010), as evidenced in Table 4, which suggested that the items converged in estimating the underlying construct (Chin, 2010).

Discriminant validity
Discriminant validity is tested to assess the extent to which each construct is distinct from other constructs by empirical standards (Hair et al., 2014). Three approaches were used to assess discriminant validity: (i) comparing the square root of the average variance extracted with the correlations among constructs (ii) assessing whether each item loads more highly on its own construct than on other constructs and (iii) assessing confidence interval value less than 1 (Chin, 2010). The results showed that the square root of each construct's AVE was greater than its highest correlation with any other construct (see Table 5), which suggested that all constructs shared more variance with its associated indicators than with any other construct (Hair et al., 2014). The results indicated that each construct was much more closely related to its own indicators than to other constructs; hence, satisfying the criteria for discriminant validity (Chin, 2010).
Meanwhile, the second approach of discriminant analysis assesses the mean by comparing the cross loadings between construct as demonstrated in Table 6. In this approach, it is important to note that each indicator should load high on its own constructs but low on other constructs. As indicated in the Table 6, all indicators loaded high on its own construct but low on the other constructs. This indicated discriminant validity was achieved as the construct was distinctly different from each other.
The third approach of assessing discriminant validity is by using HTMT technique developed by Henseler et al. (2015). As shown in Table 7, all the values fulfilled the criterion of HTMT. 90 (Gold et al., 2001). This indicated that discriminant validity was ascertained. Besides that, the result of HTMT inference also showed that the confidence interval did not show the value of 1 on any of the constructs (Henseler et al., 2015) which also confirmed discriminant validity.

Structural model
Once we have confirmed that the construct measures were reliable and valid, the next step was to address the assessment of the structural model results (see Figure 4). This involved examining the model's predictive capabilities and the relationships between the constructs. The key criteria for assessing the structural model in PLS-SEM were the significance of the path coefficients, the level of the R 2 values, the f 2 effect size, the predictive relevance, and the q 2 effect size. Before the present study describes these analyses, it is important to examine the lateral collinearity of structural model. The reason is that the estimation of path coefficients in the structural models is based on OLS regressions of each endogenous latent variable on its corresponding predecessor constructs. Just as in a regular multiple regression, the path coefficients might be biased if the estimation involves significant levels of collinearity among the predictor constructs.

Lateral collinearity analysis
The literal collinearity is important to be assessed despite that discriminant validity has already been achieved because it can mask the strong causal effect in a model that leads to deceived study finding. This typically occurs when two or more variables that are hypothesized to be casually related measure the same construct. In other words, our study needs to examine each set of predictor constructs separately for each subpart of the structural model. We consider tolerance level of below 0.20 (VIF above 5.00) in the predictor constructs as indicative of collinearity. If collinearity is detected either from tolerance or VIF guidelines, one should consider eliminating the constructs, merging the predictors into a single construct, or creating higher-order constructs to treat collinearity problems.
To assess collinearity, we refer to two indicators (i.e., tolerance and VIF values) which are actually the same measures as in the evaluation of formative measurement models. In doing so, we need to examine each set of predictor constructs separately for each subpart of the structural model. Therefore, one needs to check whether there are significant levels of collinearity between each set of predictor variables, that is, procedural justice, distributive justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. Analogous to the assessment of formative measurement models, we consider tolerance level of below 0.20 (VIF above 5.00) in the predictor construct as indicative of collinearity. If collinearity is indicated by the tolerance or VIF guidelines, one should consider eliminating the constructs, merging the predictors into a single construct, or creating higher-order constructs to treat collinearity problems. Table 8 depicts that VIFs for independent variables (procedural justice: 3.321, distributive justice: 3.252, interpersonal justice: 3.078, informational justice: 3.473) were less than 5; thus, it indicated that collinearity was not a concern in the present study (Hair et al., 2014).

