Background & Purpose: Employer branding research has emphasized positive relationships, while negative relationships with employer brands remain underexplored. Experiences of employees and job seekers may extend beyond job dissatisfaction and develop into a hostile relationship with the employer brand. This study aimed to conceptualize Employer Brand Hate (EBH), clarify its boundaries, and explain its formation contexts and modes of expression.
Methodology: This qualitative study used grounded theory and Clarke’s situational analysis within an interpretive paradigm. Data were collected through narrative-oriented interviews with 38 employees, former employees, and job seekers whose experiences extended beyond job dissatisfaction. Participants were recruited through purposive, theoretical, and snowball sampling. Analysis involved initial and focused coding, memos, situational maps, and a positional map.
Findings: EBH develops when harmful, unjust, deceptive, or value-incongruent experiences are interpreted as signs of the employer brand’s underlying nature. The individual’s psychological relationship with the employer brand then changes, and emotional, moral, and identity-based bonds may become hostile, rejecting, or severed. Although EBH overlaps with job dissatisfaction, organizational cynicism, psychological contract breach, distrust, and organizational disidentification, it cannot be reduced to them. Its expression varies with employment status, perceived costs, and opportunities for private or public response. It may remain hidden through silence, self-censorship, psychological distancing, and minimal performance, or become visible through negative storytelling, warnings to job seekers, negative word-of-mouth, and anti-brand behavior.
Conclusion: EBH is a dynamic, context-dependent transformation of individuals’ psychological relationship with employer brands. This conceptualization supports scale development and future empirical research.