Contributions published at Human Resource Management

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Quotas are increasingly popular instruments to increase women’s stagnant and scarce representation in executive leadership. Existing research on gender quotas largely explores its effects on performance, the process through which board diversity affects on organisations. However, public opinion is also important for the firm performance (e.g., firm reputation or stock price), but has not been examined more generally or in the wake of gender quotas. Thus, the current study examines public reactions to the introduction of gender quotas, exploiting a naturally occurring federally mandated gender quota in Germany, which was announced in March 2015 and implemented in January 2016. For comparison, we examine public reactions before and after the policy change in Germany, as well as public disclosure in neighbouring German-speaking Switzerland. Articles and public comments in response to the articles from highly circulated newspaper will be collected over a one-year period (March 2015 – March 2016) via keyword search. Article comments will be coded for theoretically derived thematic content (e.g., affectivity, social processes), to make various comparisons. Several significant differences are found, like for instance with respect to the time of day at which the comments have been posted and between the comments on German and Swiss newspaper articles. Furthermore, it was examined whether a “morning morality effect” or evidence for “ego depletion” is present if comments are given later in the day.

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Women are missing in leadership positions, largely driven by a crux of employment exodus occurring during the early career phase. Importantly, gender stereotypes are also heightened at this time due to expectations of impending childbearing and organizational costs, which asymmetrically influence women compared to men (i.e., the “maybe baby” effect). The present research aims to document this “maybe baby” effect in the everyday employment experiences of early career childless women. In a two-wave survey study (N = 421), we examined target’s experiences of workplace incivility (i.e., subtle disrespect) and career outcomes one year later (i.e., career identity salience, career satisfaction, and career withdrawal cognitions). As expected, women experience more incivility than men, but only for childless employees. Although being a woman is not directly associated with career outcomes, it is indirectly linked via experiences of incivility, but only for childless employees. Thus, gender stereotypes may drive coworkers’ expectations that young women have higher risks of career interruption and dependability than men, which influences their everyday treatment of childless women with multiple downstream career consequences.  

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This two-study paper contributes to turnover literature by exploring the mechanism of turnover contagion. First study is conducted in China and using sample of 168 employees nested in 38 teams investigates the effect of team-level turnover rate on individual-level on-the-job embeddedness of stayers. Results indicate that when controlling for relevant Human Resource Management practices as well as demographics, team turnover rate is negatively associated with stayer’s on-the-job embeddedness. The second study is conducted in Switzerland. Using cross sectional sample of 256 employees we explore the role of stayer’s evaluation of the loss of ties resulting from team turnover in terms of its relationship with turnover intention. We find that after controlling for job satisfaction, organizational commitment, employability and demographics, stayer’s perception of the loss of ties due to turnover in the last 12 months relates positively to their turnover intention. Moreover, we find that perceived external prestige buffers the positive relationship between stayer’s evaluation of the loss of ties and stayer’s turnover intention.

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This work is concerned with the mediation of the corporate culture and the resulting as well as targeted differentiation between employers by internet-based means of recruiting and employer branding within the target group of students and university graduates in Switzerland. After a funded and theory-guided reappraisal, this work will present an online questioning with different enterprise representatives in order to gain deepened findings about the actual usage of recruiting and employer branding channels and their potential to transport the corporate culture. It will be presented that first of all, conversations in the context of recruiting events, but also enterprise visits, enterprise presentations, a stand visit at career fairs, as well as the reception in the enterprise itself are able to transport the enterprise culture to potential candidates. Through those channels, the diverse components of the enterprise culture can be transported, but also components which are seen as important by students and graduates. The author if this thesis presents solutions thanks to which internet-based recruiting and employer branding channels are able to transfer the same components of the corporate culture. Important in this context are means of a two way-communication to transfer to virtual conversations, e.g. via social media and virtual career fairs. Also, other internet-based recruiting and employer branding channels show potential for transferring the corporate culture, but not in the same way as the above-mentioned channels. All these channels have in common that they offer a high reach amongst the relevant target groups and are in part relatively and comparably cheap. The central findings of this thesis are the usage of a compound from different internet-based channels, an increase in the virtual communication between enterprises and applicants, as well as the use of augmented social media and virtual career fairs. Moreover, the author claims that the usage of so-called virtual consultating-hours and the augmented presence on internet-based recruiting and employer branding channels, for example in the shape of video-supported reports about internal enterprise events and enterprise visits, can help transporting the corporate culture in the future.

The present master thesis examines the field of the recruiting channel called active sourcing. Active sourcing is performed internally within an organization. It is defined as locating talent-ed, experienced, suitable and motivated individuals and personally getting in contact with them. The goal of this work is to develop qualitative and quantitative measures in order to evaluate the success of the active sourcing channel. Qualitative measures, such as sourcer satisfaction and candidate experience, are distinguished into an organizational and candidates’ perspective. Quantitative measures are parted into input and output variables. An input varia-ble is the time spent to execute active sourcing. An output variable is the number of candi-dates recruited through this cannel. Finally, the return on investment ratio for active sourcing is presented. It captures the saved money from not hiring an external recruitment company to occupy a vacancy as benefit versus the expenditure for the internal sourcer as costs.

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The demographic change will lead to a higher average age and more age hetero-geneity in the workforce of organisations. This master thesis analyses opportunities and risks of an age-considering human resource management. Therefore, nine interviews with human resources managers of different organisations were conducted. The results show benefits of age diversity in recruitment, marketing, exchange of know-how and innovative abilities. However, a mixed-aged workforce also includes risks such as communication and cooperati-on difficulties, problems of older people with technology, pressure or pace of work as well as conflicts due to diverging values. Recommendations to manage an age-diverse workforce are given. Firm-specific characteristics (e.g. task-related or qualification-specific requirements) which have an impact on the opportunities and risks as well as the design of an age-considering human resource management are discussed. Key Words. Age Diversity (Management), Age-diverse Workforce, Age-related Skills.