Coefficient of determination (R2)
The R 2 value indicates the amount of variance in dependent variable that is explained by the independent variables. Thus, a larger R 2 value increases the predictive ability of the structural model. In this study, Smart PLS algorithm function is used to obtain the R 2 values, while the Smart PLS bootstrapping function is used to generate the t-statistics values. In our study, the Bootstrapping used 1000 samples to evaluate the strength of the structural paths, and the product-indicator approach was used to assess the interaction effect (Chin et al., 2003). The result of the structural model is presented in Table 9. Referring to the table, organizational justice satisfaction, procedural justice, distributive justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice were able to explain 56% of the variance in job seeker attraction. According to the rule of thumb for R 2 by Hair et al. (2014), the values were 0.70, 0.50 and 0.25 which represented substantial, moderate and weak relationships respectively. It means the R 2 for the present study showed that a moderate amount of variance was explained by all independent variables linked to it.

Path coefficients
Within the structural model, each path that connects two latent variables represents a hypothesis. Based on the analysis conducted on the structural model, it allows the researcher to confirm or disconfirm each hypothesis as well as understand the strength of the relationship between dependent and independent variables.
Using the SmartPLS algorithm output, the relationships between independent and dependent variables were examined. However, in order to test the significant level in SmartPLS, t-statistics for all paths are generated using the SmartPLS bootstrapping function. Based on the t-statistics output, the significant level of each relationship is determined. Table 9 lists down the path coefficients, observed t-statistics, and significance level for all hypothesized path. Using the results from the path assessment, the acceptance or rejection of the proposed hypotheses is determined. The testing of the proposed hypotheses is discussed in the next section.

Hypotheses testing
To validate our proposed hypotheses, the path coefficient between two latent variables is assessed. Based on previous studies, the path coefficient value needs to be at least 0.1 to account for a certain impact within the model (Hair et al., 2014). Assessment of the path coefficient (refer Table 9) shows that all proposed hypotheses were supported. From the analysis, supported hypotheses were significant at least at the level of 0.05, had expected sign directions (i.e. positive) and consisted of a path coefficient value (β) ranging from 0.117 to 0.749.
The next analysis was on the effect sizes (f 2 ). As asserted by Sullivan and Feinn (2012), "while p-value can inform the reader whether an effect exists, the p-value will not reveal the size of the effect. In reporting and interpreting study, both the substantive significant (effect size) and statistically significant (p-value) are essential results to be reported." As posited by Hair et al. (2014), the change in the R 2 value should also be executed and reported. The method suggests the examining of R 2 change be evaluating whether the omitted independent variable has substantive impact on the dependent variable. To measure the effect size, Cohen (1988) guideline is used. The value 0.02, 0.15, and 0.35 represent small, medium, and large effects respectively (Cohen, 1988). From Table 9, it can be observed that organizational justice had a large effect in producing the R 2 for job seeker attraction. Meanwhile, the independent variables of distributive justice (0.037), interpersonal justice (0.021), and informational justice (0.064) contributed medium effect to R 2 while procedural justice (0.009) was exception as it contributed only a small effect of R 2 .
In addition, the productive relevance of the model was examined using blindfolding procedure. If the Q 2 is larger than 0, the model has predictive relevance for a certain dependent variable (Fornell & Cha, 1994;Hair et al., 2014). The Q 2 in the present study demonstrated a value more than 0 such as organizational justice (Q 2 = 0.390), which indicated that the model had sufficient predictive relevance. Hair et al. (2014) also stated that as a relative measure of predictive relevance, the values of 0.02, 0.15 and 0.35 indicate that an independent variable has small, medium and large predictive relevant for a certain dependent variable. The result showed small q 2 effect size for organizational justice (0.390) which is a large predictive to the Q 2 , while others showed small effect size such as procedural justice (q 2 = 0.002), distributive justice (q 2 = 0.018), and interpersonal justice (q 2 = 0.008). Only informational justice (q 2 = 0.031) showed medium predictive to Q 2 of the present study.

