Management and Strategy - HKU Business School

17 November

Devaluation by Association: Gender Diversification and Performance Recognition in Male-Dominated Occupations

SPEAKER

Dr. Jirs Meuris
Assistant Professor
Management and Human Resources
The University of Wisconsin-Madison

ABSTRACT

Responding to persistent gender inequalities, organizations have adopted initiatives to increase women’s representation in male-dominated occupations. Although sociological research has identified many challenges for the women entering, we know less about the impact on workers inside these occupations. We propose a devaluation-by-association penalty, where incumbent men and women in male-dominated occupations are less likely to be recognized for their performance when their work unit includes more women peers. We test our thesis using longitudinal data on non-monetary awards recognizing front-line police officers in the line of duty. While women officers were less likely to receive an award relative to men regardless of unit gender composition, this likelihood declined for all officers when a larger proportion of women worked in their unit. This devaluation occurred for awards recognizing routine and exceptional performance and regardless of any gender-typing of work tasks in the unit. Further, both men and women managers contributed to this devaluation in their nomination of officers for performance awards, with men managers devaluing men officers more strongly. Collectively, our findings identify a barrier to diversity initiatives aimed at increasing women’s representation in male-dominated occupations as incumbents become penalized for their association with work units that include more women peers.

15 November

How Effective Is (More) Money? Randomizing Unconditional Cash Transfer Amounts in the US

SPEAKER

Dr. Ania Jaroszewicz
Postdoctoral and Institute Fellow
Quantitative Social Science
Harvard Business School

ABSTRACT

We randomized over 5,000 US individuals in poverty to one of three conditions during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: receiving a one-time $500 unconditional cash transfer (UCT; half a month’s worth of total household income for the median participant; N = 1; 374), a $2,000 UCT (two months’ income; N = 699), or nothing (N = 3; 170). We measured the effects of the UCTs on participants’ financial well-being, psychological well-being, cognitive capacity, and physical health through surveys administered one week, six weeks, and 15 weeks after cash receipt. For 43% of our sample, we also observe bank account balances and financial transactions. While the cash transfers increased expenditures for a few weeks, we find no evidence that they had positive impacts on our pre-specied survey outcomes at any time point. We further nd no signicant differences between the $500 and $2,000 groups. These findings stand in stark contrast to the (incentivized) predictions of both experts and a nationally representative sample of laypeople, who|depending on the treatment group, outcome, and time period|estimated treatment effect sizes of +0.16 to +0.65 SDs. We test several explanations for these unexpected results, including via two survey experiments embedded in our trial. The data are most consistent with the notion that receiving some but not enough money made participants’ needs|and the gap between their resources and needs|more salient, which in turn generated feelings of distress.

03 November

Should Workplace Programs be Voluntary or Mandatory? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Mentorship

SPEAKER

Dr. Chris Stanton
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Entrepreneurial Management Unit
Harvard Business School

ABSTRACT

There is substantial variation in whether workplace training and mentorship programs are voluntary or mandatory. When programs are voluntary, many workers do not participate. We conducted a natural field experiment on a mentorship program in a sales call center where in one treatment arm, labeled the Mandatory-Condition, all subjects were either randomly assigned a mentor or not. A second treatment arm, labeled the Voluntary-Condition, required subjects to opt into the program before randomization into receiving a mentor. In the Mandatory-Condition, the mentorship treatment raised workers’ daily revenue by 17% in their first two months of tenure. In the Voluntary-Condition, those who opted out of the program were substantially less productive than those who opted in, and treatment gains conditional on program participation were negligible. Comparing the conditions indicates that treatment effects are largest for workers who are most likely to opt out of participating in the program. We conclude that workplace programs can raise the productivity of lower performing employees but these workers may require inducements or mandates to participate.

