Matthew Bidwell

Matthew Bidwell
  • Xingmei Zhang and Yongge Dai Professor
  • Professor of Management

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    2020 SH-DH
    3620 Locust Walk
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: careers, contingent work, firm boundaries, human resource management, knowledge workers

Links: CV

Overview

Matthew Bidwell’s research examines new patterns in careers and employment, focusing on causes and effects of more short-term, market oriented employment relationships. He is particularly interested in the different kinds of career paths that people take in the modern labor market. Matthew’s work has been published in a variety of academic journals and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. It has also been recognized with a Scholarly Achievement Award from the Academy of Management Human Resources Division, the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Association and the Scholarly Contribution Award from Administrative Science Quarterly. He has also won the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award several times. He has served as a Senior Editor at Organization Science and is currently a faculty co-director of the Wharton People Analytics Initiative and faculty director of the Wharton CHRO Program.

Matthew holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School, an S.M. in Political Science from MIT, and an M. Chem from Oxford.

Continue Reading

Research

  • Giovanna Capponi, Matthew Bidwell, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, Martine Haas (2023), Global Careers and Compensation: From Initial Penalties to a Superglobal Premium (forthcoming), Academy of Management.

    Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between international mobility and financial compensation for knowledge workers pursuing business careers. While some theoretical arguments suggest that international mobility may lead to higher pay, others suggest that it may lead to performance problems and lack of recognition, which could reduce financial rewards. Empirical research on the topic is limited, with cross-sectional data providing little insight into the relationship between international mobility and compensation over time. Our study overcomes this challenge by using a panel dataset on the career histories of 1,322 MBA graduates. The results reveal a curvilinear relationship between international mobility and compensation over time. Making one or two international moves can have substantial negative effects on pay. However, further moves are associated with pay growth, and there is some evidence that those who move countries multiple times (“superglobals”) obtain substantially higher pay. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on international mobility and business careers.

  • Matthew Bidwell, Kira Choi, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo (2022), Brokered Careers: The Role of Search Firms in Managerial Career Mobility, Industrial and Labor Relations Review.

    Abstract: We explore how career paths are shaped by the involvement of search firms in hiring. Drawing on theories of market intermediation, we 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, we find that individuals who move jobs through a search firm experience lower horizontal mobility than those who move through other means. Our findings also suggest that these results are not driven by firms’ decisions to use a search firm to fill the job. In supplementary analyses, we find 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 that search firms play in managerial careers.

  • Minseo Baek, Matthew Bidwell, JR Keller (2021), My Manager Moved! The Effects of Supervisor Mobility on Subordinate Career Outcomes, Organization Science, forthcoming.

    Abstract: How do managers’ moves across jobs affect the subordinates they leave behind? Manager mobility disrupts established manager-subordinate relationships, as subordinates must now learn to work with a replacement. We explore how this relational disruption affects subordinates’ objective career success – specifically their financial rewards and subsequent promotion chances. We argue that manager mobility may have both positive and negative implications for subordinate outcomes. The loss of an established relationship may reduce subordinates’ performance and managers’ propensity to reward them; on the other hand, relational disruption may make subordinates more willing and able to seek out valuable opportunities elsewhere in the organization. We also argue that these effects are likely to be greatest for those subordinates who had worked with the previous manager for longer. Using eight years of personnel data from the US offices of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, we show how managers’ mobility is associated with a decrease in subordinates’ financial rewards, but an increase in their promotion prospects.

  • Virginia Doellgast, Matthew Bidwell, Alexander Colvin (2020), New Directions in Employment Relations Theory: Understanding Fragmentation, Identity and Legitimacy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, forthcoming.

    Abstract: This article introduces the special issue “Toward new theories in employment relations.” The authors summarize the history of employment relations theory and reflect on the implications for new theory development of recent disruptive changes in the economy and society. Three sets of changes are identified: the growing complexity of actors in the employment relationship, an increased emphasis on identity as a basis for organizing and extending labor protections, and the growing importance of norms and legitimacy as both a constraint on employer action and a mobilizing tool. The articles in this special issue advance new frameworks to analyze these changes and their implications for the future of employment relations.

  • Matthew Bidwell (2020), No Vacancies? Building Theory on How Organizations Move People Across Jobs, Advances in Strategic Management , 41, pp. 153-174.

