Executive Search Firms Research Articles

Navigating Our New Reality

Navigating Our New Reality

Increasing Gender Diversity in Higher Education Leadership: The Role of Executive Search Firms

Women are under-represented in leadership roles in United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Existing scholarship focuses on institutional barriers, which include cognitive bias and entrenched homosocial cultures, rather than external factors such as the use of executive search firms (ESFs) in recruitment and selection. Recent research indicates that the use of ESFs is increasing for senior HEI appointments. This analysis offers insights on these firms’ involvement from a gender equality perspective, based on the results from a study that used a ‘virtuous circle’ approach to research and knowledge exchange. The requirement for HEIs to pay ‘due regard’ to equality considerations under the Public Sector Equality Duty provides a framework for analysis. This paper provides new insights on the dynamics within recruitment processes when ESFs are involved and on how a legislative approach can leverage better equality outcomes.

Patterns of recruitment of academic leaders to Australian universities and implications for the future of higher education

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on research conducted to understand key factors impacting the recruitment and selection of senior academic leaders in Australian universities. A key finding emerging from this research was an increasing reliance on executive search firms when recruiting senior academic leaders. This reliance is driven by a range of factors including an ageing and contracting pool of potential academic leaders, growing competition domestically and internationally and the declining attractiveness of academia as a sustainable career in the context of increased casualisation of the academic workforce. Concurrently, workforce planning and succession planning have not been a high priority for many universities. As a result, Australian universities are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit senior academic leaders without the use of executive search firms. These findings have significant implications for the higher education sector in Australia and warrant further research.

Common Threats and Managing Reputation in Executive Search Firms

AbstractA free video abstract to accompany this article can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IziwDorbeGUThis paper provides important insights into how executive search firms can successfully manage their reputations to overcome major threats to their organizations. The paper focuses on three threats faced by executive search firms: the global financial crisis; questions around the sector's professional status; and the proliferation of social media for recruitment. Our data show that there was not a single coherent response from firms, but a piecemeal approach that focused on three forms of reputation management. First, diversifying service offerings; second, highlighting their symbolic capital; and third, connecting their firms to clients and candidates through partners. Building on our data and the theoretical literature, we provide a framework for understanding how professional service firms can manage their reputations in response to common threats, based on three categories from the English idiom ‘keep up with the Joneses’. First, moving away from the Joneses; second, fencing out the Joneses; third, networking more than the Joneses. We provide theoretical and practical insights around how organizations can manage their reputations in response to threats which are common across sectors.

New insights in reproducing transnational corporate elites: the labour market intermediation of executive search in the pursuit of global talent in Singapore

AbstractIn this article, I provide new theoretical and empirical insights into the reproduction of transnational corporate elites through the process of people moving between firms’ internal labour markets rather than from expatriation. Theoretically, the article advances understandings of the reproduction of transnational corporate elites by drawing on a pioneering engagement with global talent, transnational elites and labour market intermediary discourses. I generate these new theoretical insights through an original case study of how global executive search firms in Singapore create pipelines for the recruitment of transnational corporate elites between firms’ internal labour markets. The findings also highlight the vital role of Singapore's neoliberal labour market practices, as well as its foreign talent programme to ‘win the war for talent'. By situating this research on the agency of executive search in reproducing Singapore's transnational corporate elite, the article's key contribution is to decentre North American and Western perspectives on the reproduction of knowledge on transnational corporate elites.

Sustaining Sustainability in Large Real Estate Investment Management Firms

Executive SummaryIn this exploratory paper, we examine real estate managerial decisions; specifically, who is responsible in large real estate investment management for sustaining sustainability at the firm and asset operational level. These decisions are distinct from the acquisition of sustainable buildings. We employ 93 semi-structured interviews conducted with professionals at direct lenders, executive search firms, life insurance companies, owner-operators, private equity funds, publicly-traded REITs, third-party real estate service firms, and tax credit syndicators. Results indicate five unique approaches to sustaining sustainability at the asset and firm level: corporate, property manager, asset manager, and consultant driven, as well as stand-alone strategies. Further, interviewees suggest that the value proposition of sustainability initiatives can be enhanced through management collaboration to leverage unique data streams.

