1,720,969 research outputs found
Coming back to Edmonton: competing with former employers and colleagues
No full textDrawing on human and social capital theory, research on employee mobility has discussed the benefits and drawbacks of hiring employees from rival firms. To explain the performance implications of employee mobility, the literature has focused on what moving individuals can do, but has ignored what they are willing to do. However, to fully understand what individuals will actually do at the new firm, we need to understand both. We argue that what individuals are willing to do depends on their collective and relational identity. When competing against a former employer, individuals experience a conflict in their collective identity as they identify with both organizations but can only increase the welfare of one. To reduce this conflict, individuals strengthen their identification with the new organization and deidentify with the former by competing harder against the former organization. At the relational level, individuals can still identify with their ex-colleagues without harming the welfare of the new organization by competing harder with non-former colleagues but behaving less competitively toward former colleagues. We analyze data from the National Hockey League and find strong support for our hypotheses
When colleagues compete outside the firm
Full text linkCollaboration among employees
is the bedrock of an organization, but we suggest that it
can be undermined by their extra‐organizational affilia-
tions. We point to the hidden but common constella-
tion of two coworkers who are also affiliated with
organizations that compete with one another. We
hypothesize that such colleagues collaborate less with
one another when performing on behalf of their shared
employer. Using data from professional soccer, we
provide empirical evidence. We outline implications
for research on extra‐organizational affiliations, intra-
organizational collaboration, competition and rivalry,
and social networks
Can you go home again? Performance assistance between boomerangs and incumbent employees
Full text linkBoomerangs, that is, rehires, should have advantages over other new hires when integrating into an organization due to their familiarity with the work context and their pre-existing relationships. However, research suggests that the effects of hiring boomerangs may not be straightforwardly positive. To better understand these effects, we investigate how boomerangs’ social integration into a work team differs from that of other new hires due to their pre-existing relationships and how those relationships shape their and incumbents’ competence and motivation to provide assistance for collective performance. We theorize and find that boomerangs, compared with new hires, exhibit more performance assistance toward incumbent former and incumbent new colleagues. In contrast, incumbent former colleagues do not direct their performance assistance toward boomerangs, contrary to our prediction, nor do incumbent new colleagues. This study contributes to the nascent literature on boomerangs and the literature on job mobility by finding evidence that prior relationships condition the behavior of both boomerangs and incumbents
Collaborations that hurt firm performance but help employees' careers
Full text linkWhen a firm and a competitor collaborate with the same partner, they compete for the shared partner's resources and attention. Such“peer competition”has been shown to negatively affect a firm's access to resources and its performance.One might expect that also the employees’ careers to suffer as a result. However, we argue that the firm's employees benefit from such collaborations. They lever-age these collaborations to build social capital—helping their mobility and careers. We find empirical support for our theory using a large sample data set of video game companies. Our study points to an important yet hitherto neglected agency conflict: employees seek interfirm collaborations that benefit them person-ally but hurt their firm
The sequence effect in panel decisions: evidence from the evaluation of research and development projects
Full text linkWe examine how groups fall prey to the sequence effect when they make choices based on informed assessments of complex situations, for example, when evaluating research and development (R&D) projects. The core argument is that the temporal sequence of selection matters because projects that appear in a sequence following a funded project are themselves less likely to receive funding. Building on the idea that selecting R&D projects is a demanding process that drains participants’ mental and emotional resources, we further theorize the moderating effect of the influence of the timing of the panel meeting on the sequence effect. We test these conjectures using a randomization in sequence order from several rounds of R&D project selection at a leading professional service firm. We find robust support for the existence of a sequence effect in R&D as well as for the moderating effect. We further explore different explanations for the sequence effect and how it passes from the individual to the panel. These findings have broader implications for the literature on innovation and search in general and on group decision making for R&D, specifically, as they suggest that a previously overlooked dimension affects selection outcomes
Talent management and career development: what it takes to get promoted
No full textBased on the talent management literature, this paper investigates managerial skills that are essential for managers’ job promotion. Using arguments from the human and social capital literature and following tournament logic, we claim that a manager’s own experience, expertise, and network size positively affect promotion odds, while strong colleagues decrease promotion odds. Studying 7,003 promotions to middle management and 3,147 promotions to senior management, we find broad support for our hypotheses, but find also that network size no longer predicts promotion to senior management. Our findings have implications for individual career development and talent management programs
Evaluating novelty:the role of panels in the selection of R&D projects
Full text linkBuilding on a unique, multi-source, and multi-method study of R&D projects in a leading professional service firm, we develop the argument that organizations are more likely to fund projects with intermediate levels of novelty. That is, some project novelty increases the share of requested funds received, but too much novelty is difficult to appreciate and is selected against. While prior research has considered the characteristics of the individuals generating project ideas, we shift the focus to panel selectors and explore how they shape the evaluation of novelty. We theorize that a high panel workload reduces panel preference for novelty in selection, whereas a diversity of panel expertise and a shared location between panel and applicant increase preference for novelty. We explore the implications of these findings for theories of innovation search, organizational selection, and managerial practice
The new needs friends : Simmelian strangers and the selection of novelty
Full text linkResearch Summary
The paradox of rejecting novel ideas while being motivated to select them exists in many realms. Deviating from prior research that investigated several internal levers to promote the funding of novel ideas in the sciences, we focus on an external lever by investigating how seconded employees increase the selection of novel ideas in two ways: (1) they select more novel ideas themselves, and (2) they influence permanent employees to do the same. Combining unique quantitative longitudinal data and 37 in-depth interviews, we test our predictions in the secondment program at the National Science Foundation and find broad support for our theoretical arguments. Our findings have implications for scholars of science and innovation by proposing a relatively light-touch intervention to facilitate the selection of novel ideas.
Managerial Summary
Organizations often face a paradox: they want to select novel ideas but tend to reject them. This study shifts focus from internal measures to an external solution, examining how seconded employees can help. Through both quantitative data and interviews at the National Science Foundation's secondment program, we found that seconded employees choose more novel ideas and influence permanent staff to do the same. This suggests a simple intervention can significantly boost the acceptance of innovative ideas, offering valuable insights for those in the science and innovation. Understanding this dynamic can empower managers to strategically leverage seconded employees, fostering a more innovative and adaptive organizational culture
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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