Mediating analysis
According to Henseler et al. (2009), assessing the direct and indirect relationships between exogenous and endogenous latent variables is another important evaluation of a structural model. This direct and indirect relationship can be examined by conducting mediating or moderating analysis. In this segment, the assessment emphasizes the significance of the mediating relationships. This is based on the theoretical reasoning that suggests organizational reputation as a mediating factor that influences the relationship between organizational justice dimensions and job seeker attraction (see Figure 5).
To produce the result using SmartPLS, we ran bootstrapping analysis. Table 10 shows the result of the analysis on the mediating effect of organizational reputation to the direct relationship. The analysis started by examining the mediating influence on the organizational justice and job seeker attraction. From the analysis (see Table 10), the indirect effects of organizational reputation positively influenced organizational justice and job seeker attraction (β = 0.621, t = 17.595). Moreover, referring to the indirect effects of 95% boot CI Bias Corrected [LL = 0.546, UL = 0.686], the values did not straddle 0 which indicated that mediation existed in the relationship (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008.
Subsequently, to assess the mediating effect of organizational reputation between organizational justice dimensions and job seeker attraction, commenced with procedural justice. The indirect effects result found that organizational reputation positively influenced the relationship between procedural justice and job seeker attraction (β = 0.111, t = 2.058). Moreover, referring to the indirect effects of 95% boot CI Bias Corrected [LL = 0.010, UL = 0.210], the values did not straddle 0 which indicated mediation existed in the relationship (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008.
Next, the present study assessed the mediating effect of organizational reputation between distributive justice and job seeker attraction. The indirect relation result found that organizational reputation positively influenced the relationship between distributive justice and job seeker attraction (β = 0.261, t = 4.951). Moreover, referring to the indirect effects of 95% boot CI Bias Corrected [LL = 0.158, UL = 0.349], the values did not straddle 0 which indicated the presence of mediation in the relationship (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008.
We continued the assessment on mediating effect of organizational reputation between interpersonal justice and job seeker attraction. The indirect effects result found that organizational reputation positively influenced the relationship between distributive justice and job seeker attraction (β = 0.122, t = 2.295). Moreover, referring to the indirect effects of 95% boot CI Bias Corrected [LL = 0.017, UL = 0.231], the values did not straddle 0 which indicated mediation existed in the relationship (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008.
Finally, we assessed on the mediating effect of organizational reputation between distributive justice and job seeker attraction. The indirect relation effect result found organizational reputation positively influenced the relationship between informational justice and job seeker attraction (β = 0.194, t = 3.364). Moreover, referring to the indirect effects of 95% boot CI Bias Corrected [LL = 0.079, UL = 0.307], the values did not straddle 0 which indicated mediation existed in the relationship (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008. As a result of the analysis, hypothesis H2, and sub-hypotheses linked to H2 (H2a, H2b, H2c, and H2d) were supported.

Discussion
For decades, the mechanisms of signal were understood to have created an impact to job seeker attraction; however, the thought has been shifted which the signals transmit symbolic inference, in turn affects the job seekers attraction. There important implications can be deciphered in dealing with organizational justice and job seeker attraction. Our study asserted that organizational justice signals the symbolic inference of organizational reputation, in turn influences job seeker attraction. We tested the concept to the interns at big four Malaysia accounting companies and found supported evidence, whereby the organizational reputation mediated the relationship between organizational justice and job seeker attraction. The mediating role of organizational reputation was found in previous studies; for example, pro-environment (Behrend et al., 2009), corporate social responsibility (Jones et al., 2014) and others. Our study reinforces the establishment of the concept and confined in the perspective of organizational justice.
Furthermore, we assess the dimensions of organizational justice consisting of procedural justice, distributive justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. The result consistent with Colquitt's (2001) study in terms of distributive justice is an important dimension of organizational justice. The dimension consistently produces satisfactory results across subjects and situations (Bell et al., 2006;Colquitt, 2001;Zhao, 2013). Other than that, our result also consistent with Bell et al. (2006) that outlined the informational justice is an important dimension compare to other dimensions. This convinced us that the two dimensions were worth to be investigated into details. However, the other dimensions should not be forsaken giving for still support job seeker attraction. Result showed that dimensions such as interpersonal justice and procedural justice contribute to job seeker attraction with smaller than informational justice and distributive justice. We already anticipated the relationship during the developments conceptual of study, the result analysis reinforces the important of organizational justice dimensions to job seeker attraction, even in indirect impact form.