    Abstract: Mobility processes, the routines that organizations use to move employees into and across jobs, are a critical determinant of the way that human capital is allocated within organizations and careers developed. Most existing work on these mobility processes has examined processes in which mobility is tightly coupled to the filling of vacancies. There is substantial evidence, though, that many organizations adopt very different processes for managing mobility. In this theory paper, I compare vacancy-based, “job-pull” systems with alternative, “person-push” systems in which mobility is keyed to employees’ attainment of performance and skill thresholds to explain how and why mobility processes vary. I identify two, inter-related dimensions along which mobility processes vary: whether their decisions processes emphasize the need to match employees to tasks versus providing predictable rewards; and whether the system of jobs that people move between prioritizes flexibility or control of agency costs. I use these dimensions to predict when organizations will adopt different mobility processes, and how those processes will affect employees’ mobility.

  • Tracy Anderson and Matthew Bidwell (2019), Outside insiders: understanding the role of contracting in the careers of managerial workers, Organization Science, (forthcoming).

    Abstract: We explore the role that contracting plays within the careers of managerial workers. Contracting distances workers from organizational coordination and politics, aspects of organizational life that are often central to the managerial role. Nonetheless, managerial workers make up a substantial proportion of the contracting workforce. Qualitative interviews with managerial contractors indicate that the tension between the natures of contracting and managerial work means that managerial contractors carry out substantially more bounded work than do regular employees, and that this boundedness can shape the role that contracting plays in their careers. Examining the employment histories of MBA alumni of a US business school, we show that workers with fewer subordinates and greater personal demands are more likely to enter contracting. We also find that contractors report stronger work-life balance, but receive lower pay both while contracting and in subsequent regular employment. While prior research has highlighted the financial benefits and temporal demands of contracting for highly skilled workers, our findings introduce important boundary conditions into our understanding of high-skill contracting: the nature of the occupation is critical.

  • Matthew Bidwell and Ethan Mollick (2015), Shifts and Ladders: Comparing the Role of Internal and External Mobility in Executive Careers, Organiztion Science, 26 (6), pp. 1629-1645.

    Abstract: Workers can build their careers either by moving into a different job within their current organization or else by moving into a new job within a different organization. We use matching perspectives on job mobility to develop predictions about the different roles that those internal and external moves will play within their careers. We propose that internal and external mobility are associated with very different rewards: upwards progression into a job with greater responsibilities is much more likely to happen through internal mobility, but external moves will nonetheless offer similar increases in pay, as employers seek to attract external hires. We also examine how these predictions change when moves take workers across job functions as well as when external mobility happens involuntarily. Analyses of data on the careers on MBA alumni are used to support these arguments. Despite growing interest in boundaryless careers, our findings indicate that internal and external mobility play very different roles in executives’ careers, with upwards mobility still happening overwhelmingly within organizations.

  • Matthew Bidwell, Shinjae Won, Roxana Barbulescu, Ethan Mollick (2015), I Used to Work at Goldman Sachs! How Organizational Status Creates Rents in the Market for Human Capital, Strategic Management Journal, 36 (8), pp. 1164-1173.

    Abstract: How does employer status benefit firms in the market for general human capital? On the one hand, high status employers are better able to attract workers, who value the signal of ability that employment at those firms provides. On the other hand, that same signal can help workers bid up wages and capture the value of employers’ status. Exploring this tension, we argue that high status firms are able to hire higher ability workers than other firms, and do not need to pay them the full value of their ability early in the career, but must raise wages more rapidly than other firms as those workers accrue experience. We test our arguments using unique survey data on careers in investment banking.

  • Matthew Bidwell and JR Keller (2014), Within or without? How firms combine internal and external labor markets to fill jobs, Academy of Management Journal, 57.

    Abstract: We examine which jobs are more likely to be filled by internal mobility (specifically, promotions and lateral transfers) versus hiring. Building off the assumptions of transaction cost accounts of employment, we develop new theory that focuses on the interaction between the problems of evaluating and integrating external hires on the one hand and the incentive costs of failing to promote eligible workers on the other. These arguments lead us to predict how three specific characteristics of jobs - demands for firm-specific skills, performance variability, and supply of internal candidates - affect how those jobs are staffed. Using seven years of personnel data spanning all jobs from the US offices of a large investment bank, we find that jobs with higher performance variability and a larger grade ratio of junior to senior workers are more likely to be filled by internal mobility. We also find evidence that the effects of performance variability are contingent on the grade ratio, only affecting staffing decisions when the firm does not face strong pressures to promote junior workers in order to maintain incentives. Contrary to expectations, we find no effect for firm-specific skills.

  • Matthew Bidwell (2012), What Happened to Long Term Employment? The Role Of Worker Power and Environmental Turbulence in Explaining Declines in Worker Tenure, Organization Science, (forthcoming).

    Abstract: Recent declines in the average length of time that US workers spend with a given employer represent an important change in the nature of the employment relationship, yet one whose causes are poorly understood.  I explore those causes using Current Population Survey data on the tenure of men aged 30-65. I argue that long term employment relationships primarily occur when workers pressure employers to close off employment from market competition, reducing the attractiveness of external mobility relative to internal opportunities, and increasing employment security. I then explore how two changes in organizations’ environments might have affected workers’ ability to secure such closed employment relationships: a decline in union strength, and increased turbulence from changes in technology and globalization. My results support the argument that declines in tenure reflect the reduced power of workers to secure closed employment relationships. Recent declines in tenure have been concentrated in large organizations, and much of those declines are explained by controlling for the changing levels of industry unionization. I find little evidence that foreign competition or technological change affected mobility. The results are robust to measures of changing industry growth rates and within-industry reorganization. Supplementary analyses suggest that layoffs are associated with different industry pressures than tenure, and that voluntary mobility may have played an important role in declines in tenure.

Teaching

Current Courses (Spring 2024)

  • MGMT7940 - Understanding Careers

    This course examines the structure of executive careers in order to help understand how those careers can be managed most effectively. By drawing on extensive economic, sociological and psychological research on careers, we will examine such questions as when executives should move on to the next job or evenchange fields altogether, and what are effective means of finding jobs, achieving promotions, managing networks, and achieving work-life balance. The first few sessions of the course explore the basic building blocks of the career, outlining our knowledge on the different orientations that individuals take to their careers, how approaches to the career change as people get older, and how different kinds of job moves within and across firms advance careers. The second part of the course explores in more detail the social resources that affect careers, notably social networks and relationships with mentors. The third section of the course then examines a number of the most important and difficult issues affecting modern careers, including making successful transitions, the effects of gender on careers, work life balance, and international careers.

    MGMT7940002 ( Syllabus )

    MGMT7940004 ( Syllabus )

    MGMT7940006 ( Syllabus )

Awards and Honors

  • Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2020
  • ASQ Scholarly Contribution Award, 2017
  • Best overall paper award, Careers Division, Academy of Management, 2014
  • Winner, John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award, Labor and Employment Relations Association (recognizing outstanding research by a recent entrant to the field), 2014
  • Finalist, Industry Studies Association-INFORMS Best Paper Award, 2013
  • Finalist, Best Paper Award, Strategic Management Society Conference, 2012
  • Scholarly Achievement Award for best published paper in HR for 2011, Academy of Management HR division, 2012
  • Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Fellowship, 2010-2012
  • Outstanding Reviewer Award, Academy of Management Review, 2009
  • Outstanding Reviewer Award (given to top 5% of division conference reviewers), Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management, 2009
  • Outstanding Reviewer Award (given to top 5% of division conference reviewers), Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management, 2006
  • Recipient, Wilson Fellowship, 2000-2002
  • Kennedy Scholar, 1996-1997

In the News

Knowledge at Wharton

Wharton Stories

Activity

Latest Research

All Research

In the News

How Can AI Enhance People in the Workplace?

Wharton professor talks about the fast growing area of people analytics and the impact of AI on certain careers.Read More

Knowledge at Wharton - 2/29/2024
All News

Wharton Stories

Prof. Bidwell teaching in front of a whiteboard covered in words and graphsWhat Prof. Matthew Bidwell’s Research Reveals about Career Mobility

Around the 1970s, the predominant mindset of those entering the workforce was finding a job at a large company and climbing the internal ladder. This mentality has changed dramatically since then, and Associate Professor of Management Matthew Bidwell has been examining these new employment trends in his research on job…

Wharton Stories - 03/05/2019
All Stories