Contributions published at Empirical Research in Business, Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management (Uschi Backes-Gellner)

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In this paper, we analyze whether structured PhD programs operate at optimal size and whether there are differences between different disciplinary fields. Theoretically, we postulate that the relation between the size of a PhD program and program performance is hump shaped. For our empirical analysis, we use hand-collected data on 86 Research Training Groups (RTGs) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). As performance indicators, we use (a) the number of completed PhDs and (b) the number of publications by RTG students (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers). Applying DEA with constant and variable returns to scale, we find that the optimal team size varies between 10 and 16 RTG students in the humanities and social sciences. In contrast, our empirical analysis does not uncover a systematic relation between size and performance for RTGs in the natural and life sciences.

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The leadership literature shows consistent, sizeable, and persistent effects indicating that female leaders face significant biases in the workplace compared with male leaders. However, the social identity leadership literature suggests these biases might be overcome at the team level by adjusting the number of women in the team. Building on this work, we conducted 2 multiple source, multiple wave, multi-level randomized field experiments to test if the gender composition of teams helps to restore equity in leadership evaluations of men and women. Across two samples of university students engaged in a team-building exercise, we find that male leaders are rated as more prototypical leaders than female leaders despite no differences in leaders’ self-reported prototypicality; however, this male leadership advantage is eliminated in gender-balanced teams. In Study 2, we extend this finding by supporting a moderated mediation model showing that leader gender and the team’s gender composition interact to relate to perceived trust in the leader, through the mediating mechanism of leader prototypicality. Findings support the social identity model of organizational leadership and indicate a boundary condition of role congruity theory, bolstering our need for a more social relational, context-based approach to leadership.

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This study presents evidence of heterogeneous returns to education over the wage distribution. The authors use instrumental variable quantile regression and data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey to identify the causal link between education and wages at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of wages. The results provide evidence that there is no unique causal effect of schooling and that for each individual the effect may deviate from those extensively documented by ordinary least squares or two-stage least squares. In particular, while ordinary quantile regression estimates increasing returns in the quantile index, once the endogeneity of schooling is taken into account the authors instead observe higher returns at lower quantiles of the wage distribution. Interpreting the quantile index as a measure of unobserved ability, the results suggest that higher-ability individuals have higher wages, but the slope of their wage-education profile is flatter than that for lower-ability individuals.

In this paper, we analyze whether structured PhD programs operate at optimal size and whether there are differences between different disciplinary fields. Theoretically, we postulate that the relation between the size of a PhD program and program performance is hump shaped. For our empirical analysis, we use hand-collected data on 86 Research Training Groups (RTGs) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). As performance indicators, we use (a) the number of completed PhDs and (b) the number of publications by RTG students (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers). Applying DEA with constant and variable returns to scale, we find that the optimal team size varies between 10 and 16 RTG students in the humanities and social sciences. In contrast, our empirical analysis does not uncover a systematic relation between size and performance for RTGs in the natural and life sciences.

Mixed methods systematically combine multiple research approaches—either in basic parallel, sequential, or conversion designs or in more complex multilevel or integrated designs. Multilevel mixed designs are among the most valuable and dynamic. Yet current multilevel designs, which are rare in the mixed methods literature, do not strongly integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches for use in one study. This lack of integration is particularly problematic for research in the organization sciences because of the variety of multilevel concepts that researchers study. In this article, we develop a multilevel mixed methods technique that integrates qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). This technique is among the first of the multilevel ones to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods in a single research design. Using Miles and Snow’s typology of generic strategies as an example of organizational configurations, we both illustrate how researchers may apply this technique and provide recommendations for its application and potential extensions. Our technique offers new opportunities for bridging macro and micro inquiries by developing strong inferences for testing, refining, and extending multilevel theories of organizational configurations.

This study estimates the earning losses of workers experiencing an involuntary job separation. We employ, for the first time in the earning losses literature, a Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood estimator with fixed effects that has several advantages with respect to conventional fixed effects models. The Poisson estimator allows considering the full set of involuntary separations, including those with zero labor market earnings because of unemployment. By including individuals with zero earnings and by using our new method, the loss in the year of separation becomes larger than in previous studies. The loss starts with roughly 30% and, although it quickly shrinks, it remains at around 15% in the following years. In addition, we find that compared to other reasons for separation, the earning loss pattern is unique for involuntary separations, because no other type of separation implies such permanent scarring. This latter finding makes us confident that the self-reported involuntariness of a separation is a reliable source of information.

This paper investigates the effect of two pupil-to-teacher ratio policies on test scores for children with different achievement levels. Using data from a large randomized experiment in early childhood, we estimate unconditional quantile treatment effects of small class and teacher aide, as compared to regular classes. For the small class intervention, results show that pupils in the middle of the achievement distribution profit the most from being assigned to a smaller class, whereas pupils at the bottom or at the top of the achievement distribution experience almost no gain in test scores. For the teacher aide intervention, the analysis reveals positive and significant effects for students at the bottom of the achievement distribution, an effect stronger for boys and disadvantaged pupils. The findings suggest that the average effects reported in traditional empirical studies on pupil-to-teacher ratio interventions provide an incomplete characterization of the impact on the achievement distribution, thus constituting a weak guide for policymakers.

Firms generate new knowledge that leads to innovations by recombining existing knowledge sources. A successful recombination depends on the availability of a knowledge stock (human capital pool) and the flow of knowledge within the firm (induced by HRM systems). While human resource theory expects complementarities between human capital pools and HRM systems, it does not explicitly address how knowledge exchange may be guaranteed or fostered. Moreover, empirical approaches neglect the complexity of such complementarities. In this study we develop a model that integrates a firm’s knowledge stock and flow into a knowledge creation (KC) system comprising four ideal types. This system explains the occurrence of superior incremental innovation performance. We empirically analyze the KC system by applying fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and identify configurations concurring with our ideal types. The results show that the use of human capital and HRM practices depends on firm size and industry dynamism.

A series of seminal theoretical papers argues that poaching of employees may hamper company-sponsored general training like apprenticeship training in Germany. Empirically however, the existence and extent of poaching still remains an open question. We provide a novel empirical strategy to identify poaching and investigate its causes and consequences. We find that only a few apprenticeship training firms in Germany are poaching victims or raiders. Poaching victim firms are more likely to be in a temporary downturn and raiding firms are more likely to increase their workforce. Poaching victims hardly change their training strategy after poaching. Thus, poaching is a transitory event and not a general threat to apprenticeship training. This is an important result for countries that intend to introduce apprenticeship type of training and need to convince firms to participate in their endeavour.

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