Search Firms Research Articles

Gender Differences in the Path to Medical School Deanship

Women account for only 28% of current US medical school deans. Studying the differences between women and men in their preparation to becoming deans might help to explain this discrepancy. To identify differences in the leadership development experiences between women and men in their ascent to the medical school deanship. In this qualitative study, volunteers from the roster of the Association of American Medical Colleges Council of Deans were solicited and interviewed from June 15 to November 9, 2023. Women deans were recruited first, then men who had been appointed to their deanships at a similar time to their women counterparts were recruited. Deans were interviewed on topics related to number of applications for deanships, prior leadership roles, leadership development, personal factors, and career trajectories. Interviews were coded, and themes were extracted through conventional content analysis. Career and leadership development experiences were elicited using a semistructured interview guide. We interviewed 17 women and 17 men deans, representing 25.8% (34 of 132) of the total population of US medical school deans. Most deans (23 [67.6%]) practiced a medicine-based specialty or subspecialty. No statistically significant differences were found between women and men with regard to years to attain deanship (mean [SD], 2.7 [3.4] vs 3.7 [3.7] years), years as a dean (mean [SD], 5.7 [5.2] vs 6.0 [5.0] years), highest salary during career (mean [SD], $525 769 [$199 936] vs $416 923 [$195 848]), or medical school rankings (mean [SD], 315.5 [394.5] vs 480.5 [448.9]). Their reports indicated substantive gender differences in their paths to becoming a dean. Compared with men, women deans reported having to work harder to advance, while receiving less support and opportunities for leadership positions by their own institutions. Subsequently, women sought leadership development from external programs. Women deans also experienced gender bias when working with search firms. This qualitative study of US medical school deans found that compared with men, women needed to be more proactive, had to participate in external leadership development programs, and had to confront biases during the search process. For rising women leaders, this lack of support had consequences, such as burnout and attrition, potentially affecting the makeup of future generations of medical school deans. Institutional initiatives centering on leadership development of women is needed to mitigate the gender biases and barriers faced by aspiring women leaders.

Understanding the Superintendent Pipeline: A Call for a National Longitudinal Dataset

A recent study published in Educational Researcher by White (2023) examined superintendent gender gaps. This work required 4 years of internet searches to identify and match superintendent names with each of the roughly 13,000 school districts in the United States. Although this study provided important insights into the superintendent gender gaps, the study is unable to examine gaps for females of color or the long-term career pathways of superintendents. The lack of a national longitudinal superintendent dataset has meant researchers and policymakers have limited insights into superintendent racial and gender gaps, turnover rates, experience, and career pathways to the superintendency. Drawing on data from the Texas State Longitudinal Data System, we offer several findings to provide a glimpse of what could be accomplished with a longitudinal dataset. Policymakers, school boards, search firms, and communities will fail to understand the full range of challenges and opportunities to diversifying and strengthening the superintendent workforce until such a dataset exists and is accessible to researchers and other interested parties.

The When and How of Delegated Search

Contract Design for Outsourcing Search Firms commonly outsource search for new employees, real estate, or technology to external agents. What should the contracts with these agents look like, and under which conditions should companies even hire agents (as opposed to doing the search in house)? These are the questions studied in “The when and how of delegated search” by Zorc et al. The authors find that the optimal contracts pay the agent a per-time fee as well as a bonus for finding an acceptable alternative. The size of this bonus is defined on signing of the contract and decreases over time. The decision of whether to outsource at all hinges on the firm’s trade-off between speed and quality; in-house search becomes optimal for a firm that prioritizes quality, but outsourcing offers better speed.

They Are Not Match-Makers: Understanding the Behavior of a Search Firm

They Are Not Match-Makers: Understanding the Behavior of a Search Firm

인공지능을 활용한 인재 추천 서비스에 관한 연구: 소규모 서치 펌의 사례를 중심으로

기업에서 새로운 경력사원을 채용하기 위해서 공개 채용 등 기업 내 채용 프로세스를 이용하기도 하지만 비용 절감을 위해 외주를 통한 인재 추천 서비스를 이용하는 것이 일반적이다. 그러나 기존의 인재 추천 서비스는 컨설턴트의 역량에 의지하는 경우가 많아 컨설턴트가 전문성을 가지지 못한 분야에 대해서는 제대로 된 인재를 추천하기 어려운 경우가 많다. 이로 인해 구직자는 원하는 직장을 찾기가 어려우며, 기업 입장에서도 추가적인 비용이 발생하는 경우가 많았다. 본 연구에서는 4,412명의 인재 후보 데이터를 토대로 기존의 인재 추천 서비스의 문제점을 분석하고 이에 대한 원인을 분석하였다. 또한, 이에 그치지 않고 인공지능을 활용한 인재 추천 서비스에 대한 정확도를 측정하는 것은 물론 그 의의 및 한계점을 동시에 분석하였다. 마지막으로 이러한 연구 결과에서 도출한 한계점을 토대로 인공지능 활용 최적화를 위한 데이터베이스의 구조 및 UI 연계 데이터베이스 프로세스를 제안하였다.

