An Experiential Supply Chain Management Field Study: Effectively Bridging the Gap Between Classroom and Practice

Employers want new college graduates to relate theory to practice when they begin their careers. Experiential learning opportunities provide occasions to develop such skills. However, internships and single factory tours rarely provide more generalizable insights about the competitive nature of business across a range of firms. We conceptually explore an experiential field study that addresses this shortcoming: a supply chain management course of the brewing industry. We describe the development of our course, its execution, its learning outcomes, advantages of our approach in the brewing industry, and suggestions to replicate it at other schools and with other industries

Professional Human Capital Flows: Temporal Structure of Loss, Replacement and Contingent Bundling Effects on Firm Performance

While resource based theory (RBT) addresses the importance of both possessing and orchestrating resources that have the potential of creating competitive advantage, it suggests little about the effects of unintentionally losing such resources. Further, RBT is silent about the manners in which firms replace after such losses by acquiring external resources. Attending to these gaps, this study considers the loss of professional human capital (PHC) in a panel data set of the largest U.S. based law firms, the contingencies of loss that effect subsequent firm performance, and the manner in which firms replace with new PHC. Results suggest that losing PHC with less firm specificity and PHC that has greater redundancy in geographic locations weakens the negative effects of loss. Additionally, organizational strain is theorized to cause replacement of PHC with external PHC hires similar to those already in the firm. Results show that this is the case for greater volumes of PHC loss and greater geographic diversification, but the opposite is true of prior performance and the manager-subordinate ratio. Implications for RBT, the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model, and strategic human capital theory are discussed

Rivals’ Reactions to Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions research has principally focused on attributes of the acquiring firm and post-acquisition outcomes. To extend our knowledge, we focus on external factors, in particular rival responses, and explore when and how rivals respond to their competitor’s acquisitions. Leveraging the awareness–motivation–capability framework, we predict and find evidence that a rival’s dependence on markets in common with the acquirer, resource similarity between rival and acquirer, and a rival’s organizational slack increase the volume and, in some cases, also the complexity of a rival’s competitive actions following an acquisition. Furthermore, the type of acquisition positively moderates some of these relationships. The results extend our understanding of the influence of mergers and acquisitions on competitive dynamics in the marketplace

Pipelines and Their Portfolios: A More Holistic View of Human Capital Heterogeneity Via Firm-Wide Employee Sourcing

Scholars use the term pipelines to encapsulate many ways that firms target talent sources. Yet pipeline scholarship is fragmented to date, so we have few answers for several salient questions: Why do pipelines exist? What are their attributes? And what are their implications for firms? In this paper, we explore these questions. Based on an extensive literature review, we first distill the commonalities and core attributes of pipelines and then develop a theory-driven typology to ensure a consistency in understanding. Next, we suggest that a common theoretical justification runs through the uses of pipelines: Pipelines address labor market imperfections confronted by firms when they staff positions, counterbalancing the seemingly detrimental reduction in candidates that pipelines engender. We use this insight to theoretically delineate why different types of pipelines exist. Finally, we discuss how firms develop unique combinations, or portfolios, of pipelines to ameliorate the range of imperfections that they face to manage talent sourcing across the enterprise. In total, our paper describes how firms strategically manage pipeline portfolios, why firms turn to them to accumulate talent, and how they create between-firm heterogeneity of human capital resources

Hospitality : an introduction

xxviii, 546 p. ; 27 cm

Hiring Expert Talent in a Recession: Targeted Labor Pool Sourcing and Firm Performance

Extant research suggests that hiring experts during economic downturns can improve firm financial performance. However, recessionary labor markets deepen the challenges facing hiring firms, calling to question both the firm-level benefits and the tactics of acquiring talent when demand for a firm’s business is declining. We theorize and find that hiring expert talent during a recession actually weakens firm performance in the context of knowledge-based services. Notably though, we find firms can effectively attenuate the negative hiring effect by targeting particular labor pools, underlining the significance of gaining human capital advantages through focused sourcing. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal sample of large U.S. corporate law firms between 2002 and 2010