Keller Research Wins Best Paper

A research study co-authored by Associate Professor JR Keller has won the best published paper honor of the Academy of Management’s Careers Division.

“My Manager Moved! Manager Mobility and Subordinates’ Career Outcomes” was published in print in “Organization Science” in 2022. The award, announced by the Careers Division on Monday, recognizes, along with Keller, co-authors Minseo Baek and Matthew Bidwell, both of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

They found that a boss’s departure decreased annual bonuses for their former employees four percent, and that long-term incentives, such as stock options, decreased by 17 percent for employees left behind. The largest were among those who had worked with their department managers the longest. 

The authors also found that after a new manager started, subordinates on average were 15% more likely to leave their units for promotion. The number was higher among those that had the longest history with their previous manager.

More findings are recapped here.

The Careers Division of the Academy of Management supports research, teaching and practice focused on people's lifelong succession of work experiences, the structure of opportunity to work, and the relationship between careers and other aspects of life.

Topics include: individual career development; career management strategies; career planning; career outcomes; relationships between human resource systems and careers; life cycle interactions with work; race, culture, and gender effects on careers, and labor force diversity.