The Evolving Role of the External Search Firm in the Canadian Decanal Search

Despite the critical role academic deans play in the leadership and success of universities, most of what we know about the Canadian deanship we know from an institutional perspective, including our understanding of the recruitment and selec-tion process. The findings presented in this article will facilitate a better understanding of how the increased involvement of external search firms in decanal searches has influenced both the decanal search process and the experiences of those candidates involved in the search. Provosts, deans, and search firm representatives participated in this study. The resultant findings have several important implications for search policy and process, and the conceptual framework proposed will support new research in the area of senior administrative hiring within Canadian universities.

Brokered Careers: The Role of Search Firms in Managerial Career Mobility

The authors explore how career paths are shaped by the involvement of search firms in hiring. Drawing on theories of market intermediation, they 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, the authors find that individuals who move jobs through a search firm experience lower horizontal mobility than those who move through other means. Findings also suggest that these results are not driven by firms’ decisions to use a search firm to fill the job. Supplementary analyses show 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 search firms play in managerial careers.

Credit Management Practices and Loan Performance of Microfinance Banks in Kenya

Loan performance of microfinance firms has declined recently. This pattern compromises microfinance organizations sustainability, viability and hinders them achieving their objectives. The purpose of this study was to see how credit management strategies affected loan performance at Kenyan microfinance institutions. The particular objectives of the study were to assess the impact of credit policy, customer evaluation, collection policy, credit conditions, and credit risk management on loan performance. Thirteen Kenyan microfinance banks are the subject of this initiative. Financial Intermediation theory, Information Asymmetry theory, and Transaction Cost theory will be used in this research. The study employed a descriptive research approach. In this study, both primary and secondary data will be employed. The basic data will be evaluated using the statistical metrics of mean and standard deviation. A direct model will be used to evaluate the impact of credit management strategies on loan performance (without moderation) and a moderating effect (with moderation). It was also utilized inferential statistics with linear regression models. Structured questionnaires were utilized in primary data collection. Financial reports for Microfinance banks and supervisory reports from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) will be used for secondary data collection. The study found that that their firms conduct client appraisal. The study also found that client appraisals were effective. The study found that the firm checks at the client’s credit worthiness before issuing a loan. The study found that the bank has credit analyst whose work is appraise all potential loan customers who seek to borrow from the bank. There are various services providers contracted by the bank e.g. for credit tracking to help with tracking of vehicles used as collateral, insurance firms, law firms who assist in security perfection in case where land has been used as collateral, CRB firms who assist in giving information on clients CRB performance, company search firms e.g. credit info who assist in ascertaining the authenticity of companies belonging to clients who seek to borrow a loan from the firm. The study found that that the loan default rate is below 20%. The study also found that loan performance can be improved by calling customers frequently to remind them off their loans obligation particularly the perennial defaulters. Credit policy, client evaluation, collection policy, credit conditions, and credit hazard control were all huge on advance exhibition of microfinance banks in Kenya, as per the review, at a 5% degree of importance and a 95% degree of certainty. Their organizations perform customer assessment, as indicated by the review's discoveries. Client evaluations were also shown to be beneficial in the study. Before granting a loan, the business examines the client's credit worthiness, according to the research. Following are some recommendations based on the study's results and conclusions: On the impact of microfinance banks' credit policies and decision-making on loan performance, it is recommended that effective credit risk management procedures be developed and executed, particularly through credit risk management information systems. Keywords: Credit Management, Loan Performance, Microfinance

Is Genericness Still Adequately Defined? Internet Search Firms and the Economic Rationale for Trademarks

Landes and Posner’s highly cited economics of trademark law based on search cost reduction has influenced economists, legislators, and courts for decades. Their account, however, predates consumer use of the Internet for search and did not anticipate the rise of firms such as Google to economy-wide power in search. Consequently, trademark law intended to help consumers find a preferred brand now also protects the means they typically use. An outdated view of trademarks as a natural and equitable right––very scrutable to STS––has led to Internet search firms owning reflexive “marks for finding other marks,” a structural advantage they have exploited through new dynamic and microtargeted forms of advertising into technoscientific rentiership. This paper revises Landes and Posner’s model to fit the case of an economy containing dominant firms with significant economy-wide search cost reduction power, adding (1) differentiation of technological elements of the original formal model and (2) analysis of the distribution and function of marks such as GOOGLE in consumer decision-making. The updated theory shows that marks granted to search firms are equivalent to generic marks in economic effect and constitute a new but unrecognized class that are functionally “super-generic.”