How do executive search firms increase interest in career opportunities? The role of past interactions

This article explores how executive search consultants stimulate executives’ consideration of career opportunities available at other employers. The study is based on a panel dataset of 3582 executives invited to a job interview by a global executive search firm from January 2005 to May 2009. The results demonstrate that past interactions between executives and the search consultants had a delayed effect on consideration of career opportunities. The results contribute to research on executive careers by identifying past relationships with search consultants as a factor affecting rejection of new career opportunities. They also shed light on the relatively understudied phenomenon of executive search firms.

Career Central Corp.: Building Critical Mass

Jacob Matthews, chief strategy officer for Career Central Corp. (CEC), was faced with the challenge of growing the client base for CEC's database of job seekers. While CEC had gained traction in signing up potential recruits, the number of employers using the site was still low, and if the trend continued, the recruits might soon start leaving the site. To grow dramatically, Matthews was exploring the possibility of partnering with executive recruiters, search firms, and other online search firms. But how could he structure such partnerships without compromising the confidentiality of his candidates? How could he minimize the risk involved in trusting a third party with the company's valuable database of employees? What was the value proposition that CEC offered its clients who currently used its competitors both online and offline? Refining the marketing message, structuring strategic partnerships, and consistently delivering on its promise were the issues that CEC had to address to grow its business.

Head-hunter Methods for CEO Selection

Almost all appointments of CEOs to major non-financial firms involve at least some head-hunter involvement. Final selection always rests with the company board, but frequently the board chooses between candidates most of whom have been suggested for consideration by a head-hunter. The existing literature covers such issues as the scope and role of head-hunters in CEO appointments. The way that search firms select who to put forward for consideration has not been investigated. In this paper the authors describe the working methods used by ten major London-based national and international executive search firms in identifying suitable candidates for CEO posts. Their findings are based on extensive interviews. The primary finding is that performance of candidates in various posts prior to being put forward for consideration plays a minor role in CEO selection compared to other considerations. Other findings have to do with CEO remuneration and on-going relations between head-hunters and successful candidates.

Burning Bridges Or Building Them? The Effect Of Employee Mobility On Client Relationship Formation

Building on previous research on conflictual relationships between organizations, I explore a case of professional services firms that represent one side of the party in conflictual relationships such as law firms or executive search firms. These firms, whom I refer to as hired hands in this paper, face a special kind of challenge: they must work in the interest of their clients, but the involvement in conflictual relationships with the clients’ adversaries may undermine the possibility of building new business relationships with those who could have been potential clients themselves. Results from hazard models using a unique dataset from an executive search firm between 2005 and 2012 suggest that, in fact, the poached firms are more likely to become clients of the search firm compared to those who were at risk but were not poached, suggesting that the dynamics that would hurt most other organizations may actually provide opportunities for the hired hands. The effect is stronger for poached firms that are located outside the city where the search firm is located, suggesting that the poaching event may help the search firm increase its saliency towards its potential clients.

Market intelligence gathering in executive search firms

Market intelligence is crucial in ensuring executive search consultants make suitable decisions and deliver informed advice, knowledge and talent to clients. This article examines the types of market intelligence required by executive search consultants and the methodologies and sources used in intelligence gathering. An assessment as to whether the intelligence-gathering process is about who you know or what you know is also provided. The article considers the impact of demands for market intelligence on executive search firms and discusses knowledge management principles and processes as a means of aiding the effective capture, sharing and use of market intelligence. The article concludes with some observations on the skill sets required of researchers in executive search.

Understanding Executive Job Search

We apply the exploitation/exploration dichotomy faced by organizations in business strategy to the decisions of individual executives as to whether to continue in their current organization and exploit career opportunities there or explore new ones through the avenue of job search. Specifically, we observe whether executives pursue offers from an executive search firm to be considered for positions at other organizations. Insights from the multi-armed bandit problem help explain who searches and who does not, focusing on the structural attributes of each individual’s situation. Individuals are more likely to search where their current roles are less certain and where broader career experience makes search more useful because the array of possible opportunities is greater. The results also shed light on the operations of executive search firms, who are central actors in executive careers.

Labor Market Intermediaries and the New Paradigm for Human Resources

Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) are entities that stand between the individual worker and the organization that needs work done. They include well-known operations such as executive search firms...

