Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

The impact of universalistic versus particularistic criteria on academic hiring has been receiving growing attention in recent years. Yet, most studies conducted on hiring norms in academy and management academy have ignored the impact of social capital, particularly structural social capital, a particularistic attribute, on occupational outcomes. This could lead to a partial if not misleading view of the sociology of hiring in management academy. We utilize a novel approach, focusing on academic departments’ structural social capital in the form of network centrality (based on cumulative PhD exchange networks), and explore how this type of centrality impacts job seekers’ occupational prestige for new academic jobs in management departments and early career quality publications.We find that although merit-based criteria such as publications matter somewhat, academic network centrality explains significant variance in obtaining prestigious jobs. Paradoxically, we find that academic network centrality does not explain early career publications. We discuss the implications of our findings for management science.

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