We examine how firms' prepandemic investments in human capital influence their use of workforce reductions and layoffs (hereafter, workforce reductions) as a response to financial pressures during ...the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. We contend that workforce reductions must be examined in the context of firms' broader financial and resource orchestration environments. First, we suggest that firms' relative exposure to pandemic financial pressures (PFPs) will determine their need to cut costs during the pandemic. Second, we argue that a firm's prior investments in employees' human capital will reduce the attractiveness of workforce reductions as a cost-cutting response to PFPs, as human capital investment (HCI) increases the value of employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities and motivation, thus inducing firms to seek alternative measures to reduce costs. We then argue that the attenuating influence of HCI on the effect of PFPs on workforce reductions will be stronger when HCI is matched with greater investments in physical capital, as employees' human capital will create more value-and will translate to a bigger loss following employee departures-in such circumstances. We demonstrate support for our hypotheses in a sample of 1,364 U.S. banks using data from quarterly Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reports, news articles, and Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) Act filings through the fourth quarter of 2020. We discuss implications for our understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organizations and employees and for research on resource orchestration and human capital.
As most careers now span across organizations, former employees represent a growing source of potential hires for many organizations. Yet, we know little about whether and when firms benefit by ...rehiring former employees. To answer these questions, we adopt a knowledge-based view of hiring to develop new theory about how returning former employees' ("boomerangs") post-hire performance might differ from that of external hires who have no previous experience with the firm ("new hires"). We theorize that, relative to new hires, boomerangs' familiarity with the organization's social system will allow them to more effectively engage in coordination and overcome internal resistance from organizational incumbents. As a consequence, boomerangs should have a particular advantage in roles that require a higher degree of coordination and in units that are likely to be more resistant to outsiders. Comparing the post-hire performance of 2,053 boomerangs and 10,858 new hires over an eight-year period in a large health care organization, we find that, upon being (re)hired into the organization, boomerangs outperform new hires in their initial job spell and that this performance advantage is larger in jobs requiring greater internal coordination and in contexts characterized by greater internal resistance to external hires.
In recent decades, scholars’ and practitioners’ interest in star performers and high‐potential employees (HiPos) has increased dramatically. To date, however, researchers have considered these two ...classifications of exceptional talent in relative isolation of one another, despite the fact that they are widely considered to comprise organizations’ most valuable employees. The current article identifies and explores key intersections in the heretofore‐siloed streams of research on star employees and HiPos. In so doing, we identify core assumptions, highlight questions that emerge at focal intersections, and offer a foundation for the cross‐fertilization of insights to strengthen the scholarly and practical impact of inquiry related to both groups. We then consider the implications of four significant recent trends in the world of work – increased employee mobility; greater focus on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace; cross‐cultural issues; and the broader set of technological changes that are shaping the workplace – for research and practice related to stars and HiPos. Along the way, we highlight the integral and path‐breaking contributions of publications in Personnel Psychology to our knowledge about organizations’ best talent.
Building on the notion of cumulative advantage, we undertake a nuanced examination of how collaborating with a star affects attributions of credit and blame to nonstars in collaborative endeavors. ...Situating our inquiry in the US hedge fund industry, we hypothesize two‐way interactions predicting that collaboration with a star comanager will weaken both the positive effect of comanaged fund success and the negative effect of comanaged fund failure on nonstar managers’ professional status attainment (i.e., the status of a manager's subsequent employing firm). Specifically, we argue that the involvement of a star comanager will weaken prospective employers’ attributions for positive or negative performance to a focal nonstar manager, due to presumptions of the star's disproportionate influence in collaborative decisions. We then theorize a series of three‐way interactions specifying the roles of other signals of a nonstar manager's competence in this process. More precisely, we argue that a nonstar's performance outside the collaborative context and the status of the nonstar's current employer will weaken the dampening effect of comanaging with a star in the context of success and strengthen the favorable, blame‐reducing effect of comanaging with a star in the context of failure. Therefore, we suggest that nonstars who can signal their competence with these independent status signals will achieve greater professional status attainment than will those lacking such signals following both collaborative success and collaborative failure with a star. Our primary analyses support our hypotheses, while our supplementary analyses offer corroborative support for theorized mechanisms and evidence to address alternative explanations.
