Speaker: Professor Daniel Muzio (School of Business and Society, University of York)
Hosted by: University of Liverpool Management School's Strategy, International Business and Entrepreneurship Group
Open to: All University of Liverpool staff and students, with no sign-up needed
Date: Wednesday 20 September 2023
Time: 13:00 - 14:30
Place: Management School - Seminar Room 2 (first floor)
Abstract
Knowledge-intensive professional organizations rely on the human and social capital of their workers for competitive advantage.
Consequently, they have an incentive to recruit high caliber professionals with the expectation of harnessing those workers’ expertise and relationships and improve group and organizational outcomes.
However, existing research challenges the notion that merely recruiting high caliber professionals is sufficient to improve group and organizational outcomes.
This study investigates how intra- and inter-group dynamics moderate the relationship between recruiting a high caliber professional into a group and that group’s quality of professional business services provided to its buyers.
Using a longitudinal panel dataset of the largest UK corporate law firms between 2001 and 2017, we show that while recruiting a high caliber professional into a group (legal practice) is associated with a lower quality rating of services experienced by buyers relative to groups that did not hire a high caliber professional, this negative effect is weaker when the average quality of the incumbent professionals in the group is higher, yet stronger when the organization comprises a higher number of other high-quality groups.
Our study contributes to the strategic human capital and employee mobility literatures and has practical implications for managers.
Keywords
Professional Service Firms, Employee Mobility, Strategic Human Capital, Group Dynamics, Quality Performance
Speaker
Daniel Muzio is a Professor of Management at the School for Business and Society, University of York.
He is a leading scholar in organisation and management of Professional Services Firms, sociology of the professions, organisational and professional wrongdoing, and diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity.
Daniel has published in several leading management, sociology and law journals, including Accounting, Organization and Society, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Economic Geography, Sociology and the British Journal of Sociology.
His recent books are: Professional Occupations and Organizations, published by Cambridge University Press; Professionalism and Entrepreneurship, published by Routledge; and Oxford Handbook of Professional Services Firms, published by Oxford University Press.
Daniel is a General Editor of the Journal of Management Studies and a founding editor of the Journal of Professions and Organisation.
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