The Generalism Advantage: How search firms shape the effect of specialization on employability

I study how labor market intermediaries, such as search firms, shape employment outcomes for candidates with different career profiles in the context of middle management jobs. I suggest and find evidence that in a mediated labor market, generalists, workers whose career history spans multiple job categories, are more likely than specialists, workers whose career history is concentrated in one category, to gain access to the final employer. The generalism advantage is notably strong when generalists prevail in the candidate pool of the vacancy they are being considered for but are simultaneously rare in the professional labor market. This effect is explained by the strategic behavior of a search firm, which has several reasons to promote generalists rather than specialists to an employer. Headhunters may prefer generalists not only because they are a better fit for middle management jobs but also because they are more easily transferable to a new employer and more dependent on headhunters’ mediation. Moreover, preferences towards generalists, especially when they are rare in the market, might be an attempt to cope with competitive pressure. These findings have implications for the literature on labor market intermediaries and the studies of employability and external labor markets.

Inside the Push for Good Governance: Institutional Predictors of Administrative Transparency in Public Organizations

Policy actors around the world perceive transparency as a means to achieve good governance. Research often focuses on the determinants of fiscal and economic transparency and gives less attention to administrative transparency. This study examines whether multiple types of institutional factors influence administrative transparency in the context of the hiring of college and university presidents in U.S. postsecondary education. Across 54 contracts obtained between institutions of higher education and third-party search firms, no contract explicitly referred to the term transparency, but contracts varied in attention given to issues of confidentiality. Using data for 157 presidential searches between 2010 and 2018, we find that few structural components predict indicators of transparency, though the presence of state sunshine laws and whether a governing board oversees multiple institutions can influence specific portions of the executive search process.

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.

Under the radar: How firms manage competitive uncertainty by appointing friends of other chief executive officers to their boards

Research SummaryIn this study, we reveal a previously unstudied type of board tie that may help firms manage competitive uncertainty. While firms face regulatory barriers to the use of board interlock ties as a strategy for reducing competition, we suggest that firms can circumvent these barriers by appointing the friends of competitors' chief executive officers (CEOs) to their boards. Our theoretical framework addresses the antecedents, maintenance, and performance consequences of such “board‐friendship ties” to rivals. Our theory explains (a) why firms form and maintain board‐friendship ties, where maintenance involves the reconstitution of broken ties and (b) how firms form and maintain these ties, by revealing the role of search firms in identifying the friends of rivals' CEOs. Empirical analyses of large‐sample, longitudinal survey and archival data provide substantial support for our theory. Managerial SummaryFirms can and do reduce competition and increase performance by appointing the friends of competitors' CEOs to their boards, and search firms (headhunters) play a key role in forming and maintaining these “board‐friendship” ties to competitors. While board interlock ties between close competitors are illegal and direct friendship ties between CEOs of competitors are relatively rare, board‐friendship ties are common, and yet largely unknown to antitrust regulators and external stakeholders.

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.

Price-directed consumer search

We extend Stahl’s (1989) model to a setting with differentiated products to study the effects of price-directed consumer search. Consumers engage in costly search to find out whether products meet their needs. Consumer search is directed by prices when they are observable before search, in contrast to the case in which prices are discovered only after search, where search is naturally random. The equilibrium under price-directed search differs substantially from that under random search, despite certain similarities. We show that as search costs decrease, sales become more likely and firms earn higher expected profits under price-directed search, whereas the opposite holds under random search. Moreover, compared with random search, under price-directed search firms’ expected profits are always lower, but consumer surplus and total welfare are higher provided that the search cost is sufficiently small.

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.

Customer citizenship behavior on social networking sites

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the customer- and firm-focused driving factors, relationship quality (RQ), and identification on customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) on corporate social networking sites (SNS), as well as the impact of service attribute in such relationship.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted among the Facebook members of 7-Eleven (318) and Starbucks (316) in Taiwan to test the proposed framework. A structural equation modeling was used to test the validity of the research model and hypotheses.FindingsThe results reveal that SNS RQ and SNS identification are key factors affecting CCB, whereas financial bond (firm-focused) and consumer-company identification (customer-focused) are critical initiators. The findings reveal contingencies across service attributes for such effects. Experienced service firms can better encourage CCB by intimating SNS relationships with followers. Search firms should secure online identification to enable customers to perform CCB. The results also confirm the mediating effects of SNS RQ and SNS identification.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by simultaneously examining the firm (external)- and individual (internal)-level of incentives, and to further reveal the main drivers encouraging CCB on corporate SNS. This study also belongs to the limited studies that discuss consumer voluntary behaviors on the corporate SNS. The results shed light on the existence of a contingency role for service attribute on SNS, and further suggest how firms with distinct attributes can effectively allocate their limited resources when encouraging CCB on SNS.