Research Findings

Research has demonstrated a dramatic rise of income inequality in the West. Today, across advanced capitalist countries, the top ten percent of households take home about a third of all income and own two-thirds of all wealth. 

Despite what scholars, journalists and some politicians consider a worrying trend, there is no evidence that people have grown more concerned about inequality. In fact, citizens of more unequal societies are less concerned than those in egalitarian societies. How to make sense of this paradox?

Recently, the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference in Poland, the U.S. National Climate Assessment Report, and severe forest fires, hurricanes and winter storms have called attention to just how devastating climate change already is and will continue to be. Yet, what these events often fail to highlight is who benefits from this devastation. Understanding that piece of the puzzle is critical for building better policy approaches to climate change.

One of the most tangible effects of climate change in the United States is the mounting cost and frequency of high-impact natural hazards. In 2018 alone, mudslides engulfed large segments of Montecito, Hurricane Florence flooded a large swath of the Carolinas, Hurricane Michael destroyed communities along the Gulf coast, and California experienced some of the most destructive wildfires in history. These are just some of the most widely known events. Hundreds of other natural hazards caused millions more in damage and loss of life across the country.

R&D employees moving from one employer to another is a frequent, yet controversial event. On the one hand, inventor mobility has been shown to have a positive effect on overall innovative activity. On the aggregate level, the fast development of new technologies in regional clusters such as Silicon Valley is driven by dynamic labor markets and high turnover rates of engineers, programmers, or developers. On the firm-level, learning-by-hiring is a fast and efficient way to acquire external knowledge.

From the perspective a firm that loses key employees, outbound mobility, on the other hand, creates costs of finding suitable replacements and is associated with the risk of losing not only employees but also crucial knowledge. Knowledge that potentially is employed by the hiring firm to compete in related markets. Recent media coverage has revealed a number of lawsuits caused by one firm’s R&D employees moving to a competitor in industries ranging from semiconductors and mobile phones to pharmaceuticals and autonomous-driving vehicles.

Even though a vast majority of all households in wealthy countries have two wage-earners, women on average work fewer hours and at lower wages than their partners. This is commonly attributed to the fact that women perform most of the routine housework. For instance, Swedish women spend approximately 15 hours per week on domestic work compared to 10 hours for men – a moderate gender gap compared to many other European countries.

When women decrease time in domestic work, their time in paid work is generally thought to increase. This may happen, for example, with increased access to child care, increased supply of low-skilled workers which makes it cheaper to hire domestic help, or technological improvements in household appliances.

However, we don’t have detailed information about exactly how much more women work for pay when these kinds of changes occur.

Women on executive boards and in other top level leadership positions are still uncommon throughout the world. Germany is no exception: by the end of June 2017, only 47 out of 677 executive board members in the German stock-listed DAX, MDAX, SDAX, and TecDAX companies were female. There is a strong rationale for changing this status quo. In addition to moral motives to include women, we have compelling evidence of the  bottom line benefits that result from having more women in leadership positions. However, in top management teams across companies and in boards of companies where no quota applies, the progress is slow. We argue that women’s underrepresentation indicates the persistent existence of the leadership labyrinth – a metaphor for the numerous challenges faced by women in their careers. Being continually confronted with challenging twists and turns requires women to work extra hard and persist in the face of difficulties on their route to success.

Studies have shown that engagement in networking is crucial for career success as it facilitates access to critical career-building resources such as advice, technical knowledge, strategic insight or emotional support. However, research has also revealed that women’s professional networks are often less powerful and effective than men’s in terms of exchanged benefits. Also the presumably distinct motivations that underlie the networking behaviors of men and women remain less well understood. With our research, we provide new insights into the discussion on women, leadership and career development, with a specific focus on networking. With such insights we contribute to greater transparency in the leadership labyrinth with ineffective networks being one detrimental hurdle for women.

How do you leverage new growth opportunities?

All kinds of organisations – universities, NGOs, private companies – look to access new audiences and enter new markets by reaching out to resource holders and diverse constituencies outside their standard remit. And there’s a certain amount of good business sense at play here: addressing new audiences helps increase risk diversification and safeguard longer term prosperity.

But this growth strategy comes with potential pitfalls. New audiences often have demands that can be very different to those of existing markets. Organisations entering new spaces run the risk of neglecting mainstream business. The capabilities needed to address a new market are often not those needed to maintain the flow and quality of products and services to existing customers and stakeholders.

How can organisations manage this kind of audience diversification so that everyone comes out of it better off? How can they balance who they already are – or are perceived to be – and what they already do, with the goals, objectives and modus operandi of their new audience

When I ask people what they think of when they hear the word “outsourcing,” most commonly I get the “ideal type” answer. It is an image long associated with outsourcing: information technology (IT) jobs that get shipped overseas to countries like India.  

Yet offshoring – the more appropriate term for this example – did not define the type of outsourcing affecting my friends and family or people I have come to know through my research.  Their examples were best characterized as “in-house outsourcing,” a form of outsourcing where outsourced employees remain onsite in their current environment, but work instead for a different company, as an onsite “vendor.”

In my new book, I sought to learn more about how in-house outsourcing was affecting professionals in IT and other fields. While IT has been most often targeted, in 2005, “cost centers” like human resources (HR), accounting, and other job fields were also increasingly outsourced.

When thinking about a job and, more precisely, the position one hopes to obtain and hold, we often automatically think of material rewards (i.e., pay, benefits, mobility prospects, etc.) or job security over the long term.

Such goals are important for workers and their families, for sure, especially in the face of restructuring and growth in unstable, part-time and precarious employment.

They tell us little, however, about day-to-day workplace experiences—that is, the things that make individuals both happy and productive in their everyday work lives and that likely also make for a good workplace.

Issues of surrounding happiness and satisfaction on the job are certainly of consequence to workers. But, to be clear, they are (or should be) of relevance as well to employers—Employers who, in the current era, grapple regularly with high rates of employee turnover, absenteeism, stress of meeting production goals and heightened financial costs associated with job training.

In a recent study, we keep this dual focus on workers and employers in mind and tackle the issues of worker satisfaction and on-the-job effort and commitment.

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