Executive career success in search-firm-mediated moves across employers

This paper integrates the economic and sociological literatures on market intermediaries to examine the ways in which a labor market intermediary, executive search firms, alter career outcomes for executives who move across organizations. Analyses of the proprietary dataset of a large multinational executive search firm show that executives whose moves are mediated by the search firm are more likely to obtain a promotion or move to a larger and more reputable new employer than those who move without such mediation, but they are not more likely to move to a developmental assignment: one in a new function or in a new industry. The results suggest that the search firm constrains executives' options by matching their existing knowledge and skills with open positions.

(Re)considering New Agents: A Review of Labour Market Intermediaries within Labour Geography

AbstractThe world of work continues to change. Labour markets in most countries are increasingly shaped by policies of neoliberal deregulation while strategies of flexibility dominate public policy and corporate strategy across an array of sectors. At the forefront of these changes are the myriad labour market intermediaries that are used by workers and employees to enhance their ability to navigate ever more complex and volatile labour markets. For some, mediated employment, recruitment and work practices mean greater career progression and profit making ability, but for many others, it means increased precarity, vulnerability and insecurity. This paper critically reviews existing literature within geography on three types of private labour market intermediary, namely temporary staffing agencies and contract brokers; executive search firms and headhunters; and informal intermediaries such as gangmasters. The final section addresses the future for research in labour geography and, in particular, suggests new ways in which to broaden our understanding of labour market intermediaries and their impact on worker agency.

Interviews with five respected scholar-teachers in the field along with empirical articles on group acceptance, the role of executive search firms, and sources of charisma

This article does not have an abstract.

Mobility and Cash Compensation: The Moderating Effects of Gender, Race, and Executive Search Firms

This study addresses a phenomenon observed in past research on career success and attainment in which White male managers and executives seemingly gain more from external labor market mobility than do their female and minority male counterparts. Focusing on the executive search industry, the authors found that executive search firm representatives are more likely to contact White males than females and minority males, that the compensation advantage resulting from an external labor market strategy is strongest among White male managers and executives, and that search firm—initiated contacts moderate the relationship between compensation and mobility in an external labor market. Implications for management research, theory, and practice are discussed.

Search Intermediaries, Internal Labor Markets, and CEO Pay

Executive search firms play a major role in the hiring decisions of executives, yet their impact on executive pay and firms' internal labor markets remain unexplored. In this paper, we present a model that attempts to fill this gap. The model relates the escalation of CEO pay to a decline in firms' internal labor markets and less competition for the CEO position within the firm. The latter, in turn, is the result of more efficient executive search firm activity, and, in the presence of such activity, to an increase in the importance of as opposed to firm-specific managerial skills. The model implies that CEO pay, the pay gap between the CEO and non-CEO executives, the variance of pay, and the importance of outside to inside successions for CEO positions, will increase together as search activity becomes more efficient or general skills become more important. The time-series implications of the model are consistent with U.S. evidence.

What do business school deans do? Insights from a UK study

PurposeDuring the last 40 years, the growth and impact of UK business schools have been significant. Relatively few studies have reviewed how business school deans emerge and grow. This paper aims to explore the experiences and psychometric profiles of UK business school leaders to understand their tenures, problems, dilemmas and succession issues.Design/methodology/approachThe study comprised 16 semi‐structured interviews with business school deans and Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaires completed by deans and aspiring deans (associate deans and heads of department). The study uses the executive life cycle and concepts of social capital as theoretical frameworks to understand the dean's role.FindingsThe study revealed a pattern of individuals working in their first deanship at their third business school. Their career trajectories highlighted the usefulness of consultancy skills similar to those of a partner in a professional service firm. The importance of the dean's role in terms of business school fit, creating a differentiation strategy and team building were emphasised. The psychometric preferences of the deans in the sample indicated Jungian extroversion, tough mindedness, seeing patterns and making connections, strategic thinking and a tendency to bring issues to closure. Recommendations are made for the development of a more heterogeneous, transnational cadre of business school deans and improved dialogue with heads of universities to understand the positive contribution of business school leaders as changing business models are needed in turbulent times.Originality/valueThere are few explanations of the roles and functioning of business school deans in practice. The insights gained are valuable for business school deans and are, more broadly, of interest to heads of universities and executive search firms. The paper is theoretically and practically relevant to building leadership capabilities in knowledge intensive organisations and professional service firms.

The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities