PurposeThe aim of this work is to enhance workplace diversity and inclusion by exploring and addressing unique barriers faced by veterans during their transition from military service to civilian occupations.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on existing expatriate theory, we introduce the Veteran Employment Transition (VET) model. Drawing parallels between veterans and expatriates, the model illustrates key antecedents crucial for a successful transitional adjustment.FindingsThe proposed VET model outlines essential factors contributing to successful veteran transitions. These factors include individual factors such as language skills, job and organization factors such as role clarity and nonwork factors.Research limitations/implicationsThe VET model establishes a foundation for future research on veteran transition and answers the call for theory development in the field.Practical implicationsThe insights derived from the VET model offer practical recommendations for designing interventions and transition support programs tailored to the unique needs of returning veterans.Originality/valueThe contribution of this paper lies in the development of the VET model, offering a novel perspective for understanding and addressing the distinctive challenges faced by returning United States (US) military veterans.

We examine COVID-19 as an external enabling mechanism and propose the interplay between entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) beliefs and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) may help explain why some small firms are enabled to exploit disequilibrating environmental changes. We predict that ESE’s relationship with performance is mediated through its strategic posture, and the perceived impact of COVID moderates this relationship. We test our moderated-mediation model using data collected over multiple waves from a sample of 190 small business owners. While our findings suggest that an entrepreneur’s self-efficacy may contribute to firm performance alone, it appears insufficient to mitigate the perceived negative consequences caused by the pandemic. However, ESE may play a pivotal role when channeled through the firm’s strategic orientation. Our results suggest embracing an entrepreneurial orientation is appropriate for navigating stiff economic headwinds and unprecedented uncertainty. Still, the benefits of such a posture can be fully realized only when entrepreneurial self-efficacious managers lead the firm.

The greatest competition among rivals in many industries is not for market share but human capital. In the so-called talent war, organisations compete aggressively to attract star employees-individuals with disproportionate productivity and external visibility-in pursuit of competitive advantage. Building on human capital and resource-based view theories, we argue that firms' compensation strategies are influenced by the intangible assets that define stars. With data from Major League Baseball, we find that organisations are likely to pay higher wages to stars based on their prior performance and visibility. Furthermore, our data indicate that firm competitive position influences which of these intangible assets holds greater value for managers. We discuss the implications of these findings for organisations waging a war for talent and suggest directions for future research on a matter that is far from over.

This study explores the employee work performance impacts of business travel activities at the individual level. Using the unique data set created by combining 8 seasons (2012-2019) of Major League Baseball data, we utilize a pooled OLS framework where we control for detailed stadium, game, city, home and visiting team characteristics. Our results suggest that direction of travel and the number of time zones crossed significantly impacts individual cognitive performance. The findings underline the importance of time between assignments and how it influences these impacts. Our results offer insights for enhancing individual performance as organizations depart the constraints of the COVID impact and business travel begins to resume.

This paper explores the relationship between the stock of interstate highways on employment growth of counties in Texas between 1983 and 2012. Using the Chernozhukov-Hansen instrumental variables quantile regression (IVQR) method, we examine the heterogeneous impact that highways have on employment growth at different quantiles of the conditional distribution while at the same time controlling for potential endogeneity. The results show that the employment growth effect monotonically increases as one shifts from the lower tail to the upper tail of the distribution. The range is 0.15 to 0.44, with the highest at the 95th quantile, compared to 0.189 for OLS and 0.213 for 2SLS. A 10 percent increase in interstate highway kilometers in 1983 led to about a 1.5 to 4.4 percentage point increase in county employment over a 29-year period. Our results also indicate that the counties with low initial levels of employment grew faster than those with a high initial level of employment and that this convergence monotonically decreases from the lower tail to the upper tail of the growth distribution.

Organizations—particularly those in human capital-intensive industries—that have fought the talent war with star employees, may have received less than they bargained for (Groysberg, Lee, & Nanda, 2008; Terry & McGee, 2016). Consequently, firms may seek other ways in which a star employee can contribute to organizational productivity and effectiveness. We suggest that organizations can leverage their star talent within the recruitment process—one of the most urgent problems faced by organizations today (Ployhart, 2006). The current study seeks to examine if and how stars may enhance organizational recruitment efforts. In a 2 (star present versus absent) × 2 (average salary or above average salary) factorial research design (n = 184), we find that the presence of a star employee signals organizational reputation to potential applicants in the external labor market which, in turn, increases applicants’ attraction to the firm and the likelihood they will pursue the application process further. These results provide evidence that star employees can trigger signaling-based mechanisms early on in the recruitment process, leading to desirable organizational-level recruitment outcomes.

Post-PASPA, more than twenty states have either implemented or successfully passed legislation allowing their citizens to gamble on sports. These legislative efforts have created an opportunity for states to capture some of the over $150 billion that Americans annually wager through illegal means. While Nevada has successfully regulated sports gambling for more than seventy years, the Supreme Court’s Murphy decision has spurred calls for uniform federal legislation. Central to this push for a federal framework are the leaders of the major sports leagues and their claim of concern for contest integrity. Our position is that this argument is tenuous at best. Rather, we believe this to be a convenient avenue for the major sports leagues to become involved in the regulatory process and secure additional revenue via integrity fees for providing data to federally mandated sources. Further, we argue that this framework of requiring states to use certified data sources that originate from the leagues themselves is not only economically damaging for potential sportsbook operators but could actually result in a greater chance of contest corruption rather than increased integrity. This article examines the contrasting views of the major North American professional and amateur sports leagues (NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, and NCAA) with respect to the new, legalized sports gambling environment. We then look at the argument of maintaining contest integrity which is focal to proposed federal frameworks. Finally, we advocate for a state framework and demonstrate why states are in a better position to regulate sports gambling without federal interference, as state legislation already provides a mechanism by which income from wagers can be redistributed towards improving local infrastructure and funding social welfare programs; under proposed federal legislation, this revenue would divert elsewhere.

This case focuses on the University of Kansas football program’s fall from relevance over a nine-year period and the personnel decisions that were made as it happened. The case provides a background on the competitive landscape of intercollegiate athletics, including the importance of conference affiliation, the associated revenues that stem from such affiliations, and the potential threat of conference realignment to demonstrate the importance of a competitive football program. The case then walks the reader through football-related personnel decisions, providing detailed backgrounds of the coaches to identify job-market signals and assess their fit with the job and organization. Details of raises and contract extensions made by the outgoing chancellor and incumbent athletic director are also provided to examine performance standards within Kansas Athletics. As a change in university leadership takes place, the reader is asked to consider what actions, if any, the incoming chancellor should take to turn around a struggling football program and ensure a viable athletic department.

In this study, the authors examine Major League Baseball free agency to identify whether certain factors beyond a player's on-field performance contribute to contract premiums. These premiums are considered to be the difference between the compensation a player receives in free agency and the marginal revenue product (MRPt-1) in their contract year. Using 345 free agent transactions over a four-year period (2012-2015), the authors examine the relationships between potential free agent contract premiums and the attributes of a player's previous team, as well as how contract premiums may be influenced by the level of interest from other teams and certain facets of the acquiring teams. Results suggest that free agents tend to receive compensation premiums when they played for a successful team during their contract year. Playing for a large-market team during their contract year also influenced contract premiums. In addition, free agents tended to realize compensations premiums when multiple teams were bidding for their services, the acquiring teams were in playoff contention the prior year, and the acquiring teams possessed relatively more financial resources. Findings shed additional light on how factors peripheral to a player's on-field performance may influence the free agency market. Recommendations include that effective control mechanisms are necessary to ensure free agent compensation is commensurate with the value of the player. (C) 2017 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper uses meta-analytic techniques to assess the extant literature that empirically examines the relationship between the presence of a star employee at a firm and that firm’s performance. Framed by the resource-based view, an examination of 30 samples from previous studies in the star literature suggests an overall positive relationship that is moderated by how stars are defined as well as the type of organizational performance metric used in the study. Studies identifying stars based solely on performance criteria report stronger relationships between the presence of a star and organizational performance. Furthermore, analysis indicates that the relationship between the presence of a star employee and organizational performance significantly differs in magnitude depending on whether an operational or global measure of organizational performance is used as the dependent variable, suggesting that stars are able to appropriate some of the economic rent which would otherwise show up as organizational profit. These findings suggest study design is systematically impacting results and should be taken into careful consideration when executing future star research.

Employee involvement is a foundational construct for theory and research in job design (Oldham & Hackman, 1980), high performance work systems (Boxall & Mackey, 2009) and employee thriving (Spreitzer et al, 2005). While various aspects of employee involvement have been examined in more than 100 studies since the 1980’s there has been no systematic review of this work. This meta-analysis examines Ed Lawler’s high involvement model which emphasizes principles of decision-making power, shared information, incentive rewards, and employee knowledge (PIRK). We intend for this work to test the validity of this model and the combination of these specific principles in predicting employee motivation and attitudes as well as unit and organizational performance.

For some industries, the greatest competition among rivals is not for market share, but rather for human capital (Terdiman, 2014). Sometimes referred to as a talent war, organizations beg, borrow, or steal to attract defectors from competitors in an attempt to gain competitive advantage. But are these tactics paying off? Using signaling theory, we suggest that organizations may be offering compensation premiums to star employees as a result of misinterpreting signals within the external labor market. With data from Major League Baseball, we find that organizations are likely to pay a compensation premium to an individual based on their past performance, visibility, experience, and desirability. We discuss the implications of our findings for organizations waging war for talent and suggest directions for future research on a matter that is far from over.