Matthew Bidwell

• Martine Haas, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, Matthew Bidwell, Giovanna Capponi (2023), Is Moving Internationally for a Job a Smart Move?, Harvard Business Review (digital article).
• Giovanna Capponi, Matthew Bidwell, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, Martine Haas (2023), Global Careers and Compensation: From Initial Penalties to a Superglobal Premium (forthcoming), Academy of Management. Abstract

  This paper examines the relationship between international mobility and financial compensation for knowledge workers pursuing business careers. While some theoretical arguments suggest that international mobility may lead to higher pay, others suggest that it may lead to performance problems and lack of recognition, which could reduce financial rewards. Empirical research on the topic is limited, with cross-sectional data providing little insight into the relationship between international mobility and compensation over time. Our study overcomes this challenge by using a panel dataset on the career histories of 1,322 MBA graduates. The results reveal a curvilinear relationship between international mobility and compensation over time. Making one or two international moves can have substantial negative effects on pay. However, further moves are associated with pay growth, and there is some evidence that those who move countries multiple times (“superglobals”) obtain substantially higher pay. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on international mobility and business careers.

• Matthew Bidwell, Kira Choi, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo (2022), Brokered Careers: The Role of Search Firms in Managerial Career Mobility, Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Abstract

  We explore how career paths are shaped by the involvement of search firms in hiring. Drawing on theories of market intermediation, we argue that search firms constrain horizontal moves across functions and industries by favoring workers from within the same function and industry as the role being filled. Using survey data on 1,342 job moves undertaken by 816 MBA alumni, we find that individuals who move jobs through a search firm experience lower horizontal mobility than those who move through other means. Our findings also suggest that these results are not driven by firms’ decisions to use a search firm to fill the job. In supplementary analyses, we find no evidence that the job matches that are formed using search firms result in a better fit between workers and employers. Overall, the findings point to the significant institutional role that search firms play in managerial careers.

• Minseo Baek, Matthew Bidwell, JR Keller (2021), My Manager Moved! The Effects of Supervisor Mobility on Subordinate Career Outcomes, Organization Science, forthcoming (). Abstract

  How do managers’ moves across jobs affect the subordinates they leave behind? Manager mobility disrupts established manager-subordinate relationships, as subordinates must now learn to work with a replacement. We explore how this relational disruption affects subordinates’ objective career success – specifically their financial rewards and subsequent promotion chances. We argue that manager mobility may have both positive and negative implications for subordinate outcomes. The loss of an established relationship may reduce subordinates’ performance and managers’ propensity to reward them; on the other hand, relational disruption may make subordinates more willing and able to seek out valuable opportunities elsewhere in the organization. We also argue that these effects are likely to be greatest for those subordinates who had worked with the previous manager for longer. Using eight years of personnel data from the US offices of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, we show how managers’ mobility is associated with a decrease in subordinates’ financial rewards, but an increase in their promotion prospects.

• Virginia Doellgast, Matthew Bidwell, Alexander Colvin (2020), New Directions in Employment Relations Theory: Understanding Fragmentation, Identity and Legitimacy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, forthcoming (). Abstract

  This article introduces the special issue “Toward new theories in employment relations.” The authors summarize the history of employment relations theory and reflect on the implications for new theory development of recent disruptive changes in the economy and society. Three sets of changes are identified: the growing complexity of actors in the employment relationship, an increased emphasis on identity as a basis for organizing and extending labor protections, and the growing importance of norms and legitimacy as both a constraint on employer action and a mobilizing tool. The articles in this special issue advance new frameworks to analyze these changes and their implications for the future of employment relations.

• Matthew Bidwell (2020), No Vacancies? Building Theory on How Organizations Move People Across Jobs, Advances in Strategic Management , 41 (), pp. 153-174. Abstract

  Mobility processes, the routines that organizations use to move employees into and across jobs, are a critical determinant of the way that human capital is allocated within organizations and careers developed. Most existing work on these mobility processes has examined processes in which mobility is tightly coupled to the filling of vacancies. There is substantial evidence, though, that many organizations adopt very different processes for managing mobility. In this theory paper, I compare vacancy-based, “job-pull” systems with alternative, “person-push” systems in which mobility is keyed to employees’ attainment of performance and skill thresholds to explain how and why mobility processes vary. I identify two, inter-related dimensions along which mobility processes vary: whether their decisions processes emphasize the need to match employees to tasks versus providing predictable rewards; and whether the system of jobs that people move between prioritizes flexibility or control of agency costs. I use these dimensions to predict when organizations will adopt different mobility processes, and how those processes will affect employees’ mobility.

• Tracy Anderson and Matthew Bidwell (2019), Outside insiders: understanding the role of contracting in the careers of managerial workers, Organization Science, (forthcoming) (). Abstract

  We explore the role that contracting plays within the careers of managerial workers. Contracting distances workers from organizational coordination and politics, aspects of organizational life that are often central to the managerial role. Nonetheless, managerial workers make up a substantial proportion of the contracting workforce. Qualitative interviews with managerial contractors indicate that the tension between the natures of contracting and managerial work means that managerial contractors carry out substantially more bounded work than do regular employees, and that this boundedness can shape the role that contracting plays in their careers. Examining the employment histories of MBA alumni of a US business school, we show that workers with fewer subordinates and greater personal demands are more likely to enter contracting. We also find that contractors report stronger work-life balance, but receive lower pay both while contracting and in subsequent regular employment. While prior research has highlighted the financial benefits and temporal demands of contracting for highly skilled workers, our findings introduce important boundary conditions into our understanding of high-skill contracting: the nature of the occupation is critical.

• Matthew Bidwell and Ethan Mollick (2015), Shifts and Ladders: Comparing the Role of Internal and External Mobility in Executive Careers, Organiztion Science, 26 (6), pp. 1629-1645. Abstract
  Workers can build their careers either by moving into a different job within their current organization or else by moving into a new job within a different organization. We use matching perspectives on job mobility to develop predictions about the different roles that those internal and external moves will play within their careers. We propose that internal and external mobility are associated with very different rewards: upwards progression into a job with greater responsibilities is much more likely to happen through internal mobility, but external moves will nonetheless offer similar increases in pay, as employers seek to attract external hires. We also examine how these predictions change when moves take workers across job functions as well as when external mobility happens involuntarily. Analyses of data on the careers on MBA alumni are used to support these arguments. Despite growing interest in boundaryless careers, our findings indicate that internal and external mobility play very different roles in executives’ careers, with upwards mobility still happening overwhelmingly within organizations.
• Matthew Bidwell, Shinjae Won, Roxana Barbulescu, Ethan Mollick (2015), I Used to Work at Goldman Sachs! How Organizational Status Creates Rents in the Market for Human Capital, Strategic Management Journal, 36 (8), pp. 1164-1173. Abstract

  How does employer status benefit firms in the market for general human capital? On the one hand, high status employers are better able to attract workers, who value the signal of ability that employment at those firms provides. On the other hand, that same signal can help workers bid up wages and capture the value of employers’ status. Exploring this tension, we argue that high status firms are able to hire higher ability workers than other firms, and do not need to pay them the full value of their ability early in the career, but must raise wages more rapidly than other firms as those workers accrue experience. We test our arguments using unique survey data on careers in investment banking.

• Matthew Bidwell and JR Keller (2014), Within or without? How firms combine internal and external labor markets to fill jobs, Academy of Management Journal, 57 (). Abstract

  We examine which jobs are more likely to be filled by internal mobility (specifically, promotions and lateral transfers) versus hiring. Building off the assumptions of transaction cost accounts of employment, we develop new theory that focuses on the interaction between the problems of evaluating and integrating external hires on the one hand and the incentive costs of failing to promote eligible workers on the other. These arguments lead us to predict how three specific characteristics of jobs – demands for firm-specific skills, performance variability, and supply of internal candidates – affect how those jobs are staffed.

  Using seven years of personnel data spanning all jobs from the US offices of a large investment bank, we find that jobs with higher performance variability and a larger grade ratio of junior to senior workers are more likely to be filled by internal mobility. We also find evidence that the effects of performance variability are contingent on the grade ratio, only affecting staffing decisions when the firm does not face strong pressures to promote junior workers in order to maintain incentives. Contrary to expectations, we find no effect for firm-specific skills.

• All Research from Matthew Bidwell »

Past Courses

• EDCL7110 - Marketing For Executives

  This course is embedded in block of three courses focusing on business acumen. This course focuses on strategic marketing. Topics covered include research and practices related to branding, managing innovation, customer contact and customer service, communication in business, crisis communication, the interaction of marketing and strategy, and the impact of marketing on organizational effectiveness. Prerequisite: Enrollment in Penn Chief Learning Officer program.

• EDCL7120 - Finance For Executives

  This course is embedded in a block of three courses focusing on business acumen. This course focuses on business and corporate finance. Topics include basic financial tools, and practices, global finance, micro- and macroeconomics in the context of business finance, strategy and decision making, the relationship between strategy and finance, strategy execution, mergers and acquisition, and governance. Prerequisite: Enrollment in Penn Chief Learning Officer program.

• EDCL7130 - Management Forexecutives

  This course is embedded block of three courses focusing on business acumen. This course focuses on topics impacting the modern business world, as well as topics impacting not-for-profit, government and non-governmental organizations. Specific topics include global trends and strategy, people analytics, talent management, employee engagement, entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship. Prerequisite: Enrollment in Penn Chief Learning Officer program.

• MGMT6110 - Managing Est Enterprise

  This course is about managing large enterprises that face the strategic challenge of being the incumbent in the market and the organizational challenge of needing to balance the forces of inertia and change. The firms of interest in this course tend to operate in a wide range of markets and segments, frequently on a global basis, and need to constantly deploy their resources to fend off challenges from new entrants and technologies that threaten their established positions. The class is organized around three distinct but related topics that managers of established firms must consider: strategy, human and social capital, and global strategy.

• MGMT7930 - People Analytics

  This course examines the use of data to improve how people are managed within organizations. Recent years have seen a growing movement to bring more science to how we manage people. In some cases, that means ensuring that whatever practices and approaches we adopt are backed up by solid evidence as to their effectiveness. Often, organizations will seek to go further, analyzing their own data to identify problems and learn what is working and what is not in their own context. This course applies the insights of the people analytics movement to help students become better managers and more critical analysts within their organizations. The course aims to develop students in three specific ways. First, it provides students with an up-to-the-minute grounding in current evidence about managing people, providing a knowledge base that can ensure that their future management is guided by best practices. Second, it develops the skills and understanding necessary to be thoughtful, critical consumers of evidence on people management, allowing them to make the most of the analysis available to them as they make people decisions. Third, it provides guidance and practice in conducting people analytics, preparing students to gather data of their own, and making them more skilled analysts. The course addresses these topics through a mixture of lecture, case discussion, and hands on exploration of a variety of data sets.

• MGMT7940 - Understanding Careers

  This course examines the structure of executive careers in order to help understand how those careers can be managed most effectively. By drawing on extensive economic, sociological and psychological research on careers, we will examine such questions as when executives should move on to the next job or evenchange fields altogether, and what are effective means of finding jobs, achieving promotions, managing networks, and achieving work-life balance. The first few sessions of the course explore the basic building blocks of the career, outlining our knowledge on the different orientations that individuals take to their careers, how approaches to the career change as people get older, and how different kinds of job moves within and across firms advance careers. The second part of the course explores in more detail the social resources that affect careers, notably social networks and relationships with mentors. The third section of the course then examines a number of the most important and difficult issues affecting modern careers, including making successful transitions, the effects of gender on careers, work life balance, and international careers.

• MGMT9700 - Research Methods in Mgmt

  Students taking the course will be introduced to the seminal readings on a given method, have a hands-on discussion regarding their application often using a paper and dataset of the faculty member leading the discussion. The goal of the course is to make participants more informed users and reviewers of a wide variety of methodological approaches to Management research including Ordinary Least Squares, Discrete Choice, Count Models, Panel Data, Dealing with Endogeneity, Survival/failure/event history and event studies, experiments, factor analysis and structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, networks, comparative qualitative methods, coding of non-quantitative data, unstructured text and big data simulations.

• OIDD7930 - People Analytics

  This course examines the use of data to improve how people are managed within organizations. Recent years have seen a growing movement to bring more science to how we manage people. In some cases, that means ensuring that whatever practices and approaches we adopt are backed up by solid evidence as to their effectiveness. Often, organizations will seek to go further, analyzing their own data to identify problems and learn what is working and what is not in their own context. This course applies the insights of the people analytics movement to help students become better managers and more critical analysts within their organizations. The course aims to develop students in three specific ways. First, it provides students with an up-to-the-minute grounding in current evidence about managing people, providing a knowledge base that can ensure that their future management is guided by best practices. Second, it develops the skills and understanding necessary to be thoughtful, critical consumers of evidence on people management, allowing them to make the most of the analysis available to them as they make people decisions. Third, it provides guidance and practice in conducting people analytics, preparing students to gather data of their own, and making them more skilled analysts. The course addresses these topics through a mixture of lecture, case discussion, and hands on exploration of a variety of data sets.

• Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2020
• ASQ Scholarly Contribution Award, 2017
• Best overall paper award, Careers Division, Academy of Management, 2014
• Winner, John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award, Labor and Employment Relations Association (recognizing outstanding research by a recent entrant to the field), 2014
• Finalist, Industry Studies Association-INFORMS Best Paper Award, 2013
• Finalist, Best Paper Award, Strategic Management Society Conference, 2012
• Scholarly Achievement Award for best published paper in HR for 2011, Academy of Management HR division, 2012
• Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Fellowship, 2012
• Outstanding Reviewer Award, Academy of Management Review, 2009
• Outstanding Reviewer Award (given to top 5% of division conference reviewers), Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management, 2009
• Outstanding Reviewer Award (given to top 5% of division conference reviewers), Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management, 2006
• Recipient, Wilson Fellowship, 2000
• Kennedy Scholar, 1996

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Why ETFs Are Scoring Over Mutual Funds, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/29/2024
• The AI-Savvy Leader: Building the Leadership Skills to Make AI Work, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/29/2024
• Summer Reading: Wharton Faculty Picks, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/23/2024
• What Does Your Writing Style Say About You?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/23/2024
• How to Align Private Equity Motives with Nursing Home Outcomes, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/22/2024
• Baby Bust | Stewart Friedman, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/16/2024
• Why Are Private Equity Firms Buying Mental Health Clinics?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/15/2024
• Who Benefits in the Deal Between Reddit and OpenAI?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/15/2024
• How Behavioral Factors Shape Retirement Wealth, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/15/2024
• Stocks for the Long Run | Jeremy Siegel, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/09/2024