Increasingly mobile careers mean that today's hiring firms encounter external prospective employees who hold professional affiliations with more organizations (e.g., former employers) and groups ...(e.g., project teams) than ever before. This trend invites attention to a collection of hiring practices in which a firm leverages prospective hires’ professional affiliations to increase the firm's access to and facilitate the efficient selection of individuals in a particular labor market talent segment––hereafter, hiring by professional affiliation (HBPA). We review research on six HBPA practices: acqui‐hiring, boomerang hiring, competitor poaching, formative affiliation hiring, liftouts, and supply chain hiring. Using Podolny's pipes and prisms metaphor, we show that research on HBPA has emphasized hiring organizations’ efforts to (a) leverage prospective hires’ focal professional affiliations as prisms to facilitate matching between the organization and new hires, and (b) leverage new hires’ focal affiliations as pipes to access resources otherwise difficult to acquire. Transcending the focus of extant research on individual HBPA practices, we then develop propositions elaborating the conditions under which HBPA is likely to yield varied consequences for firms’ workforce composition and organizational capabilities––ranging from replicating the status quo to increasing workforce diversity and organizational capacity for innovation and change.
The ROTSE‐III Robotic Telescope System Akerlof, C. W.; Kehoe, R. L.; McKay, T. A. ...
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
01/2003, Letnik:
115, Številka:
803
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB 990123 convincingly demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a program of rapid follow‐up observations of gamma‐ray ...bursts, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next‐generation instrument, ROTSE‐III, that will continue the search for fast optical transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount, enclosure, environmental sensing and protection, and data acquisition. Each is described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful in similar contexts elsewhere.
The origin of γ-ray bursts (GRBs) has been enigmatic since their discovery. The situation improved dramatically in 1997, when the rapid availability of precise coordinates, for the bursts allowed the ...detection of faint optical and radio afterglows - optical spectra thus obtained have demonstrated conclusively that the bursts occur at cosmological distances. But, despite efforts by several groups, optical detection has not hitherto been achieved during the brief duration of a burst. Here we report the detection of bright optical emission from GRB990123 while the burst was still in progress. Our observations begin 22 seconds after the onset of the burst and show an increase in brightness by a factor of 14 during the first 25 seconds; the brightness then declines by a factor of 100, at which point (700 seconds after the burst onset) it falls below our detection threshold. The redshift of this burst, z 1.6 (refs 8, 9), implies a peak optical luminosity of 5× 1049 erg s−1. Optical emission from γ-ray bursts has been generally thought to take place at the shock fronts generated by interaction of the primary energy source with the surrounding medium, where the γ-rays might also be produced. The lack of a significant change in the γ-ray light curve when the optical emission develops suggests that the γ-rays are not produced at the shock front, but closer to the site of the original explosion.
In this study, we theorize that chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) peer pay comparisons influence their decisions to engage in layoffs, and we consider the conditions under which layoffs deliver ...“payoffs” in the form of increases in subsequent CEO relative pay. Our results indicate that CEOs receiving compensation below their peers are significantly more likely to announce layoffs in the subsequent year, relative to those receiving compensation above their peers. Further, we find that the relationship between layoffs and subsequent changes in CEO relative pay depends on postlayoff changes in firm performance, with CEOs in firms with the largest performance gains receiving the largest increases in relative pay. We also show that our results are robust to an alternative operationalization of CEO relative pay. We provide evidence that external social comparisons may have predictable consequences for both CEOs’ propensities to engage in particular strategic actions and future changes in CEOs’ relative pay.
Macrocycle formation that relies upon trans metal coordination of appropriately placed pyridine ligands within an arylene ethynylene construct provides rapid and reliable access to molecular rotators ...encapsulated within macrocyclic stators. Showing no significant close contacts to the central rotators, X-ray crystallography of Ag
-coordinated macrocycles provides plausibility for unobstructed rotation or wobbling of rotators within the central cavity. Solid-state
C NMR of Pd
-coordinated macrocycles supports the notion of unobstructed movement of simple arenes in the crystal lattice. Solution
H NMR studies indicate complete and immediate macrocycle formation upon the introduction of Pd
to the pyridyl-based ligand at room temperature. Moreover, the formed macrocycle is stable in solution; a lack of significant changes in the
H NMR spectrum upon cooling to -50 °C is consistent with the absence of dynamic behavior. The synthetic route to these macrocycles is expedient and modular, providing access to rather complex constructs in four simple steps involving Sonogashira coupling and deprotection reactions.
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