Theoretical implications
Study on organizational justice mostly concentrated on employees inside organization. Among others were studies on victims of unfair treatment, employees of injustice organization as well as colleagues of victim. In addition, some other scholars have studied on transgressor. Many of these studies on organizational justice were mainly focused on the aforementioned aspect. However, little research has been done on how organizational justice affects the third-party individual's perception/outsider; an aspect of organizational justice which deems important in order to have a better understanding of the relationship between job seekers and organizational justice as a whole. The third-party observer is defined as a person who is not directly impacted by the unfairness in organization but who nonetheless may make fairness judgments of the event. The third parties being outlined by the scholars are company's customers, job seekers, and members of the public. Our study contributes to the third-party organizational justice literature by understanding job seeker is one of the third-party study subjects. Our result reinforces the thought that job seekers are outsiders but also affected by organizational justice.
Comprehending a process of a characteristic influence over other characteristics would be a huge achievement for a concept. In other words, a study does not just know what but also how a characteristic is able to influence over others. Likewise, our study discovered the influencing process of organizational justice to the job seeker attraction that is through organizational reputation, and this would be marked as in-depth understanding and contributions to the literature. Scholars have drawn about the mediation effects of the organizational reputation to recruitment outcomes, but have not tested specific mechanisms (Banks et al., 2015;Behrend et al., 2009;Duarte et al., 2014;Jones et al., 2014). Therefore, our study contributed to literature by promoting organizational justice.

Managerial implications
Our study insight is for the government of Malaysia. They relentlessly give their effort and allocate a huge amount of budget every year to improvement of graduate competency so that the rate of employment can be improved. Since 2010, an important pillar was marked at 80% employment after six months graduation, ironically, the pillar has never been achieved. The worst part is the rate of employment among fresh graduates has not increased considerably since 2006 (Jayasingam et al., 2016). The employment rate recorded annually in the last 10 years was between 65% and 75%. Thus, it is timely to venture into new perspectives to achieve the country's inspiration.
Our study accentuated the roles of employer in bridging the gap which is rarely discussed in Malaysia's perspective but surely fruitful, particularly in managing graduates with choosiness attitude. Our study showed that organizational justice and organizational reputation were two important attractiveness characteristics. Malaysia's government should initiate a paradigm shift for organizations in promoting organizational justice and organizational reputation that will attract graduate labor to work as well as increase the rate of employment. Instead of merely collaborate to improve graduate competency, Malaysia's government may extend the intensity of collaboration by promoting good employers. Government may initiate various activities in the collaboration such as career fair, rating organization, documentary, and others. Organizational justice and organizational reputation are characteristics that they have to include in promoting organizations.

Limitation and future research direction
Various characteristics have shown significant impact to job seeker attraction through organizational reputation; however which characteristics that should be given priority by the organization are still unanswered. We learned that most organizations have limited sources to ascertain company profit. The knowledge on which variable should the organization pay more attention to is very much needed.
Moreover, future research should examine whether organizational reputation that attracts some individuals to a particular organization continues to have an effect after they are hired. One study showed that incumbent employees who felt greater pride in their organizational membership as a result of their attitudes toward their employer's volunteerism program tended to identify the organization more strongly, which in turn was positively associated with loyalty-related citizenship behavior and intentions to remain in the organization (Jones, 2010). These findings, coupled with those from the previous studies, raised an intriguing possibility: potential employee attracted by organizational justice through organizational reputation may ultimately become the employees who respond most positively to organizational justice after they are hired.

Conclusion
The organizational justice impacts job seeker attraction through organizational reputation that decipher how important the organizational justice is. Organizational reputation is the most influence characteristic to job seeker attraction, even more important than remuneration. Therefore, organizations should have extra concern and promote the organizational justice, as a way to uplift organizational reputation that subsequently influences job seeker attraction.