Publications (expand for abstracts)

How does an employee’s centrality in intrafirm research and development activities affect the employee’s propensity for outward mobility? Does this proclivity vary by the type of employment the employee seeks: moving to other firms versus founding a new venture? We maintain that, to answer these questions, we must distinguish between an employee’s centrality in the intrafirm collaboration network and the employee’s centrality in the intrafirm technological recombination network. We utilize the curricula vitae and patent data of corporate inventors at a leading semiconductor company between 1993 and 2012 to test our hypotheses. Contrary to prevailing views, our competing risk model indicates that corporate inventors who are central in the intrafirm collaboration and technological network and, thus, have the most opportunities are less likely to leave the current employer. However, when considering external employment opportunities, their preferences vary. Collaboration-central individuals are more likely to start a new venture than to move to another employer. Their skill in developing interpersonal relationships enables them to attract the tangible and intangible resources needed in a new firm. In contrast, inventors whose technological expertise is central to the firm’s technology recombination network are more likely to move to another employer than to start a new venture. In an established firm, they can leverage their technological know-how using the resources that a new venture would lack. Our theory highlights the trade-offs in employees’ attempts to take advantage of their internal and external value based on their position within the firm’s collaboration and technological networks.

New entrants and incumbent firms rely on new knowledge to innovate and compete in the market. One way to acquire new knowledge is through the recruitment of new employees from competitors, a phenomenon popularly known as “poaching.” Digital labor platforms are widely used by firms for this aim. We argue that job titles represent the first and most visible public source of information about knowledge workers and thus play a key role in navigating the vast spectrum of competencies available in digital platforms. Our analyses of the career trajectories of 11,644 knowledge workers in the United States between 2004 and 2014 suggest that increases in the ambiguity of a job title claimed by an employee are negatively associated with the likelihood of the employee being hired by a new employer. This finding appears stronger in the case of transitions to incumbent firms rather than new entrants. In the concluding section of the paper, we take stock of the various analyses presented and reflect on the potential role of job titles in the strategic management of human capital.

How does a firm’s response time to past failures affect its likelihood of experiencing future failures? Does this likelihood depend on the reasons for past failures? Using drug recalls during 2006–2016, we examine the effect of pharmaceutical firms’ response time to their past failures on their learning from failure. Longer response times reduce the likelihood of subsequent failure. Variations in the reasons for past failures increase the potential for subsequent failure. However, a longer response time helps overcome the challenges associated with this variation. By focusing on the temporal dimension of learning from failure, we provide unique theoretical insights into when and how organizations can learn from failure. 

Over the past decade, diverse academic disciplines such as economics, management, organizational behavior (OB), human resource management (HR), and sociology have increasingly focused on exploring the multifaceted concept of employee mobility. This encompasses both internal mobility (e.g., promotions) and external mobility (e.g., industry shifts, rival firm transitions, and employee entrepreneurship). However, the mobility literature lacks a unified conceptual framework, limiting our ability to compare the impacts of different mobility types. This prompts questions about whether this diversity enriches or complicates our understanding of mobility.

Motivated by the diversity of theoretical viewpoints, contextual variations, and methodological approaches in prior research, this paper introduces a volume within Advances in Strategic Management, with the goal of achieving critical theoretical integration. The primary objectives are to delineate disciplinary divides, identify new theoretical and empirical directions, and stimulate open debate among scholars across disciplines.

The volume is structured into four parts: a critical analysis of existing mobility literature, a challenge to established norms in intra-firm mobility, an exploration of nuanced mechanisms in inter-firm mobility, and an examination of employee entrepreneurship.

Noteworthy insights include the recognition that understanding mobility requires considering both its drivers (selection) and effects (treatment) across multiple levels and directions. Context emerges as a pivotal factor, shaping mobility by defining opportunities and values associated with different mobility forms. Furthermore, the volume emphasizes the role of opportunities in driving mobility decisions and the importance of aligning individual abilities with the evolving work context.

This work served as a comprehensive exploration of employee mobility research, encompassing disciplines such as economics, sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior/human resource management (OB/HR). Our objective was to shed light on the structural division that had persisted within these disciplines despite their shared interests.

We aimed to examine the implications and limitations of this division, notably its impact on our ability to draw comparative insights concerning the effects of various mechanisms related to internal and external employee mobility. We also delved into the role of social networks and the organizational context in the transfer of knowledge, transcending geographic, technological, firm, and team boundaries.

While this research witnessed significant growth and interest over the past four decades, it did not yield the level of cross-disciplinary integration and citation one might have expected. Our analysis not only highlighted this challenge but also identified specific journals and individuals who played a pivotal role in bridging these disciplinary divides, offering potential pathways for enhanced collaboration and knowledge exchange. In essence, our work sought to shed light on the existing divide, its consequences, and avenues for achieving greater cohesion and synergy in the study of employee mobility.

The paper examines the formation of clique-spanning ties in intra-corporate co-invention networks, by focusing on the impact of R&D unit spinouts. Using data on thirty-one spinouts in eight large U.S. information and communication technology corporations, we show that the reorganization of R&D units through corporate spinouts is associated with an increase in the extent to which inventors employed in the unit collaborate with inventors located in other cliques within the corporate co-invention network. Interestingly, the spinout effect spills over to all members of the clique of spun-out inventors, also including those who remain with the parent firm. The interpretation of these empirical findings, grounded on existing theories and on the views of inventors and executives involved in the reorganization events, suggests that corporate spinouts generate a shock in intra-corporate research collaboration dynamics, which loosens clique lock-in effects and contributes to reset cliques’ boundaries in the intra-corporate research network.

This article focuses on corporate spinouts as a strategy that can rejuvenate the inventive efforts of inventors with a long tenure in the same company. We rely on an unbalanced panel of 5,604 inventor-year observations to study a matched sample of 431 inventors employed by the Xerox Corporation and find evidence in support of three predictions. First, inventors who join a spinout increase the extent of exploration in their inventive activities. Second, they decrease the extent to which they rely on the parent organization’s knowledge. Third, because long-tenured employees, through socialization, tend to progressively adopt more exploitative behavior than short-tenured members, they benefit relatively more from the spinout experience. These results are robust to several econometric specifications that try to account for the endogeneity of the inventors’ decision to join the spinout, for the fact that spinouts’ inventive activity may be intrinsically different from that of the parent company, and for the possible presence of novel external stimuli for those who join spinouts. The data provide large-sample evidence consistent with the idea that socialization reduces opportunities for organizational learning; we discuss the implications for theory and practice.