employee recruitment - Publications - Faculty & Research

May 2023
Article

Do Internal Control Weaknesses Affect Firms' Demand for Financial Skills? Evidence from U.S. Job Postings

By: Janet Gao, Kenneth J. Merkley, Joseph Pacelli and Joseph H. Schroeder

Ineffective internal controls over financial reporting often relates to a lack of qualified personnel with sufficient accounting and technical expertise. In this study, we examine whether firms respond to internal control failures by increasing their demand for... View Details

Keywords: Internal Controls; Labor Demand; Accounting; Financial Reporting; Experience and Expertise; Recruitment; Competency and Skills; Corporate Finance

Citation

SSRN

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13 Jun 2022
Research & Ideas

Extroverts, Your Colleagues Wish You Would Just Shut Up and Listen

Employees with outgoing personalities may seem like they could charm their way to the top of any company. But there’s a down side to being the life of the party, according to new research: People often assume their extroverted colleagues... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

28 Mar 2016
Research & Ideas

What's a Boss Worth?

We all have our boss horror stories. The underminer. The bad communicator. The credit hog. The snake. Then again, if we’re lucky, we’ve all had those amazing bosses as well—the supervisor who encourages all employees to take their work up... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Service

25 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Why Unqualified Candidates Get Hired Anyway

jobs require unclouded judgment—are as susceptible to the error as the rest of us. If this were the case, their research could be the crucial first step towards helping businesses and universities make smarter recruitment choices.... View Details

Keywords: by Anna Secino; Education; Employment

09 Jun 2022
HBS Case

From Truck Driver to Manager: US Foods’ Novel Approach to Staff Shortages

in March 2020, the pandemic only exacerbated a longstanding issue. The shortage of drivers to deliver food supplies to the roughly 300,000 restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, and universities serviced by US Foods was not its only staffing problem. The company also... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

31 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

It’s Not All About Pay: College Grads Want Jobs That ‘Change the World’

agencies, and compared prosocial and standard job postings with the same skill requirements—some 27,000 of them. To test the veracity of their work, the authors cross-referenced employee reviews from the website Glassdoor. They also... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

recognize and try to stay ahead of these changes brought by scale. Here is advice for the CEO/founders of early-stage companies, but it also applies to leaders of any scaling organization, even inside a large corporate entity. Leadership changes at around 100 View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

26 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

What Companies Want Most in a CEO: A Good Listener

period. “The demand for social skills is increasing in every category of the economy,” says Sadun, the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at HBS. “[But] it’s not about schmoozing.” Instead, headhunters and corporate View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

Google and Groupon, for instance, a higher percentage of employees work in sales than engineering or data mining. And at Facebook the salesforce's ability to translate 'likes' into advertisers will make or break that company's valuation... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

13 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

experimental field study, the researchers set out to test the efficacy of three distinct incentive schemes for employees in charge of assessing risk and issuing loans: the origination bonus (in which officers are rewarded a commission for... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking

01 May 2020
What Do You Think?

Does Remote Work Mix with Organizational Culture?

stimulates them.” She finds it “challenging to implement our ‘flexible’ mindset to our clients’ employees because upper management has not embraced it themselves.” Remote work can help some avoid a toxic culture. Alison Leuders comments,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

Abstract—Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

14 Jan 2014
First Look

First Look: January 14

Harvard Business Review Can a Strong Culture Be Too Strong? By: Garvin, David A. Abstract—The article presents a case study of a business enterprise with high employee turnover that is considering adopting a personnel management... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Aug 2006
HBS Case

On Managing with Bobby Knight and “Coach K”

experiences as managers when a stern approach helped set an employee on a more productive course. Soon, many students are rethinking their position. "The ones that say they couldn't imagine learning from someone like a Coach Knight,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Sports

16 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

The Most Successful Startups Have Hands-On Founders

Source: iPhoto Startup founders with a hands-on management style are more likely to retain employees and see their firms thrive, new research shows. The results are particularly applicable to knowledge-intensive technology firms, where... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

17 Jun 2011
HBS Case

KFC’s Explosive Growth in China

says. "They'd be walking down the hall jostling, pushing, laughing. This is a group that has worked together a long time—unusual in a country where experienced management talent is at a premium ." It turns out that unusual View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Food & Beverage

17 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Why a Blended Workforce May Be Key to Lasting Competitive Advantage

In recent years, companies have been anxious about the lack of skilled workers to fill pivotal jobs. But then came COVID-19 and a subsequent recession. The ensuing business turmoil and record-high unemployment may have temporarily distracted companies from their... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph B. Fuller

15 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

Looking For a Job? Some LinkedIn Connections Matter More Than Others

with Stanford University Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Professor Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and two LinkedIn employees and recent Stanford and MIT Ph.D. graduates Karthik Rajkumar and Guillaume Saint-Jacques,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

22 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries

is how Wipro approached the launch of this lean initiative," Staats says. "They didn't come out with big banners and say, 'OK, today your work is lean work, and yesterday it wasn't.' They started with a small group and recruited... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

October 2016
Case

The Quiet Ascension of LA Fitness

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

In 2016, LA Fitness was the largest chain of non-franchised fitness clubs in North America, operating 676 clubs, serving 4.9 million members, and generating revenues of over $1.9 billion. Founded by Chinyol Yi, Louis Welch, and Paul Norris in 1984, the privately held... View Details