24 October

Who steps into the void? A third-party perspective on US sanctions on Huawei in international standard-setting

SPEAKER

Dr. Qingqing Chen
Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Economics
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the role of third-party companies in the standard-setting process when the cooperation between two groups of key players is exogenously disrupted. By jointly considering technology interdependence and cooperative interactions between players in an innovation ecosystem, the paper builds a framework to understand the third party’s technological and sociological salience in the face of disruptions. The paper argues that after a disruption, a third-party player will become more influential in the standard setting process if it (1) has the technical potential to replace either party in the disrupted relationship (the substitution effect); or (2) serves as an information broker, connecting the two groups of players (the brokerage effect). Social familiarity magnifies the substitution effect, and the technology proximity between the disconnected two parties negatively moderates the brokerage effect. The theory hypotheses are supported by evidence collected in 3GPP, an international telecommunication standard-setting organization, during the recent US sanctions on Huawei. By tracking 67 active third-party companies’ standard proposals in 535 3GPP meetings, I find supportive evidence for the substitution and the brokerage effects.

24 October

So Many Bosses, So Little Time: The Challenges of Establishing a Career in Project-Based Organizations

SPEAKER

Ms Minseo Baek
Ph.D. Candidate in Management (Human and Social Capital)
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT

How new employees get onboarded and established inside organizations is critical to their subsequent careers and organizational success. These initial adjustments are typically guided by a formal manager and team members within a clearly defined and stable team boundary. However, in project-based organizations, employees work with many managers and move around to different project teams. Therefore, their team membership is constantly in flux and they must take on many of the tasks of deciding which projects to work on and at what pace themselves in many of these settings. When new employees lack a formal structure and manager to guide them, how do they get onboarded and establish their careers successfully? Will it be equally challenging for all or more so for some than others? Drawing on an 18-month case study of junior attorneys at a top 50 US Big Law firm, I articulate how a fluid organizational structure creates a dilemma for junior attorneys when dealing with work requests from many partners. I also identify three approaches juniors take in response to this dilemma, which varies according to their conceptions of work requests and concomitant networking patterns with partners: Ally- Building, All-Encompassing, and Drifting. Interestingly, these approaches are closely related to their social background. My findings suggest that Ally-Building is the most effective, yet juniors from the firstgeneration college graduate background are predominantly All-Encompassing or Drifting due to their greater feelings of insecurity and difficulties in sourcing work. This study draws attention to the new challenges employees face in establishing themselves in the fluid work environment and the variations in their degree of success in addressing these challenges according to their social background.

24 October

Standing Out Only to Get Hammered Down: CEO Compensatory Actions and Board Ratcheting Responses

SPEAKER

Dr. Shelby Gai
Assistant Professor in Management
Eli Broad College of Business
Michigan State University

ABSTRACT

While research examining the motivation behind CEO goal attainment has often focused on monetary incentives, this study analyzes the social factors motivating CEO behavior. Drawing on self-determination theory, we consider how differences between the CEO and the board may motivate the former to engage in compensatory actions—defined as attempts to overcome feelings of inferiority or inadequacy by overperforming—due to the need for relatedness. We identify three dimensions of difference that could lead to CEO compensatory action in the form of goal over-attainment: 1) demographic differences; 2) occupational differences; and 3) status differences. We also address the possible consequences of CEO compensatory action by examining board responses in the form of ratcheting up subsequent performance targets. Bringing in research from the social identity perspective, we expect that compensating attempts by the CEO will lead to backlash such that boards will increase subsequent targets, and the likelihood for this backlash will be higher for CEOs that reflect one of the three difference dimensions. We test our hypotheses using an original dataset consisting of nearly 1000 firms from 2006-2019, and discuss the implications of our theoretical perspective and supportive empirical findings for future research on corporate governance, CEO/Board relationships, and compensatory actions.

20 October

Social capital in startups: Hiring through direct and indirect connections

SPEAKER

Prof. Olav Sorenson
Professor of Strategy
Faculty Research Director
University of California

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurs rely heavily on their social networks to recruit employees to their startups. On the one hand, these hiring patterns may stem from the fact that the information flowing through these relationships helps to resolve uncertainty on the part of both parties. On the other hand, it might reflect bias or favoritism in favor of the familiar. Using Danish registry data, we explore who most frequently hires through social connections, who gets hired, the probable mechanisms underlying these processes, and the implications of this network-based hiring for firm performance. On average, startup employees hired through connections appear to be of higher quality than those hired without them. Startups with more early employees hired through these channels perform better.

13 October

Environmental Transparency and Value Appropriation from Innovation: Evidence from US Hydraulic Fracturing 2000–2020

SPEAKER

Ms. Shirley Tang
Ph.D. Candidate in Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Olin Business School
Washington University in St. Louis

ABSTRACT

Firms are under greater pressure to be transparent about the negative externalities they impose on society. In some cases, these externalities are caused by proprietary technology on which they rely for competitive advantage. This creates a “transparency dilemma”; more transparency relieves public pressure but increases the risk of imitation. I argue that firms under greater public pressure can rely on complementary assets to strategically choose which technologies to disclose and which to keep secret. Using data on over five million chemical ingredients reported at more than 170,000 hydraulically fractured wells across the US, I find that trade secret rates in chemical reporting decrease by 10% with one standard deviation increase in the support for environmental regulation at the congressional district level. In addition, I find that this negative effect is stronger for firms possessing more complementary assets—geological resources specific for the chemical recipes, suggesting that such assets can substitute for secrecy in sustaining competitive advantage as firms disclose the technologies from which competitors cannot profit to appease stakeholders who expect minimum secrecy. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find that post-chemical disclosure regulations, firms in states with greater public pressure are more likely to hoard drilling permits. Greater public pressure is also associated with faster drilling, indicating the use of lead time as an additional value appropriation mechanism. Implications for competition and environmental policy are discussed.

11 October

Decoupling in International Business: Evidence, Drivers, Impact and Implications for IB Research

SPEAKER

Prof Peter Ping Li
Professor
Department of International Economics, Government and Business
Copenhagen Business School

ABSTRACT

We argue that decoupling, defined as the process of weakening interdependence between two nations, has been ongoing between China and the United States and is likely to accelerate, with major implications for IB and MNE strategies and management. We show how the world has both deglobalized and decoupled in recent years and discuss the underlying dynamics at the heart of decoupling and their implications for IB. We propose an initial framework of variations in decoupling by industry characteristics, and we outline novel and important questions for IB research growing out of our analysis. We conclude with a brief exposition of possible alternative scenarios.

05 October

A prosocial contributor or status grabber? How and why newcomer proactive knowledge sharing impacts inclusion perception via ambivalent coworker attributions

SPEAKER

Ms Zhishuang Guan
Ph.D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management
Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland

ABSTRACT

Newcomers are often referred to as “new blood” because they are expected to bring fresh insights to organizations. This research tackles how newcomer proactive knowledge sharing with coworkers impacts socialization outcomes. Drawing on attribution theory, I propose that newcomer proactive knowledge sharing is subjected to different attributions by coworkers, driving coworkers to demonstrate ambivalent reactions: due to its prosocial nature, proactive knowledge sharing can be attributed to newcomers’ prosocial motives, which in turn motivates coworkers to provide more socialization support. Meanwhile, because it shows off newcomers’ potential to make an impact, newcomer proactive knowledge sharing can also be interpreted as driven by status striving motives, which makes coworkers less likely to appreciate the knowledge shared. I further propose that the ambivalent coworker reactions will have opposing impacts on the extent to which newcomers perceive they are valuable and respected organizational insiders. In addition, I also identify two strategies that will make coworkers more prone to interpret newcomer proactive knowledge sharing as prosocial: newcomers’ information-seeking behavior and leaders’ encouragement of learning. I’m conducting two studies to test my predictions. In Study 1, I’m collecting large-scale multiphase, multisource, and multilevel field data. In Study 2, I plan to conduct a field experiment to test the interventions.